You say the Suwanee River's but a creek -- Mud-filled, a lazy outlet of the slough -- And judge its channel unimportant, now? You, with surveyor's chains and gauges, seek To measure length and breadth, as though a streak Traversing Nature's pathless waste; to plow Rough-shod through marshes, under brush and bough, Of misproportioned things you dare to speak? Ah! Your unseeing eyes can never scale The heights that give this magic stream its birth, Nor watch it purl its way through memory's land. An alien cannot draw aside the veil And estimate the South's intrinsic worth. Suwanee flows for those who understand! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SLEEP by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH FAREWELL TO NANCY by ROBERT BURNS SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE: 1. AT TEA by THOMAS HARDY ON THE DEATHS OF THOMAS CARLYLE AND GEORGE ELIOT by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE A SOLDIER'S GRAVE by JOHN ALBEE A PIPE OF TOBACCO (MR. POPE'S STYLE IMITATED) by ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE |