BEAVER POND MEADOW

Thou art my Dismal Swamp, my Everglades:

Thou my Campagna, where the bison wades

Through shallow, steaming pools, and the sick air

Decays. Thou my Serbonian Bog art, where

O'er leagues of mud, black vomit of the Nile,

Crawls in the sun the myriad crocodile.

Or thou my Cambridge or my Lincoln fen

Shalt be — a lonely land where stilted men

Stalking across the surface waters go,

Casting long shadows, and the creaking, slow

Canal-barge, laden with its marshy hay,

Disturbs the stagnant ditches twice a day.

Thou hast thy crocodiles: on rotten logs

Afloat, the turtles swarm and bask: the frogs,

When come the pale, cold twilights of the spring,

Like distant sleigh-bells through the meadows ring.

The school-boy comes on holidays to take

The musk-rat in its hole, or kill the snake,

Or fish for bull-heads in the pond at night.

The hog-snout's swollen corpse, with belly white,

I find upon the footway through the sedge,

Trodden by tramps along the water's edge.

Not thine the breath of the salt marsh below

Where, when the tide is out, the mowers go

Shearing the oozy plain, that reeks with brine

More tonic than the incense of the pine.

Thou art the sink of all uncleanliness,

A drain for slaughter-pens, a wilderness

Of trenches, pockets, quagmires, bogs where rank

The poison sumach grows, and in the tank

The water standeth ever black and deep

Greened o'er with scum: foul pottages, that steep

And brew in that dark broth, at night distil

Malarious fogs bringing the fever chill.

Yet grislier horrors thy recesses hold:

The murdered peddler's body five days old

Among the yellow lily-pads was found

In yonder pond: the new-born babe lay drowned

And throttled on the bottom of this moat,

Near where the negro hermit keeps his boat;

Whose wigwam stands beside the swamp; whose meals

It furnishes, fat pouts and mud-spawned eels.

Even so thou hast a kind of beauty, wild,

Unwholesome — thou the suburb's outcast child,

Behind whose grimy skin and matted hair

Warm nature works and makes her creature fair.

Summer has wrought a blue and silver border

Of iris flags and flowers in triple order

Of the white arrowhead round Beaver Pond,

And o'er the milkweeds in the swamp beyond

Tangled the dodder's amber-colored threads.

In every fosse the bladderwort's bright heads

Like orange helmets on the surface show.

Richer surprises still thou hast: I know

The ways that to thy penetralia lead,

Where in black bogs the sundew's sticky bead

Ensnares young insects, and that rosy lass,

Sweet Arethusa, blushes in the grass.

Once on a Sunday when the bells were still,

Following the path under the sandy hill

Through the old orchard and across the plank

That bridges the dead stream, past many a rank

Of cat-tails, midway in the swamp I found

A small green mead of dry but spongy ground,

Entrenched about on every side with sluices

Full to the brim of thick lethean juices,

The filterings of the marsh. With line and hook

Two little French boys from the trenches took

Frogs for their Sunday meal and gathered messes

Of pungent salad from the water-cresses.

A little isle of foreign soil it seemed,

And listening to their outland talk, I dreamed

That yonder spire above the elm-tops calm

Rose from the village chestnuts of La Balme.

Yes, many a pretty secret hast thou shown

To me, O Beaver Pond, walking alone

On summer afternoons, while yet the swallow

Skimmed o'er each flaggy plash and gravelly shallow;

Or when September turned the swamps to gold

And purple. But the year is growing old:

The golden-rod is rusted, and the red

That streaked October's frosty cheek is dead;

Only the sumach's garnet pompons make

Procession through the melancholy brake.

Lo! even now the autumnal wind blows cool

Over the rippled waters of thy pool,

And red autumnal sunset colors brood

Where I alone and all too late intrude.