New York

The savages romance,
Accreted where we need space for commerce –
The centre of the wholesale fur trade,
Starred with tepees of ermine and peopled with foxes,
The long guard-hairs waving two inches beyond the body of the pelt;
The ground dotted with deer-skins –white with white spots .
“at satin needlework in a single color may carry a varied pattern”,
And willing eagle’s-down compacted by the wind;
And picardels of beaver skin; white ones alert with snow,
It is far cry from the “queen full of jewels” and the beau with the muff,
From the gilt coach shaped like a perfume-bottle,
To the conjunction of the Monongahela and the Allegheny,
And the scholastic philosophy of the wilderness
To combat which one must stand outside and laugh since to go in to be lost.
It is not the dime-novel exterior.
Niagara Falls, the calico horses and the war canoe;
It is not that “if the fur is not finer that such as one sees others wear,
And rather would be without it” –
That estimated in raw meet and berries, we could feet the universe,
It is not the atmosphere of ingenuity,
The otter, the beaver, the puma skins
Without shooting irons or dogs;
It is not the plunder,
But “accessibility to experience’.