Classic Poem

It has no grandeur like the proud White Hills,
No cataract's thunder, steal no crystal rills
Like those which line the Catskills half the way,
And furnish comfort in a summer's day,
But the road up is dry as Minot's tongue,
Or city people chance together flung.
And off the summit one sees villages,
Church spires, white houses, and their belts of trees,
Plenty of farmers' clearings, and some woods,
But no remote Sierra solitudes.
I never counted up the list of towns,
That I can see spread on the rolling downs,
Or sought for names of mountains on the map,
As Jackson might who is a Scenery-trap,
But to my notion there is matter here,
As pleasant as if larger or severe.
'T is plain New England, neither more nor less,
Pure Massachusetts-looking, in plain dress;
From every village point at least three spires,
To satiate the good villagers' desires,
Baptist, and Methodist, and Orthodox,
And even Unitarian, creed that shocks
Established church-folk; they are one to me,
Who in the different creeds the same things see,
But I love dearly to look down at them,
In rocky landscapes like Jerusalem.
The villages gleam out painted with white,
Like paper castles are the houses light,
And every gust that o'er the valley blows,
May scatter them perchance like drifting snows.
The little streams that thread the valleys small,
Make scythes or axes, driving factories all,
The ponds are damned, and e'en the petty brooks,
Convert to sluices swell the River's crooks,
And where the land 's so poor, it will not pay
For farming, winds the Railroad's yellow way.