Page:Poems Dorr.djvu/440

Call to each other from all the hills;
A scream comes down from the eagle's nest;
The bark of a fox from the cliff's tall crest;
The owls hoot; and the very trees
Have something to say to every breeze!"

The paths were few and the ways were rude
In the depths of that virgin solitude.
The Indian's trail and the hunter's tracks,
The trees scarred deep by the settler's axe,
Or a cow-path leading to the creek,—
These were the signs he had to seek;
Save where, it may be, he chanced to hit
The Crown Point road and could follow it—
The road by the British troops hewn out
Under General Ambherst in fifty-nine,
When he drove the French from the old redoubt,
Nor waited to give the countersign!

The streams were many and swift and clear;
But there was no bridge, or far or near.
It was midnight when he paused to hear
At Rutland, the roar of the waterfall,
And found a canoe by the river's edge,
In a tangled thicket of reeds and sedge.
With a shout and a cheer, on the rushing tide
He launched it and flew to the other side;
Then giving his message, on he sped,
By the light of the pale stars overhead,
Past the log church below Pine Hill,
And the graveyard opposite. All was still,
And the one lone sleeper lying there
Stirred not either for cry or prayer.

Only pausing to give the alarm
At rude log cabin and lonely farm.