Champlain, the Lake, N. Y.

LAKE CHAMPLAIN.

NOT the tribes of yore,

OT thoughtless let us enter thy domain;

Who sought the ocean from the distant plain,
Call thee their country's door.

And as the portals of a saintly pile

The wanderer's steps delay,

And, while he musing roams the lofty aisle,
Care's phantoms melt away

In the vast realm where tender memories brood

O'er sacred haunts of time,

That woo his spirit to a nobler mood

And more benignant clime,

So in the fane of thy majestic hills

We meekly stand elate;

The baffled heart a tranquil rapture fills

Beside thy crystal gate:

For here the incense of the cloistered pines,

Stained windows of the sky,

The frescoed clouds and mountains' purple shrines,

Proclaim God's temple nigh.

Through wild ravines thy wayward currents glide,
Round bosky islands play;

Here tufted headlands meet the lucent tide,

There gleams the spacious bay;

Untracked for ages, save when crouching flew,

Through forest-hung defiles,

The dusky savage in his frail canoe,

To seek the thousand isles,

Or rally to the fragrant cedar's shade

The settler's crafty foe,

With toilsome march and midnight ambuscade

To lay his dwelling low.

Along the far horizon's opal wall

The dark blue summits rise,

And o'er them rifts of misty sunshine fall,
Or golden vapor lies.

And over all tradition's gracious spell

A fond allurement weaves;

Her low refrain the moaning tempest swells,

And thrills the whispering leaves.

To win this virgin land,

a kingly quest,

Chivalric deeds were wrought;

Long by thy marge and on thy placid breast
The Gaul and Saxon fought.

What cheers of triumph in thy echoes sleep!
What brave blood dyed thy wave!

A grass-grown rampart crowns each rugged steep,
Each isle a hero's grave.

And gallant squadrons manned for border fray,
That rival standards bore,

Sprung from thy woods and on thy bosom lay,-
Stern warders of the shore.

How changed since he whose name thy waters bear,

The silent hills between,

Led by his swarthy guides to conflict there,
Entranced beheld the scene!

Fleets swiftly ply where lagged the lone bateau,
And quarries trench the gorge;

Where waned the council-fire, now steadfast glow
The pharos and the forge.

On Adirondack's lake-encircled crest

Old war-paths mark the soil,

Where idly bivouacs the summer guest,

And peaceful miners toil.

Where lurked the wigwam, cultured households throng;

Where rung the panther's yell

Is heard the low of kine, a blithesome song,

Or chime of village bell.

And when, to subjugate the peopled land,
Invaders crossed the sea,

Rushed from thy meadow-slopes a stalwart band,
To battle for the free.

Nor failed the pristine valor of the race

To guard the nation's life;

Thy hardy sons met treason face to face,

The foremost in the strife.

When locusts bloom and wild-rose scents the air,
When moonbeams fleck the stream,

And June's long twilights crimson shadows wear,
Here linger, gaze, and dream!

Henry Theodore Tuckermar,

A

BURGOYNE'S FLEET.

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