Classic Poem

Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain! "
Thus Goldsmith sang in ever-beauteous strain;
Nor can I sing — without a throb that thrills —
My native village in the northern hills,
Round which Ondawa loves to sweetly linger,
Wearing her weirs like gems upon her finger.
Oft have I paused upon the bridge to note
The spray from many a cataract upfloat.
Veiling like incense now the village spires,
Lifting up, too, the loiterer's desires.
Often again where silent stretches sweep,
Telling where waters journey still and deep,
Gladly I've watched the bass among the rocks,
Or, in the water, seen the fleecy flocks
Of those blue heavens journeying along —
Fair as a love thought mirrored in a song!

While the stout yeomen bind the bearded grain,
Or through thy valleys drive the loaded wain;
While the white sheep take their reluctant way
Down to thy ponds, each annual washing day;
While thy proud steeds uplift the neigh that thrills;
While low thy cattle on thy thousand hills;
While from thy whirring wheels and spindles come
The welcome sounds of labor's busy hum;
While laddie's shout meets answering lassie's smile,
In happy comradeship that knows no guile;
While in thy schools is lit the inspiring flame
Of emulation on the road to fame;
While from thy churches float upon the air
Thy people's voices, blended song and prayer,
There is no need my pen thy charms should tell —
Thy beauties praise thee, and they praise thee well!

On Willard's Mount the patriot eye may see
The beacons blaze again for liberty;
Again the guns of Saratoga boom,
A nation's birth-hour and a tyrant's doom!
As hills and vales and streamlets rise again
In fair mirage on Memory's misty plain,
Often the wanderer's mind will speak thy name
To conjure up Youth's lost, bewitching flame;
Oft will the fancy of the rover think
He drinks thy streamlets, bending to the brink;
Or stealing, stealthy, to some tortuous glen,
Spies where the wily trout doth make his den;
Or when the stream, in icy armor dight,
Calls youth and maidens in the glittering night,
Then shall he don the swiftly gliding steel
And all of romance, all of beauty feel.

What matters if thy name be writ in books?
Thy mountains praise thee and thy pearly brooks.
Little can man add to thy royal share
Whom God and Nature made so passing fair.
Only for us to learn the lesson well —
No weirs can glisten in a streamless dell,
No mill-wheels turn unless the stream shall flow,
Nor river run unless the forests grow.
The Hudson rises in each tiny spring
That to its bosom gives an offering;
And civic greatness has no other start
Than simple virtue in each single heart.