Cover its surface; gray roads wind about,

O’er which the farmer’s wagon clattering rolls,

And the red mail-coach. Bridges cross the streams,

Roofed, with great spider-webs of beams within.

Homesteads to homesteads flash their window-gleams,

Like friends that talk by language of the eye.

Upon its iron strips the engine shoots,

That half-tamed savage with its boiling heart

And flaming veins, its warwhoop and its plume.

Swift as the swallow skims that engine fleets