Classic Poem

Where Naaman's Creek comes foaming,
Like wolves with shaggy hair,
To leap down to the loaming
And lap the Delaware,
A band of men as hoary
Came in the olden days
Down o'er the promontory,
A boundary to blaze.

Savage and renegado,
They toilsome oped a path
As if a straight tornado
Had hurled its bolt of wrath
From far off Susquehannock
New Netherlands to smite,
And for the Lords of Calvert
Hew antecedent right.

Their leader was a gallant,
A hawk was on his wrist;
Valor had he, and talent
To make and hold a tryst—
The panther of the border,
His word and wish were law
He loved increase and order,
And also, usquebaugh.

“I, Talbot, Lord-Lieutenant—
Kin to my Lord, as well—
Here plant his baron's pennant
And claim this parallel
To be his northern bounding—
Deed in King Charles's hand:
Now, trumpet! give a sounding!
And ‘God save Maryland’!”

A Dutchman's voice, called leisure,
Considerately meant:
“Thy parallel to measure
Hast thou no instrument?”
“No, save this cross and martyr
Relics that here I plant;
Possession's next to charter,
Priority is grant.

“Christine's the port I covet,
No higher need I go;
The only ports above it
Uplandt and Weccacoe.”
“Stand on thy Charter's number
And its degree attent,
Nor thy dimensions cumber
Without an Instrument.”

“Ha! ha!” George Talbot wondered
If Penn were shrewd as he,
“His province I have plundered
Of nearly a degree!”
So common view contended,
Wherever folk would speak,
That Maryland ascended
High up as Naaman's Creek.

And thinking all were vassal
Within that line, hewn sly,
The Utys claimed New Castle
And drunk the breweries dry;
While Penn's men, up the river,
Almost as Moses meek,
Disputed not a stiver
Of rights past Naaman's Creek.

They grew a city splendid,
With channels to the sea
And Calvert's province rended
Within his chart's degree;
And Naaman's Creek they stood by,
When, all too late, was sent,
To measure Latitude by
A Yankee Instrument.

“Now, Philadelphians! hark ye!”
(High rose his bugle's swell)
“The King's surveyors mark ye
Far in our parallel!
Ye build on Calvert's acres—
I summon ye to speak!”
Loud laughed the shad-like Quakers—
“Thee summoned Naaman's Creek!”

The Duke of York to Penn sold
The strip that claim inpent,
And Calvert was again sold
Lacking an Instrument.
In Chancery 'twas purveyed
So long it grew antique,
Mason and Dixon surveyed
The slash to Naaman's Creek.