No seasons clothed the field with cultured grain,
No buoyant ship attempts the chartless main;
Then, with impatient voice, My Seer, he cried,
When shall my children cross the lonely tide?
Here, here my sons, the hand of culture bring,
Here teach the lawn to smile, the grove to sing:
Ye laboring floods, no longer vainly glide,
Ye harvests load them, and ye forests ride;
Bear the deep burden from the joyous swain,
And tell the world where peace and plenty reign.
Hesper, to this returning no reply,
Presents new visions to his roving eye.
He saw broad Delaware the shores divide,
He saw majestic Hudson pour his tide;
Thy stream, my Hartford, through its misty robe,
Play’d in the sunbeams, belting far the globe;
No watery glades through richer valleys shine,
Nor drinks the sea a lovelier wave than thine.
Mystic and Charles refresh their seaward isles,
And gay Piscateway pays his passing smiles;
Swift Kenebec, high bursting from his lakes,
Shoots down the hillsides through the clouds he makes;
And hoarse resounding, gulfing wide the shore,
Dread Lawrence labors with tremendous roar;
Lawrence, great son of Ocean! lorn he lies
And braves the blasts of hyperborean skies.
Where hoary winter holds his howling reign
And April flings her timid showers in vain,
Groans the choked Flood, in frozen fetters bound,
And isles of ice his angry front surround.
As old Enceladus, in durance vile,
Spreads his huge length beneath Sicilia’s isle,
Her mass of mountains, on his body prest,
Close not his veins nor still his laboring breast;
His limbs convulse, his heart rebellious rolls,
Earth shakes responsive to her utmost poles,
While rumbling, bursting boils his ceaseless ire,
Flames to mid heaven, and sets the skies on fire.
So the contristed Lawrence lays him low,
And hills of sleet and continents of snow
Rise on his crystal breast; his heaving sides
Crash with the weight, and pour their gushing tides.
Asouth, whence all his hundred branches bend,
Relenting airs with boreal blasts contend;
Far in his vast extremes he swells and thaws,
And seas foam wide between his ice-bound jaws.
Indignant Frost, to hold his captive, plies
His hosted fiends that vex the polar skies,
Unlocks his magazines of nitric stores,
Azotic charms and muriatic powers;
Hail, with its glassy globes, and brume congeal’d,
Rime’s fleecy flakes, and storm that heaps the field
Strike through the sullen Stream with numbing force,
Obstruct his sluices and impede his course.
In vain he strives; his might interior fails;
Nor spring’s approach, nor earth’s whole heat avails;
He calls his hoary sire; old Ocean roars
Responsive echo through the Shetland shores.
He comes, the Father! from his bleak domains,
To break with liquid arms the sounding chains;
Clothed in white majesty, he leads from far
His tides high foaming to the wintry war.
Billows on billows lift the maddening brine,
And seas and clouds in battling conflict join,
O’erturn the vast gulf glade with rending sweep,
And crash the crust that bridged the boiling deep;
Till forced aloft, bright bounding through the air,
Moves the blear ice and sheds a dazzling glare;
The torn foundations on the surface ride,
And wrecks of winter load the downward tide.
The loosen’d ice isles o’er the main advance,
Toss on the surge and through the concave dance;
Whirl’d high, conjoin’d, in crystal mountains driven,
Alp over Alp, they build a midway heaven;
Whose million mirrors mock the solar ray
And give condensed the tenfold glare of day.
As tow’rd the south the mass enormous glides
And brineless rivers furrow down its sides,
The thirsty sailor steals a glad supply,
And sultry trade winds quaff the boreal sky.
But oft insidious death, with mist o’erstrown,
Rides the dark ocean on this icy throne;
When ships through vernal seas with light airs steer
Their midnight march and deem no danger near.
The steerman gaily helms his course along
And laughs and listens to the watchman’s song,
Who walks the deck, enjoys the murky fog,
Sure of his chart, his magnet and his log,
Their shipmates dreaming, while their slumbers last,
Of joys to come, of toils and dangers past.
Sudden a chilling blast comes roaring through
The trembling shrouds, and startles all the crew;
They spring to quarters, and perceive too late
The mount of death, the giant strides of fate.
The fullsail’d ship, with instantaneous shock
Dasht into fragments by the floating rock,
Plunges beneath its basement through the wave,
And crew and cargo glut the watery grave.
Say, Palfrey,9 brave good man, was this thy doom?
Dwells here the secret of thy midsea tomb?
But, Susan, why that tear? my lovely friend,
Regret may last, but grief should have an end.
An infant then, thy memory scarce can trace
The lines, though sacred, of thy father’s face;
A generous spouse has well replaced the sire;
New duties hence new sentiments require.
Now where the lakes, those midland oceans, lie
Columbus turn’d his heaven-illumined eye.
Ontario’s banks, unable to retain
The five great Caspians from the distant main,
Burst with the ponderous mass, and forceful whirl’d
His Lawrence forth, to balance thus the world.
Above, bold Erie’s wave sublimely stood,
Lookt o’er the cliff and heaved his headlong flood;
Where dread Niagara bluffs high his brow
And frowns defiance to the world below.
White clouds of mist expanding o’er him play,
That tinge their skirts in all the beams of day;
Pleased Iris wantons in perpetual pride
And bends her rainbows o’er the dashing tide.
Far glimmering in the north, Black Huron runs,
Clear Michigan reflects a thousand suns,
And bason’d high, on earth’s broad bosom gay,
The bright Superior silvers down the day.
Blue mounds beyond them far in ether fade,
Deep groves between them cast a solemn shade,
Slow moves their settling mist in lurid streams
And dusky radiance streaks the solar beams.
Fixt on the view the great discoverer stood
And thus addrest the messenger of good:
But why these seats, that seem reserved to grace
The social toils of some illustrious race?
Why spread so wide and form’d so fair in vain?
And why so distant rolls the bounteous main?
These happy regions must forever rest
Of man unseen, by native beasts possest;
And the best heritage my sons could boast
Elude their search in far dim deserts lost.
For see, no ship can point her pendants here,
No stream conducts nor ocean wanders near;
Frost, crags and cataracts their north invest,
And the tired sun scarce finds their bounds awest.
To whom the Seraph: Here indeed retires
The happiest land that feels my fostering fires;
Here too shall numerous nations found their seat,
And peace and freedom bless the kind retreat.
Led by this arm thy sons shall hither come,
And streams obedient yield the heroes room,
Spread a broad passage to their well
