ON THE CONNECTICUT

DELICIOUS is it, of a day in fall,

Your native river to be drifting down,

To turn your back upon the clumsy town,

That is so crooked and so stiff withal

That to the water’s edge it scarce can crawl;

While like a child that in its mother’s gown

Takes refuge, comforted from soul to crown,

Betwixt green bank you slip and gray stone wall;

Past here a plume and there an entire patch

Of golden-rod submerged or islanded,

Past many a bit of color hard to match,

But which the swift stream tempers to its mood,

To bind it all together with a thread

Of its own weaving, as a poet would.

Lucy C. Bull.