Classic Poem

Rivers that roll most musical in song
Are often lovely to the mind alone;
The wanderer muses, as he moves along
Their vacant banks, on glories not their own.

When, to give substance to his boyhood's dreams,
He leaves his land, far countries to survey,
Oft must he think, in greeting foreign streams,
" Their names alone are beautiful, not they. "

If chance he mark the dwindled Arno pour
A tide more meagre than his native Charles;
Or view the Rhone when summer's heat is o'er,
Subdued and stagnant in the fen of Arles;

Or when he sees the slimy Tiber fling
His sullen tribute at the feet of Rome,
Oft to his thought must partial memory bring
More noble waves, without renown, at home;

Now let him climb the Catskill, to behold
The lordly Hudson marching to the main,
And say what bard, in any land of old,
Had such a river to inspire his strain.

Along the Rhine, gray battlements and towers
Declare what robbers once the realm possessed;
But here Heaven's handiwork surpasseth ours,
And man has hardly more than built his nest.

No storied castle overawes these heights,
Nor antique arches cheek the current's play,
No mouldering architrave the mind invites
To dream of deities long passed away.

But cliffs, unaltered from their primal form
Since the subsiding of the deluge, rise
Above the lightnings of the midway storm,
While far below the skiff securely plies.

And these deep woods forever have remained
Touched by no axe, by no proud owner nursed;
As now they look, they looked when Pharaoh reigned,
Lineal descendants of creation's first.

Thou Scottish Tweed, a sacred streamlet now!
Since thy last minstrel laid him down to die,
Where through the casement of his chamber thou
Didst mix thy moan with his departing sigh,

A single stretch of Hudson's ampler hills
Might furnish forests for the whole of thine,
Hide in thick shade all Humber's feeding rills,
And darken all the fountains of the Tyne.

Imperial Thames! — could all his riches buy,
To gild the strand which London loads with gold,
Sunshine so bright, such purity of sky,
As bless thy sultry season and thy cold?

No tales, we know, are chronicled of thee
In ancient scrolls; no deeds of doubtful claim
Have hung a history on every tree,
And given each rock its fable and a fame.

But neither here hath any conqueror trod,
Nor grim invader from barbarian climes;
No horrors feigned of giant or of god
Pollute thy stillness with recorded crimes.

Here never yet have happy fields laid waste,
The ravished harvest and the blasted fruit,
The cottage ruined and the shrine defaced,
Tracked the foul passage of the feudal brute.

" Yet, O Antiquity! " the stranger sighs,
" Scenes wanting thee soon pall upon the view;
The soul's indifference dulls the sated eyes,
Where all is fair indeed — but all is new. "

False thought! is age to crumbling walls confined?
To Grecian fragments and Egyptian bones?
Hath Time no monuments to raise the mind,
More than old fortresses and sculptured stones?

Call not this new which is the only land
That wears unchanged the same primeval face
Which, when just dawning from its Maker's hand,
Gladdened the first great grandsire of our race.

Nor did Euphrates with an earlier birth
Glide past green Eden towards the unknown south,
Than Hudson broke upon the infant earth,
And kissed the ocean with his nameless mouth.

Twin-born with Jordan, Ganges, and the Nile!
Thebes and the Pyramids to thee are young;
Oh! had thy waters burst from Britain's isle,
Till now, perchance, they had not flowed unsung.