Down to thy wave the fish-hawk swoops; The wood-duck floats within thy bays; Its trunks the water-maple groups Along thy banks of leafy maze. The gull darts by, a flash of snow; Deep from thy brink green pictures gleam; The loon shouts o’er, and shoots below; The soft haze folds thee in a dream. The lily lifts its creamy cup In thy broad shallows, amber clear; And there the thatch shoots bristling up, And there steals down the drinking deer. On thy bright breast each fairy isle Strews its rock-vase, with foliage brimmed; And from thee grandly, pile on pile, Soar the steep crags with thunders rimmed. In thy smooth glades the camp-fire flames; The hunter’s light boat tracks thy wave; Thy ooze in caves the muskrat frames; The otter, in thee loves to lave. Wild forest lake! oh, would my home, My happy home, were reared by thee! Thence would my full heart never roam, From care and trouble ever free. [Illustration] THE AUSABLE. IN the stately Indian Pass, From my fount of shadowy glass, I struggle along in hollow song on my blind and caverned way. Sharp, splintered crags ascend, Wild firs above me bend, And I leap and dash with many a flash to find the welcome day. The lean wolf laps my flow; In my pointed pools below, The grand gray eagle’s tawny eye like lightning fires the gloom. Not oft is the warbling bird In my jagged cradle heard, For I am the child of the savage and wild, not pet of the sun and bloom. I smite, in headlong shocks, Roots clutching the ragged rocks, And the blocks of my sable basins and the chasms my fury ploughs, Where the raven, as o’er he flies, Sees the frown of his deepest dyes, As the murkiest pall of the forest is flung from the dungeon-boughs. Old Whiteface cleaves apart In dizziest heights his heart For the roll of my rocky waters, and I lighten and thunder through. And sometimes I tame my will To sing like the wren-like rill, And I mirror the flower and bending bower and laugh in the open blue. But sometimes the cataract-rain Fills my breast with frantic disdain, And my boiling deep shoots torrent-like, lashing and crashing past;-- Whole forests I tear in my wrath; Whole hamlets I strew on my’ path, Till my wild waves break upon the lake, and I slumber in peace at last. [Illustration] BUTTERMILK FALLS. RACKET RIVER.