Page:A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.djvu/175

Rh For they who sent a venture out by ye

Have set the Sun to see

Their honesty.

Ships of the line, each one,

Ye westward run,

Convoying clouds,

Which cluster in your shrouds,

Always before the gale,

Under a press of sail,

With weight of metal all untold,—

I seem to feel ye in my firm seat here,

Immeasurable depth of hold,

And breadth of beam, and length of running gear.

Methinks ye take luxurious pleasure

In your novel western leisure;

So cool your brows and freshly blue,

As Time had nought for ye to do;

For ye lie at your length,

An unappropriated strength,

Unhewn primeval timber,

For knees so stiff, for masts so limber;

The stock of which new earths are made,

One day to be our western trade,

Fit for the stanchions of a world

Which through the seas of space is hurled.

While we enjoy a lingering ray,

Ye still o'ertop the western day,

Reposing yonder on God's croft

Like solid stacks of hay;

So bold a line as ne'er was writ

On any page by human wit;

The forest glows as if

An enemy's camp-fires shone

Along the horizon,

Or the day's funeral pyre

Were lighted there;