Burgoyne's Fleet
by Alfred Billings Street�(1811�1881) |
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A DEEP, stern sound! the starting signal-roar!
And up
Champlain Burgoyne's great squadron bore.
In front, his
savage ally's bark canoes
Flashing in all their bravery
wild of hues,
Their war-songs sounding and their paddles
timed;
Next the bateaux, their rude, square shapes
sublimed
With pennon, sword, and bayonet, casting glow
In pencilled pictures on the plain below;
Last, the grand
ships, by queenly Mary led,
Where shines Burgoyne in pomp
of gold and red;
And then, in line, St. George,
Inflexible,
And radeau Thunderer, dancing on the swell
The glad wind made: how stately shone the scene!
June in
the forests each side smiling green!
The graceful
chestnut's dark green dome was fraught
With golden
tassels; ivory, seeming brought
From winter lingering in
the Indian Pass,
Mantled the locust; as in April grass
Rich dandelions burn, the basswood showed
Its bells of
yellow; while the dogwood glowed
In a white helmet
thickly plumed atop;
The earlier cherry let its sweet
pearls drop
With every breeze; the hemlock smiled with
edge
Fringed in fresh emerald; even the sword-like sedge,
Sharp mid the snowy lily-goblets set
In the nooked
shallows like a spangled net,
Was jewelled with brown
bloom. By curving point
Where glittering ripples umber
sands anoint
With foamy silver, by deep crescent bays
Sleeping beneath their veil of drowsy haze,
By watery
coverts shimmering faint in film,
Broad, rounded knolls
one creamy, rosy realm
Of laurel blossom with the
kalmia-urns
Dotted with red, the fleet, as sentient,
turns
The winding channel; in tall towers of white
The
stately ships reflect the golden light
Dazzling the lake;
the huge bateaux ply deep
Their laboring, dashing
pathway; fronting, keep,
With measured paddle-stabs, the
light canoes
Their gliding course; the doe, upstarting,
views
And hides her fawn; the panther marks the scene
And bears her cubs within the thicket's screen;
The wolf
lifts sharpened ear and forward foot;
Waddles the bear
away with startled hoot
As some sail sends a sudden flash
of white
In the cove's greenery; slow essaying flight,
The loon rears, flapping, its checked, grazing wings,
Till up it struggling flies and downward flings
Its
Indian whoop; the bluebird's sapphire hue
Kindles the
shade; the pigeon's softer blue
Breaks, swarming, out;
the robin's warble swells
In crumply cadence from the
skirting dells;
And restless rings the bobolink's bubbly
note
From the clear bell that tinkles in his throat.
Thus stately, cheerily, moves the thronging fleet!
On the
lake's steel the blazing sunbeams beat;
But now a blast
comes blustering from a gorge;
The white caps dance; it
bends the tall St. George,
And even the Thunderer tosses;
the array
Breaks up; canoe, bateau, grope doubtful way
Through the dim air; in spectral white, each sail
Glances
and shivers in the whistling gale;
All the green
paintings of point, bank, and tree
Vanish in black and
white, and all but see
A close horizon where near islands
lose
Their shapes, and distant ranks of forest fuse
Into a mass; at length the blast flies off,
Shallows stop
rattling, and the hollow cough
Of surges into caves makes
gradual cease,
Till on the squadron glides once more in
sunny peace.
So on some blue-gold day white clouds
upfloat
In shining throng, and next are dashed remote
By a fierce wind, then join in peace again,
And smoothly
winnow o'er the heavenly plain;
Or so some fleet of wild
fowl on the lake,
Dipping and preening, quiet journey
take,
Till the sky drops an eagle circling low
For the
straight plunge; wild scattering to and fro,
They seek
the shed of bank, the cave of plants,
Tunnel of stream,
wherever lurk their haunts,
Until the baffled eagle seeks
again
His sky, and safety holds, once more, its reign.
On Lady Mary's deck Burgoyne would stand
Drinking the
sights and sounds at either hand,
Replete with beauty to
his poet-heart,
Laughing to scorn man's paltry works of
Art:
The grassy vista with its grazing deer;
The lone
loon oaring on its shy career;
The withered pine-tree
with its fish-hawk nest;
The eagle-eyrie on some craggy
crest;
The rich white lilies that wide shallows told;
Their yellow sisters with their globes of gold
At the
stream's mouth; the ever-changeful lake;
Here a green
gleaming, there a shadowy rake
Of scudding air-breath;
here a dazzling flash
Searing the eyeball, there a sudden
dash
Of purple from some cloud; a streak of white
The
wake of some scared duck avoiding sight.
The dogwood,
plumed with many a pearly gem,
Was a bright queen with
her rich diadem;
An oak with some crooked branch up
pointing grand,
A monarch with his sceptre in his hand;
A rounded root a prostrate pine-tree rears
A slumbering
giant's mighty shield appears;
A long-drawn streak of
cloud with pendent swell
Of hill, a beam with its
suspended bell.
In some gray ledge, high lifted up, he
sees
An ancient castle looking from its trees;
Some
mountain's rugged outline shows the trace
Of the odd
profile of the human face;
A slender point tipped with
its drinking deer
Seems to his soldier eye a prostrate
spear;
In the near partridge-pinion's rolling hum,
He
hears, with smiles, the beating of the drum;
And in the
thresher's tones, with music rife,
The stirring flourish
of the whistling fife;
And thus his fancy roams, till
twilight draws
Around the fading scene its silver gauze.
A golden, lazy summer afternoon!
The air is fragrant with
the scents of June,�
Wintergreen, sassafras, and juniper,
Rich birch-breath, pungent mint and spicy fir
And
resinous cedar; on Carillon's walls
The sentry paces
where cool shadow falls;
His comrade sits, his musket on
his knee,
Watching the speckling gnats convulsively
Stitching the clear dark air that films some nook.
He
hears the dashing of the Horicon brook
Loud at the
west,�that curved and slender chain
By which the Tassel
hangs upon Champlain,�
It chimes within his ear like
silver bells,
And the sweet jangling only quiet tells;
In front he sees the long and leafy points
Curving the
waters into elbow-joints
Of bays; a crest beyond the old
French lines,
Domes the flat woods; east, opposite,
inclines
Mount Independence, its sloped summit crowned
With its star-fort, with battery breastplate bound,
The
floating bridge between, the massive boom
And chain in
front, and in the rearward room
A group of patriot craft;
and sweeping thence
The forest landscape's green
magnificence.
Southward the lake a narrowed river bends
With one proud summit where the brook suspends
Horicon's
tassel to King Corlaer's crown,
Close to Carillon's dark
embattled frown. |
By Alfred Billings Street�(1811�1881)
Listed September 12, 2014 |
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