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(From The Ship Cincinnatus)
Translated by C. T. Brooks
ALL hail to thee, Ohio, lovely stream, | |
| That sweepest, murmuring, by, in holy dream, | |
| New cities with their market-din profane, | |
| Colossal rocks and fields of golden grain! | |
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| Emblem of Time, here drifts along on thee, | 5 |
| Uprooted by the storm, the giant tree, | |
| The steamer’s floating palace there we view, | |
| And yonder skims the red-man’s birch canoe! | |
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| Here heardest thou the Briton’s haggling word, | |
| There the poor, errant Indian’s moan was heard, | 10 |
| Thou listenest now the German’s heartfelt song, | |
| That homeward floats on tide of yearning strong! | |
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| Thou sang’st my cradle-song, thou wast to me, | |
| In youth, the mirror fair of purity, | |
| And whisperest to my heart in manhood’s hour | 15 |
| Full many a word of earnestness and power! | |
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| Thou see’st my father’s house, so German, there, | |
| As if in airy flight such angel-pair, | |
| As bore Loretto’s house of charity, | |
| Right from the Rhine had brought thee o’er the sea. | 20 |
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| I greet you, ye twin Lares, I your child; | |
| Great Frederick, thee! thee, Joseph, wise and mild!— | |
| A rose-bush, climbing, peeps through window-pane, | |
| He too, as twig, once measured the wide main. | |
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| He sailed, one day, an Argonaut of spring, | 25 |
| From the safe port of home took sudden wing, | |
| The golden sun-fleece of far springs to find, | |
| And left his darling nightingale behind. | |
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| Thy love of home, O German! hath a glow | |
| Like to the fiery wine’s that sparkles so, | 30 |
| And which, o’er farthest seas transported, glows | |
| More deeply and a richer flavor shows. | |
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| Before the house there lies a field; all round, | |
| Stumps of felled trees stand scattered o’er the ground, | |
| An old-world’s forum, of whose columns tall | 35 |
| The storming foe left many a pedestal. | |
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| And in the midst, on one, his deeds to scan, | |
| As Triumphator, sits a grave old man; | |
| His flashing axe, the sceptre in his hand, | |
| His plough, a conqueror’s car, drove through the land! | 40 |
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| That is my sire! His bristling host behold! | |
| Ranged, lance to lance, and glittering all in gold! | |
| The golden grain encamping near and far, | |
| To guard their kernel, all arrayed for war! | |
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| Troops of the Rhine are they, whose tents he bore, | 45 |
| And, victor, planted on Ohio’s shore; | |
| Like homesick soldiers on a foreign strand, | |
| They whisper of their far, dear Fatherland. | |
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| Gay swarms of humming-birds of brightest hue, | |
| Like damsels, flutter round, the ranks to woo; | 50 |
| Ye wantons! leave me not unnerved, unmanned,— | |
| One heart in all that noble foreign band! | |
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| The herd that night brings lowing to thy gate, | |
| O hero, is thy Poet Laureate; | |
| Like his, their voice, when hunger wakes their cries, | 55 |
| In loudest, loftiest strains will ever rise. | |
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| See giant trees thy axe forbore to smite, | |
| Stretch out their arms, festooned in towering height, | |
| With wanton serpent-flowers;—they suppliant stand, | |
| Envoys of peace they came from forest-land! | 60 |
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| And nightly, when, through the old wood’s dark green, | |
| Myriads of fireflies, glancing, light the scene, | |
| ’T is the illumination’s festal blaze | |
| The captive city to its conqueror pays! | |
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| But lo, by moonlight, yonder, dead and bare, | 65 |
| A few old patriarchs lift their arms in air, | |
| Like ghosts of veterans in the battle slain, | |
| Wringing their hands and writhing on the plain! | |
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| Lo, the far billows of a fiery sea! | |
| The camp-fire of the routed host may ’t be? | 70 |
| As if a choir of seraphs swung on high | |
| The flaming sword, the wood lights up the sky! | |
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| The window-rose reflects the reddening light, | |
| She nods a greeting to the outer night, | |
| Yet to console her, all these charms will fail, | 75 |
| For the familiar German nightingale. | |
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| Thou hast achieved a noble Fatherland! | |
| Why sinks, old man, thy head upon thy hand? | |
| Do the still roses of thy heart, too, miss | |
| The nightingale of home to crown their bliss? | 80 |
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