Classic Poem

O, Sassafras! thou lakelet tide
That touches on our bounds
Like unto her who touched His side
And oped our Saviour's wounds;
Thou little bay that like the trout,
All gilled and finned, does flow,
And to thy mother bay swims out,
Thou art her true born roe.

Sure of the deluge Time thou keepst,
In notches on thy stock,
And up thy coves and pondlets sleepst
O'ershadowed by no rocks;
Beneath the dragon-headed bay,
Protruding like a tongue,
Thou laps the mill seats on thy way
The fruity capes among.

Thou leapest like a racing horse,
A greater stretch to win,
Up to thy flank in turf and gorse
His hoofs take imprint in;
We seem to sail upon thy sky,
Yet taste the ocean brine,
As in some balloon flying high
O'er the horizon line.

Pair of old towns like dimming eyes
Thy navigation ends,
Like that fond pair in Paradise,
Dissevered, but yet friends:
These did the Briton's pirates fire
A hundred years gone past,
But left to feed his funeral pyre
Their Commodore aghast.

A generation further went
The tall ships of the line
To land the red King's armament
That marched to Brandywine;
The distance shows the bars of clay
That like a mill breast stood
And swerved the waters of the Bay
From Susquehanna's flood.

The old Dutch Labadists thy banks
O'erferried in Lang Syne,
What time they played conventual pranks
On Herman's Landgravine,
When Bassett was the Manor's heir
And Bayard was his son,
And moulded Federal Delaware
In lines of Hamilton.

By Sassafras the Priest revered
His scions sent afar,
And Henry Winter Davis steered
The Congress of the war;
The while his cousin did ascend
The Bench high justice for,
And David Davis, Lincoln's friend,
Was his executor.

And Alfred Pierce's curls did glide
By Lincoln's pine-like form
On his inauguration ride
When Union was in storm.
Here Shippen, judge, in love's first flame,
Companion found for life,
Mother to her who young became
Benedict Arnold's wife.

In nooks nearby the Jesuit school
From long intolerance hid,
Till Bishop Carroll of its rule
For Independence bid;
And Quaker Fox, Lord Baltimore,
And wife here heard to preach
With William Penn, their host, beside,
Hearing the straight, plain speech.

How pure a face had Levi Scott
To lead his Wesleyan class!
And Father Hersey cooled hell hot
In pleasant Sassafras.
In Shrewsbury graveyard lie the bones
Of them respect begot,
Speaking as white as their gravestones
Of lives without a spot.

Immigrant tides not hither pass,
Though offspring westward stray,
Scarce more reside on Sassafras
Than in Colonial day;
Railway supplants of ships the masts
But keeps its distance still;
A single crime in lore outlasts
Wars which their thousands kill.

In dear old times I saw thy start
Between my father's knees;
Thy watered garden touched my heart
With Eden memories;
Though stronger barns and heavier wains
Across the line may pass,
Like the wild duck my down retains
The brine of Sassafras.