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Home  »  The Book of New York Verse  »  Henry van Dyke

Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ed. The Book of New York Verse. 1917.

Hudson’s Last Voyage, 1611 (abridged)

Henry van Dyke

SON, have you forgot

Those mellow autumn days, two years ago,

When first we sent our little ship Half-Moon,

The flag of Holland floating at her peak,—

Across a sandy bar, and sounded in

Among the channels, to a goodly bay

Where all the navies of the world could ride?

A fertile island that the redmen called

Manhattan, lay above the bay: the land

Around was bountiful and friendly fair.

But never land was fair enough to hold

The seaman from the calling of the sea.

And so we bore to westward of the isle,

Along a mighty inlet, where the tide

Was troubled by a downward-flowing flood

That seemed to come from far away,—perhaps

From some mysterious gulf of Tartary?

Inland we held our course; by palisades

Of naked rock where giants might have built

Their fortress; and by rolling hills adorned

With forests rich in timber for great ships;

Through narrows where the mountains shut us in

With frowning cliffs that seemed to bar the stream;

And then through open reaches where the banks

Sloped to the water gently, with their fields

Of corn and lentils smiling in the sun.

Ten days we voyaged through that placid land,

Until we came to shoals, and sent a boat

Upstream to find,—what I already knew,—

We travelled on a river, not a strait.

But what a river! God has never poured

A stream more royal through a land more rich.

Even now I see it flowing in my dream,

While coming ages people it with men

Of manhood equal to the river’s pride.

I see the wigwams of the redmen changed

To ample houses, and the tiny plots

Of maize and green tobacco broadened out

To prosperous farms, that spread o’er hill and dale

The many-coloured mantle of their crops;

I see the terraced vineyard on the slope

Where now the fox-grape loops its tangled vine;

And cattle feeding where the red deer roam;

And wild-bees gathered into busy hives,

To store the silver comb with golden sweet;

And all the promised land begins to flow

With milk and honey. Stately manors rise

Along the banks, and castles top the hills,

And little villages grow populous with trade,

Until the river runs as proudly as the Rhine,—

The thread that links a hundred towns and towers!

And looking deeper in my dream, I see

A mighty city covering the isle

They call Manhattan, equal in her state

To all the older capitals of earth,—

The gateway city of a golden world,—

A city girt with masts, and crowned with spires,

And swarming with a host of busy men,

While to her open door across the bay

The ships of all the nations flock like doves.

My name will be remembered there, for men

Will say, “This river and this isle were found

By Henry Hudson, on his way to seek

The Northwest Passage into Farthest Inde.”