Scenes in my Native Land/The Housatonic
THE HOUSATONIC.
Oh gentle River, winding free,
Through realms of peace and liberty,
Who that thy modest source hath seen,
Yon shallow pool, mid thickets green,
Would ere divine thy future course,
When boldly swells thy current's force:—
What countless wheels, with clamoring clash,
Shall in thine eddies roll and dash,
What spindles at thy will rebound,
What looms in echoing domes resound,
What ponderous bales the billows speed,
Thine appetite for wealth to feed.
As little dreams the village maid,
Who half confiding, half afraid,
Her daily task doth docile ply,
Beneath the watchful mistress' eye,
What added power her lot shall claim,
When ripened to the matron dame,
With vigorous arm, and fearless mien,
The dairy's undisputed queen,
In household care she leads the way,
And trains her children to obey.
Behold! what beauteous regions spread,
Old Greylock shakes his ancient head,
And forests nod with solemn sweep,
And hamlets through their vistas peep.
See Dalton, with her waving crown,
Beneath the hills sit graceful down,
And Hinsdale twine in meshes strong,
The white fleece nursed her folds among,
And Stock bridge o'er her marble bent,
Prepare the enduring monument,
And Becket's rocks whence streamlets flow,
And Chester's dells where laurels glow,
Whose lustrous leaf and radiant spire,
We fain had lingered to admire,
Or cull the iris deeply blue,
Or water-lily bright with dew,
Or rich wild rose, that freely cast
Its treasures round us as we past,
And seemed to reach its clustering bloom
And woo us with a fresh perfume.
But swift our mystic courser went,
His dauntless spirit fiercely bent
The goal to reach, nor slack his speed
The lesson of a flower to heed.
On, on he flew, nor paused to lave
His hot lip in the cooling wave,
The might of thousand steeds that shun
The lasso 'neath La Plata's sun,
Within his iron heart comprest,
While strangely from his heaving breast,
The streams of breath, in sparkles dire,
Sprinkled old Midnight's robe with fire.
His sharp, shrill neigh, with terror fills
The cattle on a thousand hills,
As mid their fragrant food they spy
This wingless monster straining by,
Whose brazen nerves and boiling veins
Propel him o'er the lessening plains.
While we, who born in times of old,
When travel from her note-book told
Of rural charms, and lambs that play,
And wild flowers treasured on the way,
We, who in earlier days were fain
To weave the poet’s idle strain,
And gather from the landscape fair
Such thoughts as angels scattered there,
Now ill at ease, with swimming eye,
Go where the fire-horse wills to fly.
Yet thou, sweet stream, whose devious way,
Unconscious woke this simple lay,
We would not quite, in giddy strife,
Forget the moral of thy life.
Thy shaded childhood, meekly fair,
Thy course mature of useful care,
Thy secret deeds of bounteous zeal,
Which laden field and grove reveal;
The peaceful smile, when all is o'er,
With which, from earth's delusive shore,
Thou to the unfathomed sea dost glide,
And mingle with its mighty tide.
There seems always a deep interest in exploring the source of a river. It is so wonderful to perceive, how from a noteless fountain, or a shallow brook, that broad bold stream should spring, on which navies ride. A fullness of thought springs up, as on visiting the birthplace of an illustrious man; not one who is remembered by blood shed upon the earth, but by deeds of benevolence, that cannot die. Doubtless many of us remember amid the studies of our childhood, the pleasure with which we read Rollin's description of the two little fountains whence the Nile emanated, which from their brighness, and circular form, were designated as the "eyes of the Nile."
A respected friend once told me with what delight he pressed his foot upon the slender source of the Danube. A strange, wild-eyed guide accompanied him to the solitary ravine. To the enquiry what he should give him for this service, fixing on him a searching glance which seemed to say, it was in his power in that secluded spot to demand what he chose, he replied solemnly in his native German, "Whatever God shall put it into your heart to give."
