Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, OUR NEIGHBOR, by HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

OUR NEIGHBOR, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Old neighbor, for how many a year
Last Line: Into horizons vaster far!
Subject(s): New England


OLD neighbor, for how many a year
The same horizon, stretching here,
Has held us in its happy bound
From Rivermouth to Ipswich Sound!
How many a wave-washed day we've seen
Above that low horizon lean,
And marked within the Merrimack
The selfsame sunset reddening back,
Or in the Powow's shining stream,
That silent river of a dream!

Where Craneneck o'er the woody gloom
Lifts her steep mile of apple-bloom;
Where Salisbury Sands, in yellow length,
With the great breakers measure strength;
Where Artichoke in shadow slides,
The lily on her painted tides, --
There's naught in the enchanted view
That does not seem a part of you:
Your legends hang on every hill,
Your songs have made it dearer still.

Yours is the river-road; and yours
Are all the mighty meadow floors
Where the long Hampton levels lie
Alone between the sea and sky.
Sweeter in Follymill shall blow
The mayflowers, that you loved them so;
Prouder Deer Island's ancient pines
Toss to their measure in your lines;
And purpler gleam old Appledore,
Because your foot has trod her shore.

Still shall the great Cape wade to meet
The storms that fawn about her feet,
The summer evening linger late
In many-rivered Stackyard-Gate,
When we, when all your people here,
Have fled. But, like the atmosphere,
You still the region shall surround,
The spirit of the sacred ground,
Though you have risen, as mounts the star,
Into horizons vaster far!





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