Our Neighbor
by Harriet Prescott Spofford�(1835�1921) |
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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! |
By Harriet Prescott Spofford�(1835�1921)
Listed , 2014 |
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