Natures Invitation - August 14, 1873

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An American Sportsman is a gentleman of leisure, intelligence and high repute, someone who is interested in field sports, honorable conduct and the preservation of game and fish.  Each original issue of Forest and Stream showcased the poet sportsman those craftsmen of verse who sang of the chase and nature in her wildest moods.

Each week too, our Podcast will also share a fresh breadth from the forest with a timeless poetic episode, these artistic pieces will be released weekly - published between our regular Thursday episode stories.

To The Gentle Sportsmen of America and around the world we respectfully and affectionately  offer a reintroduction to artistic verses of the past. Poems having a flavor of woodland, stream and lake that will re- mind every listener of Auld Lang Syne, or of more recent days spent in Nature's solitude with rod and gun, and make him long to again enjoy himself in that way."

Our introduction of an opening piece for this series is, titled “Nature’s Invitation,". The first poem, and the first reading-matter of any kind, printed in Forest and Stream. Written by Isaac Mclellan,  a veteran rhymster and brother of the rod and gun. his poems are smooth and musical. Their subjects original, they hold the quintessence, too, of a veteran sportsman's well bought knowledge.

In his day there was hardly a sportsman who did  not remember some happy line of Mr. McLellan's, for he occupied alone the position of 'the American laureate of the brookside and riverside. One of the pioneers of American poetry — hewing a path through the forests over which an army of writers has since passed.

Imagine it’s August 14, 1873 – Here’s Natures Invitation. These are the words  of Isaac Mclellan.

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NATURES INVITATION

On the fair face of Nature let us muse, and dream by lapsing stream and drooping wood;

Tread the dark forests whose primeval ranks, since the creation dawn have cast their shade;

Ponder by flowing stream and ocean tides, and note the varied forms of life they hold,

Mark the wild game so clear to hunter's heart, the swarming fowl that skim the salty deeps,

The birds that haunt the woodlands and the plains, The fish that swim the seas, the lakes, the streams,

And tempt the thoughtful angler to their marge;

Glance at the life that fills our native woods, and game of Asian plains, and Afric wilds.

When soft May breezes fan the early woods, and with her magic wand the blue-eye'd Spring

Quickens the swelling blossoms and the buds,

Then forth the russet partridge leads her brood, while on the fallen tree-trunk drums her mate ;

The quail her young in tangled thicket hides, the dun deer with their fawns the forests range,

The wild geese platoons hasten far in air, the wild ducks from their Southern lagoons pass,

And soaring high their Northward journeyings take, The dusky coot along the coast-line sweeps,

The piping snipe and plover that frequent,

The sandy bars and beaches, wing their flight, And all the grassy prairies of the West,

Team with the speckled younglings of the grouse, And all the budding forests and the streams

Are gay with beauty, joyous with young life.

Then swell the first bird melodies; the wren chirrups and perches on the garden rail,

The blue-bird twitters on the lilac hedge, or flits on azure wings from tree to tree;

The golden robin on the apple-bough, hovers, where last year's withered nest had been,

The darting swallows circle o'er the roof, the woodpeckers on trunk of gnarled trees

Tap their quick drum-beats with their horny beaks, the crow caws hoarsely from the blasted pine,

High in mid-air the sailing hawk is poised, while from the grove the purple pigeon-flocks,

Burst with loud flapping in the grain-sown fields.

Fair is the scene in Autumn, when the frosts from palettes rich, with prodigal, gorgeous brush

Color the nodding groves with brown and gold.

Then silvery-skied, and purple-hazed the dome of heaven's deep vault, and fair the earth below.

Far up, where sunny uplands scope their sides, shaggy with woods, prone to the brimming stream,

Where bowering beech trees shake their laden boughs, and oaks their varnished acorns high uplift,

Where the broad butter-nut its gummy fruit in russet husks slow-ripens day by day,

And where in crowded ranks the chestnut groves waves out their broad-leaved pennons to the air,

And from their prickly burs shake treasures down, there the quick clusterings of the squirrels sound.

The gentle valley with its belt of hills crowned to their tops with grand, primeval woods,

Glows with all forms and hues that nature loves.

Deep in its hollow stretch meadows brightly green, kept verdurous by the full o’erflowing stream ;

Yet the deep swamps and thickets that engird, the river-reaches, are resplendent all,

Their umbrage tinctur'd with imperial dyes.

The maples tall with blood-red foliage burn, the hickories clap their palms of burnish'd gold,

The poplar thrusts its yellow spire in air, the russet oaks and purpled dogwoods blend,

Their colors with the alder's sable green and scarlet sumacks; all contrasted rich

With sombre evergreens, and willows pale.

And when the winds autumnal, wailing strip the frosted foliage, like a host they stand,

With trailing banners and with drooping plumes.

Such be the scenes in wondrous forest-land

Such be the scenes by sea and lake and stream

That we would picture; wild romantic scenes,

Dear to the hunter's and the angler's soul.

-Isaac McLelllan