Racket River

MY spirit grieves, oh, river of leaves!
For the magic thy wild green beauty weaves!

From no slight spring light bubbles upfling
To trickle through pebbles, round ferns to swing.

But thou dost break, full up and awake,
From the soaring Blue Mountain’s cradled lake.

Linked lakes then pass thy picture-bright glass
On through the forest’s unbounded mass.

Thy wave now roves by colonnade groves;
Now blackens in bush-blotting, tamarack coves.

By dingles green, now it ripples in sheen,
Now crumbles to foam in some rocky ravine.

The Indian Plume burns ruddy in bloom
Like a torch of the gnomes in thy bordering gloom.

The harebell wakes by thy dashing breaks;
There, the wiry-hooked, golden-nooked columbine quakes.

Mossily tressed on the gray pine’s crest
Looms, ragged and russet, the fish-hawk’s nest.

Down yon smooth sides the black otter slides;
In this deep basin the white-fish hides:

See yon grassed park where the cedars dark
Have planted their tents round the shanty of bark!

To what sweet eves, oh, river of leaves!
To what glad dawnings fond memory cleaves!

Oft did I float o’er the golden gloat
Of the moon, in my buoyant, black, Saranac boat.

The soft white light made the dead tree bright,
And pearled into brilliance the tangled night.

Thus glows the spell of tree, wave, and dell,
Oh, river of leaves! but, at last, farewell!