Thou art my Dismal Swamp, my Everglades: Thou my Campagna, where the bison wades Through shallow, steaming pools, and the sick air Decays. Thou my Serbonian Bog art, where
O'er leagues of mud, black vomit of the Nile, Crawls in the sun the myriad crocodile. Or thou my Cambridge or my Lincoln fen Shalt be — a lonely land where stilted men
Stalking across the surface waters go, Casting long shadows, and the creaking, slow Canal-barge, laden with its marshy hay, Disturbs the stagnant ditches twice a day.
Thou hast thy crocodiles: on rotten logs Afloat, the turtles swarm and bask: the frogs, When come the pale, cold twilights of the spring, Like distant sleigh-bells through the meadows ring.
The school-boy comes on holidays to take The musk-rat in its hole, or kill the snake, Or fish for bull-heads in the pond at night. The hog-snout's swollen corpse, with belly white,
I find upon the footway through the sedge, Trodden by tramps along the water's edge. Not thine the breath of the salt marsh below Where, when the tide is out, the mowers go
Shearing the oozy plain, that reeks with brine More tonic than the incense of the pine. Thou art the sink of all uncleanliness, A drain for slaughter-pens, a wilderness
Of trenches, pockets, quagmires, bogs where rank The poison sumach grows, and in the tank The water standeth ever black and deep Greened o'er with scum: foul pottages, that steep
And brew in that dark broth, at night distil Malarious fogs bringing the fever chill. Yet grislier horrors thy recesses hold: The murdered peddler's body five days old
Among the yellow lily-pads was found In yonder pond: the new-born babe lay drowned And throttled on the bottom of this moat, Near where the negro hermit keeps his boat;
Whose wigwam stands beside the swamp; whose meals It furnishes, fat pouts and mud-spawned eels. Even so thou hast a kind of beauty, wild, Unwholesome — thou the suburb's outcast child,
Behind whose grimy skin and matted hair Warm nature works and makes her creature fair. Summer has wrought a blue and silver border Of iris flags and flowers in triple order
Of the white arrowhead round Beaver Pond, And o'er the milkweeds in the swamp beyond Tangled the dodder's amber-colored threads. In every fosse the bladderwort's bright heads
Like orange helmets on the surface show. Richer surprises still thou hast: I know The ways that to thy penetralia lead, Where in black bogs the sundew's sticky bead
Ensnares young insects, and that rosy lass, Sweet Arethusa, blushes in the grass. Once on a Sunday when the bells were still, Following the path under the sandy hill
Through the old orchard and across the plank That bridges the dead stream, past many a rank Of cat-tails, midway in the swamp I found A small green mead of dry but spongy ground,
Entrenched about on every side with sluices Full to the brim of thick lethean juices, The filterings of the marsh. With line and hook Two little French boys from the trenches took
Frogs for their Sunday meal and gathered messes Of pungent salad from the water-cresses. A little isle of foreign soil it seemed, And listening to their outland talk, I dreamed
That yonder spire above the elm-tops calm Rose from the village chestnuts of La Balme. Yes, many a pretty secret hast thou shown To me, O Beaver Pond, walking alone
On summer afternoons, while yet the swallow Skimmed o'er each flaggy plash and gravelly shallow; Or when September turned the swamps to gold And purple. But the year is growing old:
The golden-rod is rusted, and the red That streaked October's frosty cheek is dead; Only the sumach's garnet pompons make Procession through the melancholy brake.
Lo! even now the autumnal wind blows cool Over the rippled waters of thy pool, And red autumnal sunset colors brood Where I alone and all too late intrude.
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