Classic Poem

Adieu the island! Lo, the Sabbath dawns,
A cloudless April-day. Still toward the West
The broad stream bears them onward in its arms.
On either shore, and through the neighbouring fields,
While sounds the bell from yonder village spire,
The unknown people throng. Then to the deck
The various inmates of the ark collect,
And round the pastor drawn, in pious groups,
Flood the calm air with the melodious hymn;
While, as they pass the town, an answer comes,
Like a clear echo, from the hill-side church.
The melody into their hearts descends—
The old familiar tune—till every breast
Is waked to joy, and even the sternest eye
Is moistened with a sympathizing mist.
How beautiful, in such an hour and place,
To hear from stranger lips unseen, perchance
That never may be seen till met in Heaven,
The sacred sounds proclaiming brotherhood—
The masonry of souls! How beautiful!
In all the world of art—a wondrous world—
I know no picture lovelier than to-day
Melts o'er my vision. Chief amid the group—
A dwindled portion of his former flock—
Each face familiar, all, as children, dear—
The pastor stands, and on his loving arm
Holds the great volume, and, with sunburnt hand,
Turns o'er the intimate leaves. Ope where he will,
The broad page greets him like a well-known friend
Near by, with white hair stirring to the breeze,
Frail Master Ethan, leaning on his cane,
Stands hat in hand. The matrons, on the deck,
Sit with the children at their careful sides;
There youths and maids respectful posture hold;
And every man draws near, save those who lean
And listen at the easy moving oars.
Suns rise and set, and still the boat glides on;
Peace rules the day, and music cheers the eve.
Lo, on the south extends the lovely land
Where strode the solitary man of old,
Bursting upon the entangled night of woods,
Like prophecy, proclaiming where he went
The forest's fall, and the red man's decline!
Here the lone Nimrod of the pathless West
Reigned with his rifle, and, through hostile wilds,
Won to himself an empire undisturbed.
His nights o'erhung with royal tents of boughs,
His vernal board with venison was crowned,
His cup with coolest crystal from the rocks;
And oft unto his morning throne of state—
A crag which overbrowed the stateliest woods—
He mounted, and surveyed his wide domain,
Deciding where to bend his further sway.
Behind him, like the murmuring of the sea
Which, to a constant wind, invades the shore,
He heard the encroaching tumult of the world;
And, with the sun, strode on a few swift miles,
Usurping, westward, what he eastward lost.
Such was the realm of Boone, the pioneer,
Whose statue, in the eternal niche of fame,
Leans on his gleaming rifle; and whose name
Is carved so deep in the Kentuckian rocks,
It may not be effaced. His glorious soul,
Heroic among kindred hero souls,
Now threads the boundless forest of the stars;
While still his memory, like a spirit, walks
With living influence in his favourite land.
What means this sudden swelling of the stream,
As if a thousand springs within its depths
Had burst, like mighty geysers, to exalt
The river's watery head that, rising, roars,
And frights the banks until they swoon and drown?
Answer, ye nymphs, from out your turbid caves!
For nymphs there are in this unclassic flood,
Born of the savage muse in vanished years,
Who peopled all the solitude with shapes,
Whose spiritual whispers in the wind,
The waters and the woods, still charm the ear.
A poesy, unwritten, floats abroad,
So wide dis-spread, the echo-waking axe
Shall not dispel it; nor the busy plow
Turn it beneath the furrows; nor the train,
Thundering along its iron way, affright;
Nor smoking barges, with their flashing wheels,
Dislodge it from the waters. Every brook
And tree, could we but comprehend the song,
Is musical with voices not its own;
An influence of the primal time still lives,
And breathes, and moulds us in our daily walks
And thus developes in us, unaware,
A something of the earliest things which were.
'Tis this which links us with the perfect plan,
The chain which was, and is, and is to be.
Even where I gaze, the fancy, in the stream,
Pictures dim, liquid shapes which rise and sink,
And sway in waves that ripple to the shore,
Intoxicate in the redundant flood.
There curved an arm, and there a bright face laughed,
With momentary eyes and lips disclosed,
And sound of sinless kisses thrown, perchance,
From watery fingers to the youths on deck.
There swim the children of the Indian muse,
Who ply at night the shadowy canoe,
While kindred forms, along the moon-lit woods,
Startle the phantom deer and wake the chase,
From whence their sires have gone—forever gone.
The man has fled, the spirit still remains—
The substance less substantial than the shade—
And still the river's sullied waters swell,
Augmented by the melting mountain snows,
And plenteons April-rains. Afar and near,
The swift careering drift chaotic flies,
Borne on the thievish shoulders of the flood!
Great trees, whirled ruthless from their native banks,
Sweep headlong, with their budding limbs all drowned,
And roots fantastic raking through the air,
These are the shapes that in the channel depths
Of Mississippi lodge—the downward prongs
Mining the sandy bed—the dreadful trunk
Swaying aslant to gore the freighted ark.
Here float the logs of some disjointed raft,
And there the woodman's scattered cords! Enough
Swims prodigal to build a nation's navy.
