Hudson River

Rivers that roll most musical in song
Are often lovely to the mind alone;
The wanderer muses, as he moves along
Their barren banks, on glories not their own.

When to give substance to his boyish dreams,
He leaves his own, far countries to survey,
Oft must he think, in greeting foreign streams,
"Their names alone are beautiful, not they."

If chance he mark the dwindled Arno pour
A tide more meagre than his native Charles;
Or views the Rhone when summer's heat is o'er,
Subdued and stagnant in the fen of Aries;

Or when he sees the slimy Tiber fling
His sullen tribute at the feet of Rome,
Oft to his thought must partial memory bring
More noble waves, without renown, at home;

Now let him climb the Catskill, to behold
The lordly Hudson, marching to the main,
And say what bard, in any land of old,
Had such a river to inspire his strain.

Along the Rhine, gray battlements and towers
Declare what robbers once the realm possessed;
But here Heaven's handiwork surpasseth ours,
And man has hardly more than built his nest.

No storied castle overawes these heights,
Nor antique arches check the current's play,
Nor mouldering architrave the mind invites
To dream of deities long passed away.

No Gothic buttress, or decaying shaft
Of marble, yellowed by a thousand years,
Lifts a great landmark to the little craft,
A summer-cloud! that comes and disappears:

But cliffs, unaltered from their primal form,
Since the subsiding of the deluge rise,
And hold their savins to the upper storm,
While far below the skiff securely plies.

Farms, rich not more in meadows than in men
Of Saxon mould, and strong for every toil,
Spread o'er the plain, or scatter through the glen,
Boeotian plenty on a Spartan soil.

Then, where the reign of cultivation ends,
Again the charming wilderness begins;
From steep to steep one solemn wood extends,
Till some new hamlet's rise the boscage thins.

And these deep groves forever have remained
Touched by no axe — by no proud owner nursed:
As now they stand they stood when Pharaoh reign'd,
Lineal descendants of creation's first.

Thou Scottish Tweed, a sacred streamlet now
Since thy last minstrel laid him down to die,
Where through the casement of his chamber thou
Didst mix thy moan with his departing sigh;

A few of Hudson's more majestic hills
Might furnish forests for the whole of thine,
Hide in thick shade all Humber's feeding rills,
And darken all the fountains of the Tyne.

Name all the floods that pour from Albion's heart,
To float her citadels that crowd the sea,
In what, except the meaner pomp of Art,
Sublimer Hudson! can they rival thee:

Could boastful Thames with all his riches buy,
To deck the strand which London loads with gold,
Sunshine so bright — such purity of sky —
As bless thy sultry season and thy cold?

No tales, we know, are chronicled of thee
In ancient scrolls; no deeds of doubtful claim
Have hung a history on every tree,
And given each rock its fable and a fame.

But neither here hath any conqueror trod,
Nor grim invader from barbarian climes;
No horrors feigned of giant or of god
Pollute thy stillness with recorded crimes.

Here never yet have Jiappy fields, laid waste,
The ravished harvest and the blasted fruit,
The cottage ruined, and the shrine defaced,
Tracked the foul passage of the feudal brute.

"Yet, O, Antiquity!" the stranger sighs,
"Scenes wanting thee soon pall upon the view;
The soul's indifference dulls the sated eyes,
Where all is fair indeed — but all is new."

False thought! is age to crumbling walls confined,
To Grecian fragments and Egyptian bones?
Hath Time no monuments to raise the mind,
More than old fortresses and sculptured stones?

Call not this new which is the only land
That wears unchanged the same primeval face
Which, when just dawning from its Maker's hand,
Gladdened the first great grandsire of our race.

Nor did Euphrates with an earlier birth
Glide past green Eden towards the unknown south,
Than Hudson broke upon the infant earth,
And kissed the ocean with his nameless mouth.

Twin-born with Jordan, Ganges, and the Nile!
Thebes and the pyramids to thee are young;
O! had thy waters burst from Britain's isle,
Till now perchance they had not flowed unsung.