And we had rested underneath the oaks Shadowing the bank, whose grassy spires are shaken By the perpetual beating of the falls Of the wild Ammonoosuc. We had tracked The winding Pemigewasset, overhung By beechen shadows, whitening down its rocks, Or lazily gliding through its intervals, From waving rye-fields sending up the gleam Of sunlit waters. We had seen the moon Rising behind Umbagog's eastern pines, Like a great Indian camp-fire; and its beams At midnight spanning with a bridge of silver The Merrimac by Uncanoonuc's falls. There were five souls of us whom travel's chance Had thrown together in these wild north hills A city lawyer, for a month escaping From his dull office, where the weary eye Saw only hot brick walls and close thronged streets; Briefless as yet, but with an eye to see Life's sunniest side, and with a heart to take Its chances all as godsends; and his brother, Pale from long pulpit studies, yet retaining The warmth and freshness of a genial heart, Whose mirror of the beautiful and true, In Man and Nature, was as yet undimmed By dust of theologic strife, or breath Of sect, or cobwebs of scholastic lore; Like a clear crystal calm of water, taking The hue and image of o'erleaning flowers, Sweet human faces, white clouds of the noon, Slant starlight glimpses through the dewy leaves, And tenderest moonrise. 'T was, in truth, a study, To mark his spirit, alternating between A decent and professional gravity And an irreverent mirthfulness, which often Laughed in the face of his divinity, Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite unshrined The oracle, and for the pattern priest Left us the man. A shrewd, sagacious merchant, To whom the soiled sheet found in Crawford's inn, Giving the latest news of city stocks And sales of cotton, had a deeper meaning Than the great presence of the awful mountains Glorified by the sunset; and his daughter, A delicate flower on whom had blown too long Those evil winds, which, sweeping from the ice And winnowing the fogs of Labrador, Shed their cold blight round Massachusetts Bay, With the same breath which stirs Spring's opening leaves And lifts her half-formed flower-bell on its stem, Poisoning our seaside atmosphere.