[1] Where the rocks are gray and the shore is steep, And the waters below look dark and deep, Where the rugged pine, in its lonely pride, Leans gloomily over the murky tide, Where the reeds and rushes are long and rank, And the weeds grow thick on the winding bank, Where the shadow is heavy the whole day through,— There lies at its moorings the old canoe.
The useless paddles are idly dropped, Like a sea-bird's wings that the storm had lopped, And crossed on the railing one o'er one, Like the folded hands when the work is done; While busily back and forth between The spider stretches his silvery screen, And the solemn owl, with his dull " too-hoo,'" Settles down on the side of the old canoe.
The currentless waters are dead and still, But the light wind plays with the boat at will, And lazily in and out again It floats the length of the rusty chain, Like the weary march of the hands of time, That meet and part at the noontide chime; And the shore is kissed at each turning anew, By the drippling bow of the old canoe.
Oh, many a time, with a careless hand, I have pushed it away from the pebbly strand, And paddled it down where the stream runs quick, Where the whirls are wild and the eddies are thick, And laughed as I leaned o'er the rocking side, And looked below in the broken tide, To see that the faces and boats were two, That were mirrored back from the old canoe.
But I love to think of the hours that sped As I rocked where the whirls their white spray shed, Ere the blossoms waved, or the green grass grew O'er the mouldering stern of the old canoe.
As I chanced to know its real authorship, and hence knew that it lacked several hundreds of miles, geographically speaking, of being a "song of the South," I sent a communication to the New York Critic, which was printed in its issue of March 13, 1897, giving the facts.
She was born and passed most of her short life in a quiet place on the Vermont bank of the Connecticut river, near the "toll-bridge," which was mentioned last week in the papers as having been carried off by the freshet, near Piermont.