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| OLD neighbor, for how many a year | |
| The same horizon, stretching here, | |
| Has held us in its happy bound | |
| From Rivermouth to Ipswich Sound! | |
| How many a wave-washed day we ’ve seen | 5 |
| Above that low horizon lean, | |
| And marked within the Merrimack | |
| The selfsame sunset reddening back, | |
| Or in the Powow’s shining stream, | |
| That silent river of a dream! | 10 |
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| Where Craneneck o’er the woody gloom | |
| Lifts her steep mile of apple-bloom; | |
| Where Salisbury Sands, in yellow length, | |
| With the great breakers measure strength; | |
| Where Artichoke in shadow slides, | 15 |
| The lily on her painted tides,— | |
| There ’s naught in the enchanted view | |
| That does not seem a part of you: | |
| Your legends hang on every hill, | |
| Your songs have made it dearer still. | 20 |
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| Yours is the river-road; and yours | |
| Are all the mighty meadow floors | |
| Where the long Hampton levels lie | |
| Alone between the sea and sky. | |
| Sweeter in Follymill shall blow | 25 |
| The Mayflowers, that you loved them so; | |
| Prouder Deer Island’s ancient pines | |
| Toss to their measure in your lines; | |
| And purpler gleam old Appledore, | |
| Because your foot has trod her shore. | 30 |
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| Still shall the great Cape wade to meet | |
| The storms that fawn about her feet, | |
| The summer evening linger late | |
| In many-rivered Stackyard-Gate, | |
| When we, when all your people here, | 35 |
| Have fled. But, like the atmosphere, | |
| You still the region shall surround, | |
| The spirit of the sacred ground, | |
| Though you have risen, as mounts the star, | |
| Into horizons vaster far! | 40 |
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