Classic Poem

Who turn the capes of De La Warr
And sail within the shifting bar
Know not, perchance, what round them look:
Quaint feudal namesakes, lost or gray,
And quainter people passed away,
Which to recall would be a day
Spent over many a mouldy book.

Soft be the meadows far within
The sandy beaches, low and thin,
With frequent fens and creeks between;
No mountain backs the inland lift,
The sandy islands blow and shift,
And shining white, broad inlets rift
The mighty marshes, gold and green.

Yon Jersey spit is Jutland quite,
That tapers downward to the light
Which never burned for Captain Mey;
Hindlopen is a Friesland ghost,
To thrill the cruising Dutchman most,
Who wonders if it be the coast
Of Zuyder, whence he sailed away.

Beyond the beaches level lie
The fertile farm-lands to the sky;
To shallow lakes the streams expand;
The twilights they outshine the stars,
So streaked is heaven with golden bars;
The nights are beautiful as Thor's,
Seen in the pleasant Swedish land.

And up the rivers as we ride,
Borne on the slow and equal tide,
So high we look down on the flocks—
By many a bood and dyke we slip,
By many a sober-sided ship,
By many a willowy islet's strip,
Set round with emerald splatterdocks.

Through lilies and through cat-tails creep
The oozy creeks, by tdes made deep,
And all the marshes round about
Are populous with birds that sing,
Atop the reeds all day they swing,
So fat at last they scarce can cling,
And at the gunner nod and flout.

Is it a Summer land of Thor?
A new Batavia, mistless? Or
Is it that dream, half manifest,
Which made the King Gustavus burn,
To hear his faithful Oxenstiern,
For fair Christina's dowry, yearn
To plant an empire in the West?

Yea, with the Kaiser at his feet,
From Leipsic's fight this King of Sleet
Turned his high face, so sanguine fair,
Across the seas by Swedes untried;
And with a soldier's thrill of pride,
He saw his royal banner ride
The sluices of the Delaware.

Still be their hamlets unforsook
From Maurice Cove to Maerty's Hook,
From Pennypack to Tinicum;
Still stands their kirk at Wicaco;
To Uplandt School the urchins go;
And in Christina's graveyard grow
Their ivies round the porches dumb.

Here for the otter set his trap
The Dalecarlian, and the Lapp
Chafed for his reindeer and his fur,
The tough Finn cast his nets for shad;
Dreamed of his peaks the Norway lad,
And thinking of his sweet heart sad,
He pined for Fatherland and her.

The conquering Saxon overtook
And swallowed quite this Gothic brook,
As breaks the North Sea o'er the dunes,
As Gothland abbeys crack to frost;
To Papist wiles the Queen was lost;
And by the English epic crost
Faint grew these Scandinavian runes.

No more we hear their pleasant speech,
But in the red-leaved groves of peach
How many a Jersey swain, belike,
The while he shakes the velvet fruit
On the green melons at his foot,
Says, “Into Lutzen's tough pursuit
My fathers bore the Swedish pike!”

Or, where the ripened plains of grain,
Blow twixt deep gullies, worn by rain,
How many a rustic reaps, aware
His fathers' graves were old before
The Quaker landed on their shore,
And from the papist Baltimore
They saved the banks of Delaware.

Their old names, writ in English ways,
In English prayers their Swedish praise,
The early tale is vague indeed;
They do no more their pastors draw
From the pure schools of Upsala,
But keep the stature, tall and braw,
And florid visage of the Swede.

Not wholly is their race forgot
In graver Dutch or Huguenot;
The simplest, sweetest of our broods,
The softest river of our clime
Their valor, hallowed for all time,
And conquered, like a quiet rhyme
Their memory lulls our solitudes.

We hear it where the bean vine opes
Its pods upon the cantaloupes,
And on the sweet potato hills;
It murmurs in the files of maize,
And where the striped heifers graze
Along the brinks of brackish bays,
And by the willow planted rills.

It sayeth: “See! on every hand,
In frequent fiord and pasture land,
In long gray lakes the mills that spin,
These pastoral plains as pleasant are,
And innocent of crime or war,
As lighted by the Northern Star,
The Kingdom of the Swede and Finn!”