Foresters eBook

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Sons of the city! ye whom crowds and noise
Bereave of peace and Nature's rural joys,
And ye who love through woods and wilds to range,
Who see new charms in each successive change;
Come roam with me Columbia's forests through,
Where scenes sublime shall meet your wandering view
Deep shades magnificent, immensely spread;
Lakes, sky-encircled, vast as ocean's bed;
Lone hermit streams that wind through savage woods;
Enormous cataracts swoln with thundering floods;
The settler's (1) farm with blazing fires o'erspread;
The hunter's cabin and the Indian's shed;
The log-built hamlet, deep in wilds embraced;
The awful silence of th' unpeopled waste:
These are the scenes the Muse shall now explore,
Scenes new to song, and paths untrod before.

To Europe's shores renowned in deathless song,
Must all the honours of the bard belong?
And rural Poetry's enchanting strain
Be only heard beyond th' Atlantic main?
What though profuse in many a patriot's praise,
We boast a Barlow's soul-exalting lays;
An Humphreys blessed with Homer's nervous glow;
And Freedom's friend and champion in Freneau;