Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
Sleepy Hollow
By Henry Theodore Tuckerman (18131871)B
The river winds through leafy glades,
Save where, like battlements, arise
The gray and tufted Palisades.
Is tempered by the humid earth,
And zephyrs, born of summer’s prime,
Give a delicious coolness birth.
With constant greetings bland and free;
The pages of the open book
All flutter with their wayward glee.
Cloud shadows skim along the field;
And yonder dangling woodbines oft
Their crimson bugles gently yield.
Far down the water’s marge beside,
And now awake the nearer firs,
And toss their ample branches wide.
The grain slope lies in green repose;
Through the dark foliage of the pine
And lofty elms, the sunshine glows.
The trees-of-life their shafts uprear;
Red cones upon the sumach play,
And ancient locusts whisper near.
Let thy stray vision homeward fall;
Behold the mist-bloom floating nigh,
And hollyhock white-edged and tall;
Round thick and mealy stamens spring,
And nestled to its crimson heart,
The sated bees enamored cling.
That peeps through trellises of rose,
And quivers with a vague delight,
As each pale shadow comes and goes.
The wren’s glad chirp, the scented hay,
And e’en the watch-dog’s peaceful look
Our vain disquietudes allay.