Our life should feed the springs of fame
With a perennial wave.
As ocean feeds the babbling founts
Which find in it their grave.
Ye skies drop gently round my breast,
And be my corselet blue,
Ye earth receive my lance in rest,
My faithful charger you;
Ye stars my spear-heads in the sky,
My arrow-tips ye are;
I see the routed foemen fly,
My bright spears fixed are.
Give me an angel for a foe,
Fix now the place and time,
And straight to meet him I will go
Above the starry chime.
And with our clashing bucklers' clang
The heavenly spheres shall ring,
While bright the northern lights shall hang
Beside our tourneying.
And if she lose her champion true,
Tell Heaven not despair,
For I will be her champion new,
Her fame I will repair.
There was a high wind this night, which we afterwards learned had
been still more violent elsewhere, and had done much injury to
the cornfields far and near; but we only heard it sigh from time
to time, as if it had no license to shake the foundations of our
tent; the pines murmured, the water rippled, and the tent rocked
a little, but we only laid our ears closer to the ground, while
the blast swept on to alarm other men, and long before sunrise we
were ready to pursue our voyage as usual.
-
TUESDAY.
"On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the fields the road runs by
To many-towered Camelot."
^Tennyson.^
-
TUESDAY.
- * -
Long before daylight we ranged abroad, hatchet in hand, in search
of fuel, and made the yet slumbering and dreaming wood resound
with our blows. Then with our fire we burned up a portion of the
loitering night, while the kettle sang its homely strain to the
morning star. We tramped about the shore, waked all the
muskrats, and scared up the bittern and birds that were asleep
upon their roosts; we hauled up and upset our boat and washed it
and rinsed out the clay, talking aloud as if it were broad day,
until at length, by three o'clock, we had completed our
preparations and were ready to pursue our voyage as usual; so,
shaking the clay from our feet, we pushed into the fog.
Though we were enveloped in mist as usual, we trusted that there
was a bright day behind it.
Ply the oars! away! away!
In each dew-drop of the morning
Lies the promise of a day.
Rivers from the sunrise flow,
Springing with the dewy morn;
Voyageurs 'gainst time do row,
Idle noon nor sunset know,
Ever even with the dawn.
