Page:May-day and other pieces, Emerson, 1867.djvu/56

44 Pleased with these grand companions, we glide on,

Instead of flowers, crowned with a wreath of hills,

And made our distance wider, boat from boat,

As each would hear the oracle alone.

By the bright morn the gay flotilla slid

Through files of flags that gleamed like bayonets,

Through gold-moth-haunted beds of pickerel-flower,

Through scented banks of lilies white and gold,

Where the deer feeds at night, the teal by day,

On through the Upper Saranac, and up

Père Raquette stream, to a small tortuous pass

Winding through grassy shallows in and out,

Two creeping miles of rushes, pads, and sponge,

To Follansbee Water, and the Lake of Loons.

Northward the length of Follansbee we rowed,

Under low mountains, whose unbroken ridge

Ponderous with beechen forest sloped the shore.

A pause and council: then, where near the head