Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
The Ohio
By Thomas Buchanan Read (18221872)L
In its depths of oak and pine
All our household gods are gathered,
Thine, my noble friend, and mine!
Gaze, with wonder-filling eyes,
With the maidens whose emotions,
Like the waters, fall and rise.
Chase the forest-sheltered game;
Here are men with soul and sinew
Which no wilderness can tame.
Worthy these the pioneers,—
And the patriarch lends a sanction
In the wisdom of his years.
In the hold are gathered all;
And, methinks, I hear the woodlands,
Mid their thundering echoes, fall.
Till the ashen fields are bare,
And a boundless harvest springing,—
The response of toil and prayer!
Free the wharf, and man the oars;
Give the broad keel to the river,
Bid adieu to crowded shores:
Throng with all their hopes and cares,—
Sires of future states of freemen,
Standing mid their waiting wares.
With its everlasting roar,
Whose Niagara of traffic
Flows to westward evermore.
And the furnace flames disgorge,
With the multitudinous clamor
Of the factory and the forge.
Brood the rivers at their springs,
Then descend, with sudden swooping,
On their far and flashing wings.
And Monongahela meet,
And a moment whirl and dally
Round the city’s crowded feet;
How they sweep the shores as one,
Driving westward, ever westward,
In the pathway of the sun.
Now our heaving ark careers;
Or some great bridge which a freshet
Bears in triumph from its piers.
Smoking round the distant hill,
With its swift wheel flashing splendor,
Like the loud wheel of a mill,
Sweep our deck with foamy force,
While the angel of Adventure,
With true courage, guides our course.
Brooks no voice which bids it wait,
Bearing onward, ever onward,
Where the forest opes its gate;
Rusting in its old repose,
Which, once swung upon its hinges,
There ’s no giant hand can close.
We will pitch our camp, nor rest
Till from out our forest cabins
Spring the homesteads of the West.