The Foresters - A Poem Descriptive of a Pedestrian Journey to the Falls of Niagara #269626

The Foresters.<br><br>Sons of the city! ye whom crowds and noise<br>Bereave of peace and Nature's rural joys,<br>And ye who love through woods and wilds to range,<br>Who see new charms in each successive change;<br>Come roam with me Columbia's forests through,<br>Where scenes sublime shall meet your wandering view<br>Deep shades magnificent, immensely spread;<br>Lakes, sky-encircled, vast as ocean's bed;<br>Lone hermit streams that wind through savage woods;<br>Enormous cataracts swoln with thundering floods;<br>The settler's (1) farm with blazing fires o'erspread;<br>The hunter's cabin and the Indian's shed;<br>The log-built hamlet, deep in wilds embraced;<br>The awful silence of th' unpeopled waste:<br>These are the scenes the Muse shall now explore,<br>Scenes new to song, and paths untrod before.<br><br>To Europe's shores renowned in deathless song,<br>Must all the honours of the bard belong?<br>And rural Poetry's enchanting strain<br>Be only heard beyond th' Atlantic main?<br>What though profuse in many a patriot's praise,<br>We boast a Barlow's soul-exalting lays;<br>An Humphreys blessed with Homer's nervous glow;<br>And Freedom's friend and champion in Freneau;