White lay the snow flakes on the lonely shore, And Winter flung his banner on the blast— Behind swept angry waters, and before Spread waving woods, dark, limitless and vast, When a new continent received at last Our houseless sires. The red man, gaunt and grim, On the strange scene his falcon vision cast; And nameless terror shook his tawny limb While, drowning ocean’s roar, went up their triumph-hymn; And when the bold survivors of the band Reached the decaying autumn-time of life, And locks were white, and palsied was the hand, Barbaric swarms, with axe and deadly knife, And painted, plumed, and quivered for the strife, Rushed from their trackless lairs to burn—despoil— Butcher the cradled babe, the pleading wife; Then swept the nodding harvest from the soil, And scattered on the wind the fruits of patient toil. When the green, shrouding moss of time o’ercrept Mounds in the vale and on the mountain-side, Where the stern founders of our empire slept, Improvement, moving with gigantic stride, Still hurried onward:—patient Labor plied The ringing axe; and from his old domain Fled drowsy Solitude; while far and wide The scene grew bright with fields of golden grain, And orchards robed in bloom on hill and sunny plain. The wand of Enterprise to queenly states Gave wondrous being; rivaling the spell That reared round Thebes a wall of many gates When proud Amphion[A] swept his chorded shell, The tuneful gift of Hermes: pastoral bell, With tinkling murmurs, woke savannahs green, And roused wild echoes in the woody dell, Where late the cougar, of terrific mien, Devoured the fawn, or rocked upon his perch unseen. With his penates, to the distant shores Of our broad western streams, Adventure hied, And pierced the soil for rich metallic ores, Or, with a keen, prophetic vision, spied An unborn mart upon the river-side; While Traffic trimmed her bark to brave the gale, And meet the terrors of a chartless tide— In nameless havens furled her tattered sail, Or toward Pacific seas, pursued the red man’s trail. The buskined lords of bow and leathern quiver Were thy admiring sponsors long ago, And named thee “Genesee,” my native river,(1) For pleasant are thy waters in their flow! Though on thy sides no bowers of orange grow, The free and happy in thy valley throng, O’er which the airs of health delight to blow— No richer, brighter charms than thine belong To streams immortal made by proud Homeric song.