X.

THE WONDERS OF THE WELKIN.

1.

rubens accendit lumina Vesper."

STILLY eve came slowly stealing
O'er savannah, fell, and forest,
Ere we parted from our moorings,
From the many-warder'd inlet.

Purple grew the giant ridges;

Glow'd the sky, one dispread rainbow;
Flush'd each pale cloud and wan cloudlet
With the warm blaze of the red rose;
While all calm in tranquil smoothness

Like some old-world warrior's target,
Pure wrought gold bedeck'd with brilliants—
Lay the isle-gemm'd Bay of Thunder.

G

2.

"now reigns,

Full-orb'd, the moon, and with more pleasing light,
Shadowy, sets off the face of things ;-"

« Ἐκ τ' ἔφανεν πᾶσαι σκοπίαι, καὶ πρωόνες ἄκραι,
καὶ νάπαι.”

Then the moon beam'd o'er the landscape,

Mingling her pale, ghostly lustre

With the Sun-God's fading crimson,

Silvering gay

44 rock and green tree-top.

From the lone height's 43 rose-red castle

Many a lush ridge wound toward us,
Many a trailing leafy foreland:

And in many a bowery baylet

From thin ring of glimmering white beach,
Or through shadowy greenwood-tangle-
Curl'd the blue smoke of the camp-fire.

3.

"We gazed, in silence hush'd, with eyes intent

On the refulgent spectacle”

Night's dun dank mists blurr'd the coast-line,

Shrouding the dead Day-King's glories.

Lo! amid the dusk sky northward,

Bends a black mass o'er the mere-marge.

From behind, toward the welkin,

Shoot lithe pillars, or of saffron

Or gay gold or pearly opal,

Then in stately march move eastward,—

Like long, down-dropp'd, wind-borne rain-threads, a Like, methought, the show'r that wafted

Erst the Lord of bright Olympus

To His earth-born Argian maiden.

4.

"Insula portum

Efficit objectu laterum, quibus omnis ab alto
Frangitur, inque sinus scindit sese unda reductos."

Dawn sore battled with grim Night's mists,

Ere the dusky host she routed,

• Such as we saw moving majestically down the Gulf of St. Lawrence off Cap Tourment on the 20th of the next month, in the course of a tour we made eastward.

Ere disclosed she in the grey shore
Haven 65 sought by careful pilot,
Long and wistfully sought haven,—
Haven shaped as old-world circus,
Shaped as circus of the Roman,-
Fenced by lonely warder-islet

From the rage of Keetchi Gahmi,
From the rage of broad Big Water,—

By haught ring of shaggy mountains

Sheltered from the West and North West

And the ice-engender'd North-Wind,

From the blasts of Mudjeykeewis,

From the fury of Keywaydin,

From the dire Kabeebonokka.

5.

"In the calm sunshine slept the glittering main."

Parting hence, we bent us, homeward,

Tow'rd the Leap of Mary's River,

By the isle of title royal

Flying gaily with a fair wind,

Cloudless welkin, waveless water,—

By thy bill-like point, Keweena,-65
By the Mahnitoo's 36 lone island
Scarce beyond,-whose beacon-tower
Bids men shun the grisly rude rock,
As they haste o'er broad Big Water.

6.

miracula rerum "

Then

as children round the Yule-log,

In the nights of drear December,

Raptured with the visions summoned,
With the visions laid and summon'd,
By the all-creative lantern·
Gazed we on the fleeting pageants 66
Of the dreamy summer-sunshine-
Now a chain of towery blue peaks