a home among the lightsome hearts of Merry
Mount.

Never had the Maypole been so gayly decked as at sunset on Midsummer
eve. This venerated emblem was a pine tree which had preserved the
slender grace of youth, while it equalled the loftiest height of the
old wood-monarchs. From its top streamed a silken banner colored like
the rainbow. Down nearly to the ground the pole was dressed with
birchen boughs, and others of the liveliest green, and some with
silvery leaves fastened by ribbons that fluttered in fantastic knots
of twenty different colors, but no sad ones. Garden-flowers and
blossoms of the wilderness laughed gladly forth amid the verdure, so
fresh and dewy that they must have grown by magic on that happy pine
tree. Where this green and flowery splendor terminated the shaft of
the Maypole was stained with the seven brilliant hues of the banner at
its top. On the lowest green bough hung an abundant wreath of
roses--some that had been gathered in the sunniest spots of the
forest, and others, of still richer blush, which the colonists had
reared from English seed. O people of the Golden Age, the chief of
your husbandry was to raise flowers!

But what was the wild throng that stood hand in hand about the
Maypole? It could not be that the fauns and nymphs, when driven from
their classic groves and homes of ancient fable, had sought refuge, as
all the persecuted did, in the fresh woods of the West. These were
Gothic monsters, though perhaps of Grecian ancestry. On the shoulders
of a comely youth uprose the head and branching antlers of a stag; a
second, human in all other points, had the grim visage of a wolf; a
third, still with the trunk and limbs of a mortal man, showed the
beard and horns of a venerable he-goat. There was the likeness of a
bear erect, brute in all but his hind legs, which were adorned with
pink silk stockings. And here, again, almost as wondrous, stood a real
bear of the dark forest, lending each of his forepaws to the grasp of
a human hand and as ready for the dance as any in that circle. His
inferior nature rose halfway to meet his companions as they stooped.
Other faces wore the similitude of man or woman, but distorted or
extravagant, with red noses pendulous before their mouths, which
seemed of awful depth and stretched from ear to ear in an eternal fit
of laughter. Here might be seen the salvage man--well known in
heraldry--hairy as a baboon and girdled with green leaves. By his
side--a no