In entering Massachusetts by the western railroad, you pass the first tributary brooklet to the Housatonic, then the little pond which is called its source, and then crossing and recrossing, follow for some time the beautiful course of its broader waters.
Miss Sedgwick, in her interesting essay on her native Berkshire, says:—"We have entered it by a road far superior to the Appian Way. On every side are rich vallies, and smiling hill-sides, and deep set in their hollows lovely lakes sparkle like gems. From one of these, a modest sheet of water in Lanesborough, flows out the Housatonic, the minister of God's bounty, bringing to the meadows along its course, a yeasty renewal of fertility, and the ever-changing, ever-present beauty, that marks God's choicest works. It is the most judicious of rivers; like a discreet, rural beauty, it bears its burdens and does its work out of sight; its water privileges for mills, furnaces, and factories, are aside from the villages. When it comes near to them, as in Stockbridge, it lingers like a lover, turns and returns, and when fairly off, flies past rolling wheels, and dinning factories, till reaching the lovely meadows of Barrington, it again disports itself at leisure."
In the territory of Connecticut, it assumes more of the character of dignity and power, and especially at Derby, after its junction with the Naugatuck, mingles with and diversifies much bold and romantic scenery.
In approaching the dividing line between the States of New York and Massachusetts, the Shaker villages are seen at a distance, with the green hills of Lebanon, cultivated to their very summits. Slatestone, and a kind of gneiss, unusually brilliant with mica, which had prevailed, soon yielded to limestone ranges, enriched with that fine marble which distinguishes Richmond and Stockbridge. Iron, marble, and lime, woods, rocks, and waters, are among the riches of this wildly variegated country.
Pittsfield is a fine town, on a green vale, running between two mountain ranges. In the centre of its public square, which comprises about four acres, is a magnificent elm, which the earliest settlers had the taste and wisdom to spare, when the surrounding forests were, shorn. Its trunk rises ninety feet before the branches strike out, and its head towers upward to the height of one hundred and twenty-six feet. It is evidently of great antiquity, and exhibits symptoms of decay.
Dalton, seated among the hills, looked sweetly pleasant, as if it might extend to the wearv-hearted an invitation to share its quiet retreat, and steal from the bustle of an unsatisfying world. The road, which for some time kept the level of the Housatonic, and then that of the swift, stone-paved Westfield, both of which it had repeatedly crossed, took leave of these quiet companions, and began its ascent of eighty feet in a mile. This continued for about thirteen miles,—Washington, on one of the spurs of the Green Mountains, being the height of land, from whence the descent is in the same ratio, for the same distance.
Hinsdale, with its manufacturing zeal, and its perpetual clangor of loom and spindle, exhibited the blackened walls of a lofty factory, which the destroying flame had visited, and through which, methought, the whistling winds lectured on the instability of wealth, the favorite deity of our times. The deep excavations for the railroad, made among the rocks at Becket, awaken the surprise of every beholder. The wild, bold hills, so bleak during the storms of winter, and the varied surface of Chester, were radiant with the most splendid specimens of the laurel. Varying from white, through every tint of pink, to an unusually decided red, it thrust its masses of rich efflorescence and dark lustrous foliage before us, as we hurried by, striving to remind us of the Maker.
But the spirit of fire, to which we had intrusted ourselves, was intent only to surmount space. It could not tarry for us to toy with a flower, or to listen to any message that Nature might have for her children. While its continued agency must mark the character of a people with energy, and the consciousness of power, will it not have a tendency to diminish their perception of rural beauty, by abridging their opportunities to cultivate it? While to pass from point to point, with the speed of lightning, is the only aim of the traveller, a newspaper may as well beguile his thoughts as all the blended and glorious charms of mountain, vale, and flood.
"The Ionians," said a classic writer, "are silent contemplative, recluse. Knowing that Nature will not deliver her oracles in the crowd, on the wing, or by the sound of a trumpet, they open their breasts to her in solitude, with the simplicity of children, they look earnestly in her face, and wait for a reply."