The Murmurs Of Many A Famous
River On The Other Side Of The Globe Reach Even To Us Here, As To
More Distant Dwellers On Its Banks; Many A Poet's Stream Floating
The Helms And Shields Of Heroes On Its Bosom.
The Xanthus or
Scamander is not a mere dry channel and bed of a mountain
torrent, but fed by the everflowing springs of fame; -
"And thou Simois, that as an arrowe, clere
Through Troy rennest, aie downward to the sea"; -
and I trust that I may be allowed to associate our muddy but much
abused Concord River with the most famous in history.
"Sure there are poets which did never dream
Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream
Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose
Those made not poets, but the poets those."
The Mississippi, the Ganges, and the Nile, those journeying atoms
from the Rocky Mountains, the Himmaleh, and Mountains of the
Moon, have a kind of personal importance in the annals of the
world. The heavens are not yet drained over their sources, but
the Mountains of the Moon still send their annual tribute to the
Pasha without fail, as they did to the Pharaohs, though he must
collect the rest of his revenue at the point of the sword.
Rivers must have been the guides which conducted the footsteps of
the first travellers. They are the constant lure, when they flow
by our doors, to distant enterprise and adventure, and, by a
natural impulse, the dwellers on their banks will at length
accompany their currents to the lowlands of the globe, or explore
at their invitation the interior of continents.
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