Page:Poems Proctor.djvu/73

And to Winnipesaukee's tranquil sea,
Bosomed in hills and bright with isles
Where the alder grows and the dark pine tree,
And the tired wind sleeps and the sunlight smiles;
Up and on to the mountains piled,
Peak o'er peak, in the northern air,
Home of streams and of winds that wild
Torrent and tempest valeward bear,—
Where the great Stone Face looms changeless, calm
As the Sphinx that couches on Egypt's sands,
And the fir and the sassafras yield their balm
Sweet as the odors of morning lands,—
Where the eagle floats in the summer noon,
While his comrade clouds drift, silent, by,
And the waters fill with a mystic tune
The fane the cliffs have built to the sky!
And, beyond, to the woods where the huge moose browsed,
And the dun deer drank at the rill unroused
By hound or horn, and the partridge brood
Was alone in the leafy solitude;
And the lake where the beaver housed her young,
And the loon's shrill cry from the border rung,
The lake whence the Beauteous River flows,
Its fountains fed by Canadian snows.

What were the labors of Hercules
To the toils of heroes such as these?—
Guarding their homes from savage foes