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(From Chicora)
HERE Coosa’s quiet waters lave | |
| Bright fields that blush when Summer smiles; | |
| The sunlight dances on the wave | |
| By white shell beds and marshy isles; | |
| With brimming banks, a kindred stream, | 5 |
| Comb’hee from swamp and forest pours; | |
| They meet, combined, the broader gleam | |
| Of ocean’s surge, on Otter’s shores; | |
| Light clouds in pointed masses lie | |
| On ether floating far and wide, | 10 |
| Like mountains lifted to the sky, | |
| Of snowy top and dusky side; | |
| Sweeping the river’s utmost bound, | |
| Blue sky and emerald marsh between, | |
| Dark lines of forest circle round, | 15 |
| A setting for the pictured scene; | |
| Serenely beautiful it lies, | |
| Breathing an air of Paradise; | |
| So soft, so still, as though a care | |
| Or wrong had never sheltered there; | 20 |
| As though no eye had ever shed | |
| Its tears of anguish for the dead, | |
| Nor heart with sorrow beat or bled. | |
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| Fair fields, calm river smooth and bright, | |
| Sweet-breathing flowers and rustling trees, | 25 |
| The honeyed haunts of early bees, | |
| Where birds with morning songs unite | |
| To hail the newly risen light, | |
| What isles of earth are blessed like these? | |
| No age, no blight ye ever know, | 30 |
| O beauteous land and glorious sea! | |
| Still shall your breezes softly blow, | |
| Your rippling waters ever flow, | |
| Blending their ceaseless harmony, | |
| When smiling earth and glowing sky | 35 |
| No longer fill the gazer’s eye, | |
| Hushed his last pulse of hope and fear; | |
| When passing ages shall efface | |
| All memory of his name and race, | |
| Without a toil, without a care, | 40 |
| Nature in her undying grace, | |
| Each form and show as fair and true, | |
| The sea as bright, the sky as blue, | |
| Shall glow with smiles and blushes here. | |
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| Still shall be heard the loon’s lone cry | 45 |
| Upon the stream, and to their rest | |
| Long trains of curlews seaward fly, | |
| At sunset, to their sandy nest; | |
| Still joyous from the sparkling tide | |
| With silver sides shall mullets leap; | 50 |
| The eagle soar in wonted pride; | |
| And by their eyrie strong and wide, | |
| On the dry oak beside the deep, | |
| Their watch shall busy ospreys keep; | |
| Still shall the otter win his prize, | 55 |
| Stealthy and dextrous as before; | |
| And marsh-hens fill with startled cries | |
| Or noisy challenges the shore; | |
| And, when from the redundant main | |
| The spring-tide with a bolder sweep | 60 |
| Spreads over all the marshy plain, | |
| Cunning and still shall sit the while | |
| On drifted sedge, a floating isle, | |
| And patiently their vigils keep | |
| Till the short deluge sinks again. * * * * * | 65 |
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