Nor sluice their lakes nor form their soils in vain.
Here my bold Mississippi bends his way,
Scorns the dim bounds of yon bleak boreal day
And calls from western heavens, to feed his stream,
The rains and floods that Asian seas might claim.
Strong in his march and charged with all the fates
Of regions pregnant with a hundred states,
He holds in balance, ranged on either hand,
Two distant oceans and their sundering land,
Commands and drains the interior tracts that lie
Outmeasuring Europe’s total breadth of sky.
High in the north his parent fountains wed,
And oozing urns adorn his infant head;
In vain proud Frost his nursing lakes would close
And choke his channel with perennial snows;
From all their slopes he curves his countless rills,
Sweeps their long marshes, saps their settling hills;
Then stretching, straightening south, he gaily gleams,
Swells through the climes and swallows all their streams;
From zone to zone, o’er earth’s broad surface curl’d,
He cleaves his course, he furrows half the world,
Now roaring wild through bursting mountains driven,
Now calm reflecting all the host of heaven;
Where Cynthia pausing, her own face admires,
And suns and stars repeat their dancing fires.
Wide o’er his meadowy lawns he spreads and feeds
His realms of canes, his waving world of reeds;
Where mammoths grazed the renovating groves,
Slaked their huge thirst and chill’d their fruitless loves;
Where elks, rejoicing o’er the extinguished race,
By myriads rise to fill the vacant space.
Earth’s widest gulf expands to meet his wave,
Vast isles of ocean in his current lave;
Glad Thetis greets him from his finisht course
And bathes her Nereids in his freshening source.
To his broad bed their tributary stores
Wisconsin here, there lonely Peter pours;
Croix, from the northeast wilds, his channel fills,
Ohio, gather’d from his myriad hills,
Yazoo and Black, surcharged by Georgian springs,
Rich Illinois his copious treasure brings;
Arkansas, measuring back the sun’s long course,
Moine, Francis, Rouge augment the father’s force.
But chief of all his family of floods
Missouri marches through his world of woods;
He scorns to mingle with the filial train,
Takes every course to reach alone the main;
Orient awhile his bending sweep he tries,
Now drains the southern, now the northern skies,
Searches and sunders far the globe’s vast frame,
Reluctant joins the sire, and takes at last his name.
There lies the path thy future sons shall trace,
Plant here their arts, and rear their vigorous race:
A race predestined, in these choice abodes,
To teach mankind to tame their fluvial floods,
Retain from ocean, as their work requires,
These great auxiliars, raised by solar fires,
Force them to form ten thousand roads, and girth
With liquid belts each verdant mound of earth,
To aid the colon’s as the carrier’s toil,
To drive the coulter and to fat the soil,
Learn all mechanic arts and oft regain
Their native hills in vapor and in rain.
So taught the Saint. The regions nearer drew
And raised resplendent to their Hero’s view
Rich nature’s triple reign; for here elate
She stored the noblest treasures of her state,
Adorn’d exuberant this her last domain,
As yet unalter’d by her mimic man,
Sow’d liveliest gems and plants of proudest grace,
And strung with strongest nerves her animated race.
Retiring far round Hudson’s frozen bay,
Earth’s lessening circles shrink beyond the day;
Snows ever rising with the toils of time
Choke the chill shrubs that brave the dismal clime;
The beasts all whitening10 roam the lifeless plain,
And caves unfrequent scoop the couch for man.
Where spring’s coy steps in cold Canadia stray,
And joyless seasons hold unequal sway,
He saw the pine its daring mantle rear,
Break the rude blast, and mock the brumal year,
Shag the green zone that bounds the boreal skies,
And bid all southern vegetation rise.
Wild o’er the vast impenetrable round
The untrod bowers of shadowy nature frown’d;
Millennial cedars wave their honors wide,
The fir’s tall boughs, the oak’s umbrageous pride,
The branching beech, the aspen’s trembling shade
Veil the dim heaven and brown the dusky glade.
For in dense crowds these sturdy sons of earth
In frosty regions claim a stronger birth;
Where heavy beams the sheltering dome requires
And copious trunks to feed its wintry fires.
But warmer suns, that southern zones emblaze,
A cool thin umbrage o’er their woodland raise;
Floridia’s shores their blooms around him spread,
And Georgian hills erect their shady head;
Whose flowery shrubs regale the passing air
With all the untasted fragrance of the year.
Beneath tall trees, dispersed in loose array,
The rice-grown lawns their humble garb display;
The infant maize, unconscious of its worth,
Points the green spire and bends the foliage forth;
In various forms unbidden harvests rise,
And blooming life repays the genial skies.
Where Mexic hills the breezy gulf defend,
Spontaneous groves with richer burdens bend.
Anana’s stalk its shaggy honors yields,
Acacia’s flowers perfume a thousand fields,
Their cluster’d dates the mast-like palms unfold,
The spreading orange waves a load of gold,
Connubial vines o’ertop the larch they climb,
The long-lived olive mocks the moth of time,
Pomona’s pride, that old Grenada claims,
Here smiles and reddens in diviner flames;
Pimento, citron scent the sky serene,
White woolly clusters fringe the cotton’s green,
The sturdy fig, the frail deciduous cane
And foodful cocoa fan the sultry plain.
Here, in one view, the same glad branches bring
The fruits of autumn and the flowers of spring;
No wintry blasts the unchanging year deform,
Nor beasts unshelter’d fear the pinching storm;
But vernal breezes o’er the blossoms rove
And breathe the ripen’d juices through the grove.
Beneath the crystal wave’s inconstant light,
Pearls burst their shells to greet the Hero’s sight;
From opening earth in living lustre shine
The various treasures of the blazing mine;
Hills, cleft before him, all their stores unfold,
The pale platina and the burning gold;
Silver whole mounds, and gems of dazzling ray
Illume the rocks and shed the beams of day.
Book II
Natives of America appear in vision—Their manners and characters—Columbus demands the cause of the dissimilarity of men in different countries—Hesper replies, That the human body is composed of a due proportion of the elements suited to the place of its first formation; that these elements, differently proportioned, produce all the changes of health, sickness, growth and decay, and may likewise produce any other changes which occasion the diversity of men; that these elemental proportions are varied, not more by climate than temperature and other local circumstances; that the mind is likewise in a state of change, and will take its physical character from the body and from external objects: examples—Inquiry
