All round, upon the river’s slippery edge,
  Witching to deeper calm the drowsy tide,
    Whispers and leans the breeze-entangling sedge;
  Through emerald glooms the lingering waters slide,
    Or, sometimes wavering, throw back the sun,
    And the stiff banks in eddies melt and run
Of dimpling light, and with the current seem to glide.

    In Summer ’tis a blithesome sight to see, 120
  As, step by step, with measured swing, they pass,
    The wide-ranked mowers wading to the knee,
  Their sharp scythes panting through the wiry grass;
    Then, stretched beneath a rick’s shade in a ring,
    Their nooning take, while one begins to sing
A stave that droops and dies ’neath the close sky of brass.

    Meanwhile that devil-may-care, the bobolink,
  Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops
    Just ere he sweeps o’er rapture’s tremulous brink. 
  And ’twixt the winrows most demurely drops, 130
    A decorous bird of business, who provides
    For his brown mate and fledglings six besides,
And looks from right to left, a farmer mid his crops.

    Another change subdues them in the Fall,
  But saddens not; they still show merrier tints,
    Though sober russet seems to cover all;
  When the first sunshine through their dew-drops glints,
    Look how the yellow clearness, streamed across,
    Redeems with rarer hues the season’s loss,
As Dawn’s feet there had touched and left their rosy prints. 140

    Or come when sunset gives its freshened zest,
  Lean o’er the bridge and let the ruddy thrill,
    While the shorn sun swells down the hazy west,
  Glow opposite;—­the marshes drink their fill
    And swoon with purple veins, then slowly fade
    Through pink to brown, as eastward moves the shade,
Lengthening with stealthy creep, of Simonds’ darkening hill.

    Later, and yet ere Winter wholly shuts,
  Ere through the first dry snow the runner grates,
    And the loath cart-wheel screams in slippery ruts, 150
  While firmer ice the eager boy awaits,
    Trying each buckle and strap beside the fire,
    And until bedtime plays with his desire,
Twenty times putting on and off his new-bought skates;—­

    Then, every morn, the river’s banks shine bright
  With smooth plate-armor, treacherous and frail,
    By the frost’s clinking hammers forged at night,
  ’Gainst which the lances of the sun prevail,
    Giving a pretty emblem of the day
    When guiltier arms in light shall melt away, 160
And states shall move free-limbed, loosed from war’s cramping mail.

    And now those waterfalls the ebbing river
  Twice every day creates on either side
    Tinkle, as through their fresh-sparred grots they shiver
  In grass-arched channels to the sun denied;
    High flaps in sparkling blue the far-heard crow,
    The silvered flats gleam frostily below,
Suddenly drops the gull and breaks the glassy tide.