To whom the Seraph: Here indeed retires The happiest land that feels my fostering fires; Here too shall numerous nations found their seat, And peace and freedom bless the kind retreat. Led by this arm thy sons shall hither come, And streams obedient yield the heroes room, Spread a broad passage to their well known main, Nor sluice their lakes, nor form their soils in vain. Here my bold Missisippi bends his way, Scorns the dim bounds of yon bleak boreal day, And calls from western heavens, to feed his stream, The rains and floods that Asian seas might claim. Strong in his march, and charged with all the fates Of regions pregnant with a hundred states. He holds in balance, ranged on either hand, Two distant oceans and their sundering land; Commands and drains the interior tracts that lie Outmeasuring Europe's total breadth of sky. High in the north his parent fountains wed, And oozing urns adorn his infant head; In vain proud Frost his nursing lakes would close, And choke his channel with perennial snows; From all their slopes he curves his countless rills, Sweeps their long marshes, saps their settling hills; Then stretching, straighteningsouth, he gaily gleams, Swells thro the climes, and swallows all their streams; From zone to zone, o'er earth's broad surface curl'd, He cleaves his course, he furrows half the world, Now roaring wild thro bursting mountains driven, Now calm reflecting all the host of heaven; Where Cynthia pausing, her own face admires, And suns and stars repeat their dancing fires. Wide o'er his meadowy lawns he spreads and feeds His realms of canes, his waving world of reeds; Where mammoth grazed the renovating groves, Slaked his huge thirst, and chill'd his fruitless loves; Where elks, rejoicing o'er the extinguished race, By myriads rise to fill the vacant space. Earth's widest gulph expands to meet his wave, Vast isles of ocean in his current lave; Glad Thetis greets him from his finish'd course, And bathes her Nereids in his freshening source. To his broad bed their tributary stores Wisconsin here, there lonely Peter pours; Croix, from the northeast wilds his channel fills, Ohio, gather'd from his myriad hills, Yazoo and Black, surcharged by Georgian springs, Rich Illinois his copious treasure brings; Arkansa, measuring back the sun's long course, Moine, Francis, Rouge augment the father's force. But chief of all his family of floods Missouri marches thro his world of woods; He scorns to mingle with the filial train, Takes every course to reach alone the main; Orient awhile his bending swreep he tries, Now drains the southern, now the northern skies, Searches and sunders far the globe's vast frame, Reluctant joins the sire, and takes at last his name.