“Where Gleaming Fields of Haze...”
by Henry D. Thoreau

Where gleaming fields of haze
Meet the voyageur’s gaze,
And above, the heated air
Seems to make a river there,
The pines stand up with pride
By the Souhegan's side,
And the hemlock and the larch
With their triumphal arch
Are waving o'er its march
       To the sea.
No wind stirs its waves,
But the spirits of the braves
       Hov’ring o’er,
Whose antiquated graves
Its still water laves
       On the shore.
With an Indian’s stealthy tread,
It goes sleeping in its bed,
Without joy or grief,
Or the rustle of a leaf,
Without a ripple or a billow,
Or the sigh of a willow,
From the Lyndeboro’ hills
To the Merrimack mills.
With a louder din
Did its current begin,
When melted the snow
On the far mountain’s brow,
And the drops came together
In that rainy weather.
Experienced river,
Hast thou flowed forever
Souhegan soundeth old
But the half is not told,
What names hast thou borne,
In the ages far gone,
When the Xanthus and Meander
Commenced to wander,
Ere the black bear haunted
       Thy red forest-floor,
Or Nature had planted
       The pines by thy shore?

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A Note on the Text:

• Source: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers [The Writings of Henry David Thoreau (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906) p. 234-235]

• Title from first line

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