Alone at night! The river black below.
Dark banks in front, the murky woods around,
The hollow roar of rushing waterfall,
The hoot of owl, the wolf packs distant sound,
All make a scene of deepest solitude ;
Man is so far off, God so grandly near;
The wilderness is one great tongue that speaks
The human hearts in accents wondrous clear.
Not in the desert solitudes of space
Not o'er the seas do we so realize
The Presence that pervades the loneliness,
For here the forest temples round us rise
And hearts expand in all this wilderness.
A Sabbath day! The skies are robed in gold
With purple hues fringed with a pearly sheet;
The lake sleeps breathless, not a leaf is stirred.
Viewing the scenes repose I thought how sweet
The sanctity of Sabbath in the mind,
That finds a sympathy in vast universe
For on this kind day Nature's pulse seems stilled.
The waters ripple with a calmer course
The forests rustle with a gentler grace,
Birds seem to chant with sweeter melodies.
A perfect calm pervades the human heart,
And Nature purifies the earth and skies.
By Tupper Lake the trapper finds his spoil,
The muskrat holds the busy beaver's home,
Where that shrewd architect builds his dam,
With tender saplings, a surmounting dome.
There, too, he traps the fisher and the mink,
The furry otter, sables, a rich prize
Where, too, the hunter drives the dappled deer
Hunts him thro' forests as he frantic flies,
Then seeks escape by swimming river-tide.
Pursued by hounds, tormented till he dies!
Here, too, the wild ducks haunt the open lake.
The speckled loons their dismal hootings sound.
Great eagles o'er the mountain summits soar,
The wide-wing'd herons skim the waters round:
The anglers here their spotted victims take
By flowing stream or o'er the Tupper Lake.