Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Americas: Vol. XXX. 1876–79.
Rio Grande del Norte
By Robert Southey (1774–1843)A
Where the great river, amid shoals and banks
And islands, growth of its own gathering spoils,
Through many a branching channel, wide and full,
Rushed to the main. The gale was strong; and safe,
Amid the uproar of conflicting tides,
Our gallant vessels rode. A stream as broad
And turbid, when it leaves the Land of Hills,
Old Severn rolls; but banks so fair as these
Old Severn views not in his Land of Hills,
Nor even where his turbid waters swell
And sully the salt sea.
So we sailed on
By shores now covered with impervious woods,
Now stretching wide and low, a reedy waste,
And now through vales where earth profusely poured
Her treasures, gathered from the first of days.
Sometimes a savage tribe would welcome us,
By wonder from their lethargy of life
Awakened; then again we voyaged on
Through tracts all desolate, for days and days,
League after league, one green and fertile mead,
That fed a thousand herds.
A different scene
Rose on our view, of mount on mountain piled,
Which when I see again in memory,
Star-gazing Idris’s stupendous seat
Seems dwarfed, and Snowdon with its eagle haunts
Shrinks, and is dwindled like a Saxon hill.