Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
The Upper Saranac
By Alfred Billings Street (18111881)W
A mirror for the welkin’s bound!
Thy breezes glide with rippling tread;
Thy linking brooks send tinkling sound.
The wood-duck floats within thy bays;
Its trunks the water-maple groups
Along thy banks of leafy maze.
Deep from thy brink green pictures gleam;
The loon shouts o’er, and shoots below;
The soft haze folds thee in a dream.
In thy broad shallows, amber clear;
And there the thatch shoots bristling up,
And there steals down the drinking deer.
Strews its rock-vase, with foliage brimmed;
And from thee grandly, pile on pile,
Soar the steep crags with thunders rimmed.
The hunter’s light boat tracks thy wave;
Thy ooze in caves the muskrat frames;
The otter in thee loves to lave.
My happy home, were reared by thee!
Thence would my full heart never roam,
From care and trouble ever free.