gs
Of beauty-incense, giving to the Lord
The purest sacrifice glad Nature brings.

The list'ning stars with rapture beat and glow;
The moon forgets her high, eternal calm
To shout her gladness to the sea below,
Whose waves are silver tongues to join the psalm.

Those everlasting snow-fields are not cold;
This icy solitude no barren waste.
The crystal masses burn with love untold;
The glacier-table spreads a royal feast.

Fairweather! Crillon! Warders at Heaven's gate!
Hoar-headed priests of Nature's inmost shrine!
Strong seraph forms in robes immaculate!
Draw me from earth; enlighten, change, refine;

Till I, one little note in this great song,
Who seem a blot upon th' unsullied white,
No discord make--a note high, pure and strong--
Set in the silent music of the night.

IV

THE DISCOVERY

The nature-study part of the voyage was woven in with the missionary
trip as intimately as warp with woof. No island, rock, forest, mountain
or glacier which we passed, near or far, was neglected. We went so at
our own sweet will, without any set time or schedule, that we were
constantly finding objects and points of surprise and interest. When we
landed, the algae, which sometimes filled the little harbors, the limpets
and lichens of the rocks, the fucus pods that snapped beneath our feet,
the grasses of the beach, the moss and shrubbery among the trees, and,
more than all, the majestic forests, claimed attention and study. Muir
was one of the most expert foresters this country has ever produced. He
was never at a loss. The luxuriant vegetation of this wet coast filled
him with admiration, and he never took a walk from camp but he had a
whole volume of things to tell me, and he was constantly bringing in
trophies of which he was prouder than any hunter of his antlers. Now it
was a bunch of ferns as high as his head; now a cluster of minute and
wonderfully beautiful moss blossoms; now a curious fungous growth; now a
spruce branch heavy with cones; and again he would call me into the
forest to see a strange and grotesque moss formation on a dead stump,
looking like a tree standing upon its head. Thus, although his objective
was the glaciers, his thorough knowledge of botany and his interest in
that study made every camp just the place he wished to be. He always
claimed that there was more of pure ethics and even of moral evil and
good to be learned in the wilderness than from any