| |
| THE MOUND now towers | |
| Close to my step. The grouped sheep scamper wide, | |
| Turn their smooth, pointed faces, gaze and bleat, | |
Then scamper as before.
The crest I win. | |
| A hazed horizon of aerial tints, | 5 |
| Melting the mountains to a tender dream, | |
| Tinging the nearer hills, and quivering round | |
| The neighboring roofs in hues that scarce are hues, | |
| But delicate shadows, fleeting breaths of hues, | |
| Semi-transparent veils of shimmering light. | 10 |
| At length the landscape struggles clearer out; | |
| Mountains and woodlands outlined dim, with curves | |
| Of filmy hills and streaks of gauzy green. | |
| The lowering eye then lights upon the domes | |
| And steeples of the city; then the broad | 15 |
| Transparent river. Thence dark crossing lines | |
| Of fences, nestling homesteads, scattered trees, | |
| Red buckwheat stubbles, withered stacks of corn, | |
| And fading fields, come stretching to the Mound. | |
| I hear Æolian tones: the rapid bark, | 20 |
| The mellowed low, the pleasant bleat, the hum | |
| Of toil, the shout, the whistle, and the song, | |
| Keen clink of scythe, and now and then the smite | |
| Of hoof upon the road, the whir of wheels | |
| On the smooth track, and then the rumble brief | 25 |
| Over the bridge. The heaped hay-wagon jerks | |
| Across the mounded field, its hillock brown | |
| Holding the harvesters, with pitchforks struck | |
| Within the odorous mass. White cattle gleam | |
| From apple-shades, the red kine mingling in | 30 |
| So as scarce rounding forth. The unkempt colt | |
| Perks his observant ear, and glares as goes | |
| The tottering wagon with the welcome hay | |
Through the barn’s weedy lane.
A sketch of smoke | |
| Catches my eye; the narrow steamboat glides | 35 |
| Along the mirrored river; to the shore | |
| Dances the swell. The tall and tapering sloop, | |
| Lazily next, with her great mainsail spread | |
| To catch the air, moves past; then darts a skiff | |
With glittering oars.
While drinking in the scene, | 40 |
| My mind goes back upon the tide of years, | |
| And lo, a vision! On its upward path | |
| The Half-Moon glides. The crowded forests lean | |
| Their foliage in the waters, and expand | |
| One sea of leaves all round me. On the deck | 45 |
| Stands the bold Hudson, gazing at the sights | |
| Opening successive,—point and rock and hill, | |
| Majestic mountain-top, and nestling vale. | |
| As the white sail glints sudden to the sun, | |
| Off swings the eagle from the neighboring pine; | 50 |
| And as the long boom brushes by the brink, | |
| The brown bear jolts away within the bush, | |
| The drinking deer winks from the sandy point, | |
| And breath-like from the ledge the panther melts. | |
| As up some reach the vessel moves, within | 55 |
| The archway of a creek the bark canoe | |
| Darts arrow-like; as turns the prow in-shore | |
| The Indian hunter with recoiling form | |
| Stands grasping idly his forgotten bow; | |
| And as the yacht around some headland breaks, | 60 |
| Amid the rounded wigwams on the bank | |
| Leap startled movements of tumultuous life, | |
| Pointing with eager haste, and gazing wild. | |
| Still on the Half-Moon glides; before her rise | |
| Swarms of quick water-fowl, and from her prow | 65 |
| The sturgeon leaps, and falls with echoing splash. | |
| Between the frequent islets brimmed with leaves | |
| The sheldrake, in his green and silver, shoots, | |
| And antlers stem the gloss. But now the sun | |
| Slants low, and by an island of the stream | 70 |
| The anchor plunges, and the Half-Moon sits | |
| Still as a sleeping duck. I start, and wake. | |
| The busy river-scene again extends | |
| In the soft sundown glow. The grouping herds | |
| Through the sleek fields of golden velvet graze | 75 |
| Slow toward the farm-yard; softened rural sounds— | |
| The wheezing bellow, the quick, peevish bleat, | |
| And the clear, jerking crow—fall on my ear; | |
| And, with quick footsteps through the amber scene, | |
| Past maple-nestling homesteads, where the steeds | 80 |
| Unloosed are led to water; where the kine, | |
| Patient, await within the lane, the pail; | |
| And where the mouse-like wren creeps in and out | |
| Its little cottage fastened to the tree, | |
| To give one chatter more; past laboring groups | 85 |
| Loitering along with instruments of toil, | |
| Past farmers’ wagons clattering toward their homes | |
| From city barterings,—contrast strong to when, | |
| A century since, one forest clothed the whole, | |
| One silent solitude,—the river’s bank | 90 |
| I reach, where, in the hush, the rowlock sounds | |
| Loud, and the tiller of the crawling sloop | |
| Creaks louder; thence, swift wafted o’er the tide, | |
| I gain the peopled streets that hold my home; | |
| Dwelling upon the everlasting stream | 95 |
| Of change and progress coursing through the world. | |
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