"The hut is desolate; and there
The famished dog alone returns;
On the cold steps he makes his lair;
By the shut door he lays his bones.
"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.
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