Our party has reach’d now the foot of the hill, And we rest for a space on the trunk by the rill; One twists from the hopple a chalice of green, And stoops, for the lymph, the dense thicket between; One whirls a thick branch, as a fine twanging sound On the ear tells the hungry musketoe is round, Whilst Wright, never loath, takes immediate seat, Complaining in bass of the dust and the heat. We leave the green spot, our swift journey resume— The forest twines closer its cool verdant gloom; Above, like an arbor, the green branches meet, And the moss springs elastic, yet soft, to our feet. The shade is so dense, the gray rabbit scarce fears To show, o’er the fern clump, his long peering ears, And the saucy red-squirrel, erect on his spray, Were unseen, if his chatter-tongue did not betray; A scatter of viands, with plunge in the brake, As one stumbles o’er a coil’d root like a snake, There’s a laugh from the group, and a lofty perch’d crow Lifts his foot, with a croak, and looks wisely below; But onward we journey—we catch, as we pass Through the vistas, quick glimpses of rock, stream and grass, Then fitful we loiter by mounds plump with moss, With sunbeams, like fluid gold, streaking across, We peel the sweet birch bark, we pluck from the ground The rich, pungent wintergreen growing around, We taste the sour sorrel, in handfulls we pick The bright partridge-berry sown crimson and thick, We hear the near quail, from the rye stubble, call, And we watch the black beetle on rolling his ball; Then forward again, with new strength, on our way, Our footsteps as light as our bosoms are gay, A whirr—and, so sudden, the heart gives a bound, The partridge bursts up from his basin of ground; Three clear, fife-like notes—first, a low, liquid strain, Then high, and then shrill—all repeated again, ’Tis the brown-thresher, perch’d on yon pine grim and dark, Our sweetest of minstrels—our own native lark. We pass the low sawmill—the bridge o’er the brook, Where it glides, slow and deep, by each alder-cloth’d nook, We toil up the hill—o’er the fields are the frames Of hemlocks, scath’d black by the fierce fallow-flames, Or girdled, with half naked trunks smooth and gray, To catch the red lightning, or sink in decay. Again the wood closes—still wend we along, The robin is cheering our hearts with his song, The black snake, warm basking, his sunlight forsakes, As, at the loud beat of our steps, he awakes, The trees shrink away—one more hill to our feet, And our eyes, Pleasant Pond, in its beauty will greet; There glitters the outlet—still, upward, we pass, And there, spreads its smooth polish’d bosom of glass. On the East, lifts a hill, low and rounded, its crown With a slope, like a robe, on each side falling down,