CONTOOCOOK RIVER.10
Of all the streams that seek the sea
By mountain pass, or sunny lea,
Now where is one that dares to vie
With clear Contoocook, swift and shy?
Monadnock's child, of snow-drifts born,
The snows of many a winter morn
And many a midnight dark and still,
Heaped higher, whiter, day by day,
To melt, at last, with suns of May,
And steal, in tiny fall and rill,
Down the long slopes of granite gray;
Or filter slow through seam and cleft
When frost and storm the rock have reft,
To bubble cool in sheltered springs
Where the lone red-bird dips his wings,
And the tired fox that gains their brink
Stoops, safe from hound and horn, to drink.
And rills and springs, grown broad and deep,
Unite through gorge and glen to sweep
In roaring brooks that turn and take
The over-floods of pool and lake,
Till, to the fields, the hills deliver
Contoocook's bright and brimming river!
By mountain pass, or sunny lea,
Now where is one that dares to vie
With clear Contoocook, swift and shy?
Monadnock's child, of snow-drifts born,
The snows of many a winter morn
And many a midnight dark and still,
Heaped higher, whiter, day by day,
To melt, at last, with suns of May,
And steal, in tiny fall and rill,
Down the long slopes of granite gray;
Or filter slow through seam and cleft
When frost and storm the rock have reft,
To bubble cool in sheltered springs
Where the lone red-bird dips his wings,
And the tired fox that gains their brink
Stoops, safe from hound and horn, to drink.
And rills and springs, grown broad and deep,
Unite through gorge and glen to sweep
In roaring brooks that turn and take
The over-floods of pool and lake,
Till, to the fields, the hills deliver
Contoocook's bright and brimming river!
