  Wise is the wild duck winging straight to thee, River of summer! from the cold Arctic sea, Coming, like his fathers for centuries, to seek The sweet, salt pastures of the far Chesapeake. Soft 'twixt thy capes like sunset's purple coves, Shallow the channel glides through silent oyster groves, Round Kent's ancient isle, and by beaches brown, Cleaving the fruity farms to slumb'rous Chestertown. Long ere the great bay bore the Baltimores, Yielded thy virgin tide to Virginian oars; Elsewhere the word went, "Multiply! increase!" Long ago thy destinies were perfect as thy peace. Still, like thy water-fowl, dearly do I yearn, In memory's migration once more to return, Where the dull old college from the gentle ridge, O'erlooks the sunny village, the river, and the bridge. On the pier decrepit I do loiter yet, With my crafty crab-lines and my homespun net, Till the silver fishes in pools of twilight swam, And stars played round my bait in the coves of calm. Sweet were the chinquapins growing by thy brink, Sweet the cool spring-water in the gourd to drink, Beautiful the lilies when the tide declined, As if night receding had left some stars behind. But when the peach tints vanished from the plain, Or struggled no longer the shad against the seine, Every reed in thy march into music stirred, And to gold it blossomed in a singing bird. Eden of water-fowl! clinging to thy dells Ages of mollusks have yielded their shells, While, like the exquisite spirits they shed, Ride the white swans in the surface o'erhead. Silent the otter, stealing by thy moon, Through the fluttered heron, hears the cry of the loon; Motionless the setter in thy dawnlight gray Shows the happy hidden cove where the wild duck play. Homely are thy boatmen, venturing no more In their dusky pungies than to Baltimore, Happy when the freshet from northern mountains sweeps, And strews the bay with lumber like wrecks upon the deeps. Not for thy homesteads of a former space, Not for thy folk of supposititious race; Something I love thee, river, for thy rest, More for my childhood buried in thy breast. From the mightier empire of the solid land, A pilgrim infrequent I seek thy fertile strand, And with a calm affection would wish my grave to be Where falls the Chester to the bay, the bay unto the sea. |
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