Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/315

Rh ," the friends that he would often stroke with his hand from the side of his boat. Familiar though they may be in part, possibly written for an imaginary naturalist before the friendship with Thoreau, yet no words are so strong, in sympathetic description of Thoreau, as Emerson's passage in "Woodnotes," beginning:—

And such I knew a forest seer, A minstrel of the natural year, Foreteller of the vernal ides, Wise harbinger of spheres and tides, A true lover who knew by heart Each joy the mountain dales impart; It seemed that nature could not raise A plant in any secret place, In quaking bog, on snowy hill, Beneath the grass that shades the rill, Under the snow, between the rocks, In damp fields known to bird and fox, But he would come in the very hour It opened in its virgin bower, As if a sunbeam showed the place, And tell its long descended race. It seemed as if the breezes brought him It seemed as if the sparrows taught him As if by secret sight he knew Where, in far fields the orchis grew. Many haps fall in the field Seldom seen by wishful eyes; But all her shows did nature yield, To please and win this pilgrim wise. He saw the partridge drum in the woods; He heard the woodcock's evening hymn; He found the tawny thrushes broods; And the shy hawk did wait for him;