At such a time as this, the wary crew
Must needs, with well manned oars, avoid the drift,
While many a danger lies engulphed, unseen.
And when the night comes on, as now it comes,
And threatening clouds impend from east to west,
While all the watery shore no harbour gives,
With what misgivings, doubting hopes and fears,
The venturous watchers ride into the dark,
Where Providence assumes the swaying helm,
Loud sweeps the torrent; but with louder voice
Roars on the shoreless ocean of the wind,
Bearing the dusky navies of the storm,
Whose signal cannons, flashing, threat the land.
Along the hills gleam scattered cottage-lights,
Mocking the homeless households where they float,
Compassed with dangers which the starless night,
With cruel kindness, veils. The startled sense,
For every peril hid, beholds, thrice told,
The horror painted on the blackened air;
While oft the fancy, drowning with the wreck,
Dies momentary deaths. The grinding drifts
Chafe hoarsely at their thin and creaking walls
With frightful discord, and the ominous waves
Dash at the rude partition, as in scorn,
Striking with multitudinous hands. The lights,
Before and aft, dispense their scanty rays—
How spectral, thin, and ineffectual!—
Which oft the sheeted lightning in the south,
With sudden brilliance dims, and shows the guard,
An instant, where to set the helm and where
To ply the sidelong oar. Thus speeds the ark;
And midnight rules the wild tempestuous hour
On deck the men are gathered by the oars;
Below, the women sit in dreary groups,
Waiting and listening: some with infants clasped,
Convulsive, on the breast, while at their feet
The older children crowd, their terror drowned
In unrecording sleep. But hark! the shock!
The shout above! the shriek below! the neigh
Of frighted steeds! Fear rules the scene. On deck
All crowd with straining eyes, which nought discern
Save random lights on shore. Their course is stopped;
And, lo, a noon-like sheet of lightning flames,
And shows their ark 'mong rafts and steamers lodged;
While, like a vision in delirium seen,
A midnight city, with its sudden spires,
Springs on their sight—a marvelous instant springs—
Then vanishes in night, and leaves them nought
But wild conjecture which must wait the dawn.
The storm is past; a cloudless day awakes,
And to the wondering multitudes on deck
A glorious city spreads its welcoming arms—
The Queen Metropolis of inland States—
Which, like a mighty heart, receives and gives,
Swelling through all the body of the land
The pulsing veins of trade. In foundry yards
Loud hammers ring upon the boilers huge—
Too oft the ominous knell of future deaths,
Wrought by destruction in the sudden air,
Making a murderous gap a nation feels.
In each great bolt, 'twixt double sledges clinched,
What lives are wedged—a life for every blow!
Bold wielder! strike again, and still again,
Lest that the careless stroke hereafter fall,
With triple weight, on many an aching heart!
Along the sloping wharf the giant keels
Swing by their cables, e'en as monsters chained,
Frighting the sky with hot discordant breath,
Heaved from their lungs of fire; and noisy Toil
Lays his brown shoulders to the southern bale,
Or rolls the cask ashore, where Commerce stands
Smiling among the mountainous freight, and sends
Her northern product back. Time was, my friend—
Thou, who beneath thy thine own Catawba vine
Sittest, like autumn in a plenteous land,
Crowned with the fruits of heavy labours past.
Forgetting not thy reapers, nor the poor
Gleaning amid the stubble—when thy feet
Here paced the sod primeval, while the trees
Stretched their defiant branches unalarmed.
Then were yon hills—which now the reaching streets,
Audacious, climb with all a city's din—
Templed within a Sabbath shade of woods;
And where the eagle, on the topmost branch,
Gazed at the sun unstartled, nightly, now,
In its high tower, the astronomic glass
Sweeps the blue space to mightier suns than ours
Within thy memory, on this self-same ground,
A forest and a giant city stand.
When now the day discloses all the scene—
The thronging wharf and their own ark half wrecked—
The adventurers hold a solemn council hour,
And in the small republic, on the deck,
Discuss their future course. Some, unappalled,
Call for repairs; impatient to be on,
Some urge a transfer to the rapid bark,
Whose flashing wheels shall bear them quickly through
But they, whose hands grew brown upon the plough,
And they who joyed to drive the well-fed team
And laden wain to market, once more sigh
To feel the solid earth beneath their feet,
To wind their way 'twixt farms and thorough woods,
Hewing, if need be, their own forest-path.
This plan is carried; and their various wagons
Are rolled ashore, and the delighted steeds,
Pawing the ground, receive the accustomed gears,
The collar and the rein; and all, well-pleased,
Assume their places, and take up their march.
The suburbs now, and now the hills, receive
The winding line; and soon amid the fields,
The city lost, they note the stretching road
Inviting on and on. Another State,
With noble farms usurping glorious woods,
Now bids them welcome, and still cheers their course;
While, day by day, the sidelong forests grow
To longer stretches, and the new-made fields,
Rougher with fallen logs and girdled trunks,
Occur less frequent with their lessening homes