| Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867. | | | | IX. To the Hudson | | By Mrs. Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1806–1893) |
| | | O RIVER! gently as a wayward child | |
| I saw thee ’mid the moonlight hills at rest,— | |
| Capricious thing with thine own beauty wild. | |
| How didst thou still the throbbings of thy breast! | |
| Rude headlands were about thee stooping round, | 5 |
| As if amid the hills to hold thy stay; | |
| But thou didst hear the far-off ocean sound, | |
| Inviting thee from hill and vale away, | |
| To mingle thy deep waters with its own; | |
| And, at that voice, thy steps did onward glide, | 10 |
| Onward from echoing hill and valley lone. | |
| Like thine, O, be my course,—nor turned aside, | |
| While listing to the soundings of a land, | |
| That, like the ocean-call, invites me to its strand. | | | | |
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