The River
I behold once more
My old familiar haunts; here the
blue river,
The same blue wonder that my infant
eye
Admired, sage doubting where the
traveller came…
Fragrant roots in my father’s
fields,
And everywhere in the world he
went.
Look, here he is, unaltered, except
that now
He his land is flooded and here
is the rock where, as a simple
child,
I caught with bended pin my
earliest fish,
Much triumphing, —and these the
fields
Over whose flowers I chased the
butterfly,
A blooming hunter of a fairy fine.
And listen, where overhead the
ancient crows
Hold their sour conversation in the
sky:—
These are the same, but I am not
the same,
But wiser than I was, and wise
enough
Not to regret the changes, tho’
they cost
Me many a sigh. Oh, call not Nature
dumb;
These trees and stones are audible
to me,
These idle flowers, that tremble in
the wind,
I understand their faery syllables,
And all their sad significance. The
wind,
That rustles down the well-known
forest road—
It has a sound more eloquent than
speech.
The stream, the trees, the grass,
the sighing wind,
All of them utter sounds of amonishment
And grave parental love.
They are not of our race, they seem
to say,
And yet have knowledge of our moral
race,
And somewhat of majestic sympathy,
Something of pity for the puny
clay,
That holds and boasts the
immeasurable mind.
I feel as I were welcome to these
trees
After long months of weary
wandering,
Acknowledged by their hospitable
boughs;
They know me as their daughter, for
side by side,
They were co-exist with my
ancestors,
Adorned with my country’s primitive
times,
And soon may give my dust their
dark shade.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
