I learned to read I know not when
Along the marshy marges,
Where, through the o'erflowed feeder moved
The masted sloops and barges;
And like a cup the lock drank up
Propellers slowly steaming,
That churned anew their mystic screw
Upon the river screaming.

The pivot bridges slowly shut,
The high canal a'passing
That in its leaks each negro hut
In shining sky was glassing;
And from the moist ground sunflowers broke
O'erripe, the patchess eeding,
And red as blood, the clumps of poke
The yellow birds were feeding.

How loved the birds in twittering flocks
The cat-tails' bursting riches!
How cooled the broad, green splutterdocks
The turtles in the ditches!
The milk-white lilies sucked the pools,
Part bud and partly fruiting,
The minnows flashed in silver schools
And every reed was fluting.

The snakes on little bridges slept
Or slided in the sluices
When near their noonday nap I stept,
And ran in fluttered ruses.
After long life this thought I take,
My last rest nearly nearing,
All beings bit me but a snake,
And still of snakes I'm fearing.

How solid seem those distant farms
Beside the mirage river,
Where orchard trees uplift their arms,
While hitherward a'quiver
The blue kingfisher wings the drain,
The fish hawk guards his eyrie,
And on his stilts the dripping crane
Stalks, skeleton and wiry.

The wide land seems to me a float,
Except my causeway sunning,
And through the reed bird clouds some boat
Pole hidden men a' gunning
The golden bugs they fret me warm,
My little feet are naked;
I see at last my father's farm,
By two tall poplars staked.

The coon limped past me like a dog
And climbed a copse to see me,
The groundhog rolled beneath a log
While I went past him, dreamy;
Those meadow larks all day I trailed,
They ever found a cover,
The coveys of the quail aye quailed
When I shot high and over.

Dear vagrant days! Their food I feel
At life's ebb latest going,
Like to the small sandsnipes that wheel
To give their plumage growing;
We waste no time in youth's stray spells
But store away each feature,
Like to the heart's uncounted swells
Which strengthen all our nature.

My girl's name on the beechen rind
Of woodlands overflooded
I cut, and oft looked back behind
To see what it foreboded;
When ice the muskrats prisoned in
We went for them a'spearing,
And shot the wild fowl, flying thin
Across the leafless clearing.

How mellow, down the blue lagoon,
The bands of music sounded,
Banging the grand election tune
When Taylor's fame was rounded;
And Clayton, on the towpath crest,
Of Bweena Vista telling,
Pulled down the glory — and his vest —
With every patriot yelling.

O, never in this world I shall
Behold such long suspenders,
(Like towlines on the new canal,)
Expanding battle splendors;
They locked him down the Capitol,
A statesman of the nation,
Who plotted from this small canal
The Isthmian transformation.

In these bulrushes Bulwer saw —
With Clayton, treaty-making —
The far-off Strait of Panama
The rival oceans breaking;
And from this small canal they put
The future, hostage deeding,
To lock the high Culebra cut,
With Chagres River feeding.

The infant feats of Hercules
His mighty labors sample,
He rives the high Hesperides,
He rises by example;
Not laws alone make mighty States,
In neighbor Works they smoulder —
Till yield the globe's eternal gates
Unto the baby's shoulder.

Once, to my fear, the Buck Bridge gorge
Was like a Roman labor
And streamed the lock of small St. George,
Niagara's greater neighbor;
Now, like a child the old canal
Has grown more small by ageing,
And like a brook or highland dall,
It shrinks away by raging.

Yet carries it the shaft of steam,
The engines dip at stations,
And is the Lurlei in a stream
And rainbow bridging nations;
The railway path's a Midas toy
Whereon the schemers revel,
The oceans are the orb's long joy
And flow in light's own level.

Ah! childhood lures me back no more
To sills Colonial-dated,
When men clung to the Ocean shore,
On bars peninsulated.
Few were the things so well we knew
And life-long they abided;
Upon the world's last slime I grew,
Before the floods subsided.

Now in the fens a mighty fort,
By the Canal ramparted,
To the horizon shrieks retort,
Its cannon thunder-hearted;
Down the long bar the engine fumes,
New York to Norfolk spriting,
One energy three States consumes,
The Dutchman's empire slighting.

Long past, a little railroad, set
On sills of stone its wicket,
The old canal is flowing yet,
The railroad's but a thicket;
And when the waters find their room,
Our minds not torn asunder,
By still canals we shall resume
And voyage where we thunder.