"Now the tired sportsman leans his gun
Against the ruins on its site,
And ponders on the hunting done
By the lost wanderers of the night.

"And there the little country girls
Will stop to whisper, listen, and look,
And tell, while dressing their sunny curls,
Of the Black Fox of Salmon Brook."

The same writer has happily versified a pleasant superstition of the
valley of the Connecticut. It is supposed that shad are led from the
Gulf of Mexico to the Connecticut by a kind of Yankee bogle in the shape
of a bird.

THE SHAD SPIRIT.

"Now drop the bolt, and securely nail
The horse-shoe over the door;
'T is a wise precaution; and, if it should fail,
It never failed before.

"Know ye the shepherd that gathers his flock
Where the gales of the equinox blow
From each unknown reef and sunken rock
In the Gulf of Mexico,--

"While the monsoons growl, and the trade-winds bark,
And the watch-dogs of the surge
Pursue through the wild waves the ravenous shark
That prowls around their charge?

"To fair Connecticut's northernmost source,
O'er sand-bars, rapids, and falls,
The Shad Spirit holds his onward course
With the flocks which his whistle calls.

"Oh, how shall he know where he went before?
Will he wander around forever?
The last year's shad heads shall shine on the shore,
To light him up the river.

"And well can he tell the very time
To undertake his task
When the pork-barrel's low he sits on the chine
And drums on the empty cask.

"The wind is light, and the wave is white
With the fleece of the flock that's near;
Like the breath of the breeze he comes over the seas
And faithfully leads them here.

"And now he 's passed the bolted door
Where the rusted horse-shoe clings;
So carry the nets to the nearest shore,
And take what the Shad Spirit brings."

The comparatively innocent nature and simple poetic beauty of this class
of superstitions have doubtless often induced the moralist to hesitate
in exposing their absurdity, and, like Burns in view of his national
thistle, to: