Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.

Middle States: Susquehanna, the River, Pa.

Meeting of the Susquehanna and the Lackawanna

By Lydia Huntley Sigourney (1791–1865)

RUSH on, glad stream, in thy power and pride,

To claim the hand of thy promised bride;

She doth haste from the realm of the darkened mine,

To mingle her murmured vows with thine;

Ye have met,—ye have met, and the shores prolong

The liquid notes of your nuptial song.

Methinks ye wed, as the white man’s son

And the child of the Indian king have done;

I saw thy bride, as she strove in vain,

To cleanse her brow from the carbon stain,

But she brings thee a dowry so rich and true

That thy love must not shrink from the tawny hue.

Her birth was rude, in a mountain cell,

And her infant freaks there are none to tell;

The path of her beauty was wild and free,

And in dell and forest she hid from thee;

But the day of her fond caprice is o’er,

And she seeks to part from thy breast no more.

Pass on in the joy of thy blended tide,

Through the land where the blessed Miquon died;

No red man’s blood with its guilty stain

Hath cried unto God from that broad domain,—

With the seeds of peace they have sown the soil,

Bring a harvest of wealth for their hour of toil.

On, on, through the vale where the brave ones sleep,

Where the waving foliage is rich and deep;

I have stood on the mountain and roamed through the glen

To the beautiful homes of the western men;

Yet naught in that realm of enchantment could see,

So fair as the vale of Wyoming to me.