| |
| SON, have you forgot | |
| Those mellow autumn days, two years ago, | |
| When first we sent our little ship Half-Moon,— | |
| The flag of Holland floating at her peak,— | |
| Across a sandy bar, and sounded in | 5 |
| Among the channels, to a goodly bay | |
| Where all the navies of the world could ride? | |
| A fertile island that the redmen called | |
| Manhattan, lay above the bay: the land | |
| Around was bountiful and friendly fair. | 10 |
| But never land was fair enough to hold | |
| The seaman from the calling of the sea. | |
| And so we bore to westward of the isle, | |
| Along a mighty inlet, where the tide | |
| Was troubled by a downward-flowing flood | 15 |
| That seemed to come from far away,—perhaps | |
| From some mysterious gulf of Tartary? | |
| |
| Inland we held our course; by palisades | |
| Of naked rock where giants might have built | |
| Their fortress; and by rolling hills adorned | 20 |
| With forests rich in timber for great ships; | |
| Through narrows where the mountains shut us in | |
| With frowning cliffs that seemed to bar the stream; | |
| And then through open reaches where the banks | |
| Sloped to the water gently, with their fields | 25 |
| Of corn and lentils smiling in the sun. | |
| Ten days we voyaged through that placid land, | |
| Until we came to shoals, and sent a boat | |
| Upstream to find,—what I already knew,— | |
| We travelled on a river, not a strait. | 30 |
| |
| But what a river! God has never poured | |
| A stream more royal through a land more rich. | |
| Even now I see it flowing in my dream, | |
| While coming ages people it with men | |
| Of manhood equal to the river’s pride. | 35 |
| I see the wigwams of the redmen changed | |
| To ample houses, and the tiny plots | |
| Of maize and green tobacco broadened out | |
| To prosperous farms, that spread o’er hill and dale | |
| The many-coloured mantle of their crops; | 40 |
| I see the terraced vineyard on the slope | |
| Where now the fox-grape loops its tangled vine; | |
| And cattle feeding where the red deer roam; | |
| And wild-bees gathered into busy hives, | |
| To store the silver comb with golden sweet; | 45 |
| And all the promised land begins to flow | |
| With milk and honey. Stately manors rise | |
| Along the banks, and castles top the hills, | |
| And little villages grow populous with trade, | |
| Until the river runs as proudly as the Rhine,— | 50 |
| The thread that links a hundred towns and towers! | |
| And looking deeper in my dream, I see | |
| A mighty city covering the isle | |
| They call Manhattan, equal in her state | |
| To all the older capitals of earth,— | 55 |
| The gateway city of a golden world,— | |
| A city girt with masts, and crowned with spires, | |
| And swarming with a host of busy men, | |
| While to her open door across the bay | |
| The ships of all the nations flock like doves. | 60 |
| My name will be remembered there, for men | |
| Will say, “This river and this isle were found | |
| By Henry Hudson, on his way to seek | |
| The Northwest Passage into Farthest Inde.” | |
| |
