The Song of the Woods’ Dog-Watch
’Tis the weirdly witching hour of the woods’
“dog-watch,”
When the guide suspends the kettle in the ash limb’s crotch,
Stirs the drowsy, drowsy embers till the cozy fire beams
And flickers dance like gnomes and elves athwart the glowing dreams
Of the sleeping town-bred fisher who is stretched with placid soul
On the earth in sweeter slumber than his town couch can cajole.
Ah, ’tis tough on bone and muscle, is this chas-
ing after fun—
And a sleeper gets to sleeping forty knots along
’bout one.
But the guide is up a-stirring—monstrous shape with flaring torch,
Prodding up the dozing fire for the woods’ “dog-
watch.”
And the slow unclosing eyelids of the startled dreamer see
This dreadful apparition thrown in shadows on a tree.
And his heart for just a second goes to skirrup-
ing about
As it flopped when he was wrestling with that five-three-quarter trout.
But the ogre leaves the shadows, leans against a handy tree
And remarks: “The water’s bilin’; won’t ye have a cup o’ tea?”
And he wakes to a night of the fisherman’s
June,
—Afar the weird lilt of the dolorous loon
Floats up from the heart of the fair, velvet night—
A globule of sound winging slow in its flight.
As elfin a note as a gnome ever blew,
It wells from the waters, “Ah-loo-hoo-ah-hoo-
o-o-o.”
O spell of the forest! O glimmer and gleam
From the sheen of the lake and the mist-breath-
ing stream!
The night and the stars and the dolorous loon
Make mystic the spell of the fisherman’s June.
The spruces sing the lyric of the wood’s dog-
watch;
The kettle as it bubbles in the ash limb’s crotch,
The rustle of the spindles of the hemlock and the pine,
The crackle where the licking tongues of ruddy fire twine,
The oboe, in the distance, of the weird and lone-
some loon,
—This chorus sings the lyric of the blessed month of June.
What June? Your June of meadows or your June of scented breeze,
Or your June begirt with roses stretched in hammock at her ease?
Such a deity for maidens! I can bow to no such June!
I extol the mystic goddess of the Forest’s Silent
Noon.
—Noon of day or noon of night-time—in the vast and silent deeps,
Where human care or human woe or human envy sleeps,
Where rugged depths surround me, dim and silent, deep and wide,
And no human shares my joy but that second self, my guide.
—Here’s a June that one can worship. Here’s a June by right a queen, ’Neath her hand eternal mountains, ’neath her feet eternal green..
And here will I adore her, seeking out her awful throne
With the Silence swimming round me, and alone, thank God, alone!