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(From The Backwoodsman)
AS down Ohio’s ever ebbing tide, | |
| Oarless and sailless, silently they glide, | |
| How still the scene, how lifeless, yet how fair | |
| Was the lone land that met the stranger there! | |
| No smiling villages or curling smoke | 5 |
| The busy haunts of busy men bespoke; | |
| No solitary hut, the banks along, | |
| Sent forth blithe labor’s homely, rustic song; | |
| No urchin gambolled on the smooth, white sand, | |
| Or hurled the skipping-stone with playful hand, | 10 |
| While playmate dog plunged in the clear blue wave, | |
| And swam, in vain, the sinking prize to save. | |
| Where now are seen, along the river-side, | |
| Young, busy towns, in buxom, painted pride, | |
| And fleets of gliding boats with riches crowned, | 15 |
| To distant Orleans or St. Louis bound. | |
| Nothing appeared but nature unsubdued, | |
| One endless, noiseless woodland solitude, | |
| Or boundless prairie, that aye seemed to be | |
| As level and as lifeless as the sea; | 20 |
| They seemed to breathe in this wide world alone, | |
| Heirs of the earth—the land was all their own! | |
| ’T was evening now: the hour of toil was o’er, | |
| Yet still they durst not seek the fearful shore, | |
| Lest watchful Indian crew should silent creep, | 25 |
| And spring upon and murder them in sleep; | |
| So through the livelong night they held their way, | |
| And ’t was a night might shame the fairest day; | |
| So still, so bright, so tranquil was its reign, | |
| They cared not though the day ne’er came again. | 30 |
| The moon high wheeled the distant hills above, | |
| Silvered the fleecy foliage of the grove, | |
| That as the wooing zephyrs on it fell, | |
| Whispered it loved the gentle visit well. | |
| That fair-faced orb alone to move appeared, | 35 |
| That zephyr was the only sound they heard. | |
| No deep-mouthed hound the hunter’s haunt betrayed, | |
| No lights upon the shore or waters played, | |
| No loud laugh broke upon the silent air, | |
| To tell the wanderers, man was nestling there. | 40 |
| All, all was still, on gliding bark and shore, | |
| As if the earth now slept to wake no more. | |
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