The Pilot in the Mist

Steaming the northern rapids — ( an old St. Lawrence reminiscence,

A sudden memory-flash comes back, I know not why,

Here waiting for the sunrise, gazing from this hill;)

Again‘ tis just at morning — a heavy haze contends with daybreak,

Again the trembling, laboring vessel veers me — I press through foam-dash'd rocks that almost touch me,

Again I mark where aft the small thin Indian helmsman

Looms in the mist, with brow elate and governing hand.