Classic Poem

The Frame

Sky windows high over the Hudson,
Wide wonder of water and light;
High windows, wide on the sunset,
Wide windows, black on the night.

Blending

Sometimes that long, high-lying western wall
Grays up into a bank of evening cloud,
Blending and dim; vague river to vague sky;
Only pricked lights — too regular for stars —
To show the margin between earth and heaven.

Barges

Slow barges, loaded high and wide,
With rose-red tiles;
Low barges, weighted to the tide
With broken blue-stone piles;
Broad barges, full from side to side
With gold-brown earth a-heap;
Come sweeping down in light and pride,
Go creeping up when light has died,
In chains of stars asleep

Colors

From coral dawn to twilight jade
The great sky jewel turns and glows;
Saphire and light —
Saphire at night —
Saphire and gold and rose.

A ribbon of green the thin park winds,
By azure water, winding, too;
A ribbon of grass —
A ribbon of glass —
A ribbon of green and blue.

Children under the May-leaved trees,
Flying flowers of the park are they
Lilac and cream —
Lilac and green —
Lilac and rose and gray.

A Cold Day

Purple, ruffled purple, when the wind blows up the blue,
Fringed and frosted with the white-caps as they run;
Broken ice, dull gray and white
In the hard wind-sharpened light,
And the staring cliffs across there, bald and dun.

Afternoon

A gray-blue sheet of rippled silk
The wide, still river lies,
Slow-flowing, snowy plumes of steam
Melt like a disappearing dream
Into the drowsy skies.

Far pants the fleeting motor-boat;
Far puffs the crawling train
Smoothly the distant tug-boats go,
With sail-furled schooners, stately, slow,
Or barges long in chain.

Good Cheer

Going gaily down the stream;
Flagged with forward-flying steam,
Brisk and red the tug-boats run;
Twinkling blue the river's flow,
Bank and border crisp with snow,
All ablaze with morning sun.

My Clouds

As those who live on mountains see the clouds
Stealing below them in the valleys green,
Rising around them, billowing and soft;
We, in our cliff-side dwellings, watch the steam.
From river-bordering trains, — a drifting plume,
That rolls among the poplars, tumbling white
Against the slopes of green, the river's blue;
And rising, white and glorious in the sun,
Whirling, on-rushing, up and up it pours —
Charging upon our windows in the clouds.

Blue and White

Blue and white! Blue and white!
The river's full of ice.
Driving with the current and the tide,
Riding swiftly, crowding low,
In the strong mid-river flow —
Sliding softly, crushing slowly, up the side.

Blue and white! Blue and white!
The sky is full of clouds;
Shining in the splendor of the sun;
Flying wide and wild away
Through the short, wind-ridden day —
Grouping softly, crowding closely, when it's done.

Steam

Tall by the tree-walled towering cliffs, all snow,
Remote, remote and dim, the mills across;
Glassed in still water; their vague shimmering towers
Marred by slow drift of loose, snow-crusted ice.

Snow-mist and river-fog and mingling steam;
Wreaths from the distant chimneys rising slow;
Long streaming plumes from busy tugs below,
Puffs from the panting derrick engine near,
And volleying clouds from each long laboring train.

Sunset on Riverside

Watching the gold light flush to rose,
The rose light dull to gray,
And the gray light dim
Till the farther brim
Dies out with the dying day.

Then the silver stars shine out above,
And the gold stars shine below;
Their long stems shiver
In the glassy river
Like flame flowers standing so.

And smooth across the glimmering field
Vague vessels bear at ease
Their trailing flights
Of clustered lights,
Like captive Pleiades.

White Days

Days when the shifting snow shuts off the sky;
Shuts off the distant shore, the mile of stream;
Blankets the anchored barges white and deep;
The slow, flat fields of floating shifting ice;
Sheets the deserted wharf in silent sleep;
Even the river white with drifting ice,
The slow, flat fields of floating shifting ice;
And, white as wool, outpouring, soft and high,
Whirling and changing as it billows by —
White rolls the flying steam.

River Lights

As black as ink, as smooth as oil,
In the long warm summer nights,
The river mirrors glassily
A double world of lights.

In shining rank on either bank
Clear lights the shores define;
Thick-starred they rise against the skies
Where fainter stars may shine.

And all along the water way
In gold and red and green,
Beauty and safety ride at peace,
Or pass in peace between.

Slow steamboats heavily loaded
With music and light and love,
The lamp-lit banks behind them,
The starlit skies above.

They pass with a rushing murmur,
Crested with gems they burn,
Dripping with light from the gunwale,
Valenced from stem to stern.

They pass like moving islands
Whose trees are a blazing pyre,
With roots that trail below them
In a long thick fringe of fire.

My Pleasure Boats

Where treetops wave in level light when morning sunbeams glance,
And river ripples run, all blue and bridling,
Magnolia-white the pleasure boats moored in the shallows dance,
A flock of snowy ducks, so lightly sidling.

The twilight water welters bare, milk-blue and shining wide;
Low smouldering sunset clouds beyond it hover,
Like shapeless logs the pleasure boats lie black along the tide,
Till darkness falls at last to cool and cover.

Then every little pleasure boat sets out a starry light,
On slim reflected limbs they stand and shiver,
Like a flock of little candles out playing in the night,
Like little wading candles in the river.