A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers - Pennsylvania State ...

without “brecking” our “conow,” reading the New England
Gazetteer, and seeing no traces of “Mohogs” on the banks.
The Souhegan, though a rapid river, seemed to-day to have
borrowed its character from the noon.
Where gleaming fields of haze
Meet the voyageur’s gaze,
And above, the heated air
Seems to make a river there,
The pines stand up with pride
By the Souhegan’s side,
And the hemlock and the larch
With their triumphal arch
Are waving o’er its march
To the sea.
No wind stirs its waves,
But the spirits of the braves
Hov’ring o’er,
Whose antiquated graves
Its still water laves
On the shore.
Henry David Thoreau
171
With an Indian’s stealthy tread
It goes sleeping in its bed,
Without joy or grief,
Or the rustle of a leaf,
Without a ripple or a billow,
Or the sigh of a willow,
From the Lyndeboro’ hills
To the Merrimack mills.
With a louder din
Did its current begin,
When melted the snow
On the far mountain’s brow,
And the drops came together
In that rainy weather.
Experienced river,
Hast thou flowed forever?
Souhegan soundeth old,
But the half is not told,
What names hast thou borne,
In the ages far gone,
When the Xanthus and Meander