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 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! 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, 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. 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 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. 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, 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! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HOMAGE TO SEXTUS PROPERTIUS: 3 by EZRA POUND GOOD-BYE DOROTHY GAYLE: THE ROAD TO BUFFALO by KAREN SWENSON LOVE by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE DIRGE OF RORY O'MORE; 1642 by AUBREY THOMAS DE VERE EPITAPHS OF THE WAR, 1914-18: CONVOY ESCORT by RUDYARD KIPLING A PRAYER by HENRY MAXIMILIAN BEERBOHM |