Down Stream
Scarred hemlock roots,
Oaks in mail, and willow-shoots
Spring’s first-knighted;
Clinging aspens grouped between,
Slender, misty-green,
Faintly affrighted:
Far hills behind,
Somber growth, with sunlight lined,
On their edges;
Banks hemmed in with maiden-hair,
And the straight and fair
Phalanx of sedges:
Wee wings and eyes,
Wild blue gemmy dragon-flies,
Fearless rangers;
Drowsy turtles in a tribe
Diving, with a gibe
Muttered at strangers;
Wren, bobolink,
Robin, at the grassy brink;
Great frogs jesting;
And the beetle, for no grief
Half-across his leaf
Sighing and resting;
In the keel’s way,
Unwithdrawing bream at play,
Till from branches
Chestnut-blossoms, loosed aloft,
Graze them with their soft
Full avalanches!
This is very odd!
Boldly sings the river-god:
‘Pilgrim rowing!
From the Hyperborean air
Wherefore, and O where
Should man be going?’
Slave to a dream,
Me no urgings and no theme
Can embolden;
Now no more the oars swing back,
Drip, dip, till black
Waters froth golden.
Musketaquid!
I have loved thee, all unbid,
Earliest, longest;
Thou hast taught me thine own thrift:
Here I sit, and drift
Where the wind’s strongest.
If, furthermore,
There be any pact ashore,
I forget it!
If, upon a busy day
Beauty make delay,
Once over, let it!
Only, — despite
Thee, who wouldst unnerve me quite
Like a craven,—
Best the current be not so,
Heart and I must row
Into our haven!
Source: She Wields a Pen: American Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century (University of Iowa Press, 1997)