Down The Mississipp

Down the Mississipp
4103

(A voyage made before the abolition of sistery)
Twas a winter morning, as the clock struck ten,
That we left St Louis, two dejected men
Gazing on the river, thick with yellow mud
And dreaming of disaster fire and for and flood- of bollers ever bursting, and snags that break the wheel
And sawyers ripping steamboats through all their length of keel,
Yet on shipboard stepping we dismissed our fears,
And beheld in sunlight in the upper spheres
Little cherubs waving high their golden wings,
Guarding us from evil and its hidden springs,
So, on heaven relying, thinking on our weans,
Thinking on our true loves, we sailed for New Or leans,
Southward, moving southward, in our gallant ship
Floating, steaming, panting, down the Mississipp

Oh, the hapless river, in its early run
Clear as molten crystal, sparkling in the sun;
Ere the fierce Missouri rolls his troublous tide
To pollute the beauty of his injured bride;
Like a bad companion, poisoning a life With a vile example and incessant strife
So the Mississippi, lucent to the brim,Weided to
Missouri, takes her hue from him,
And is pure no longer, but with sullen haste
Journeys to the ocean-a gindness gone to waste
Thus our idle fancles shaped themselves that day,
Mid the bluffs and headlands and the islets gray
As we traveled southward in our creaking ship,
Steaming through the ice drifts down the Missis- sipp

In our ur wake there followed, white as flakes of snów
Seven adventurous seagulis, floating to and fro:
Diving for the bounty of the bread we throw
Dipping, curving, swerving fishing as they flew
And in deep mid current ‘throned upon a snak
Far away, a rover from his native crag
Sat a stately eagle, Jove’s imperial bird,
Heedless of our presence, though the saw and heard
Looking so contemptuous that human nature sighed
For a loaded rifle to siny him for his pride
But superb, defiant, slowly at his ease
Spreading his wide pinions he vanished in the breeze,
Southward, fiving southward, far beyond our ship

In a blaze of glory shone the sun that day
In a blaze of beauty, fresh as flowers of May
A maid from Alabama came tripping on our deck
Bright as heaven above us, pure without a speck:
Singing songs till twilight, happy as the lark
That for inner giadness sings though none may hark-
Songs of young affection, mot mournful songs of home,
Songs of happy sadness, when the fancies roam
From the oppressive real to the fairy far
Shining through the future silvery as a star
And the sun departed in his crimson robe
Leaving sleep his viceroy to refresh the globe:
Thus we traveled southward in our gallent ship
Floating, drifting, dreaming, down the Mississipp

Brightly rose the morning o’er the straggling town
Where the broad Ohio pours its waters down
To the Mississippi, rolling as before,
Seeming none the wider for increase of store
And they said “those houses, scattered on the strand,
Take their name from Cairo in the Eastern land
And shall be a city at some future day Mightier than Cairo, dead and passed away
And we thought it might be as we p gazed awhile
And we thought it might not ere we passed a mile
And our paddles paddled through the turbid stream,
As we floated downward in a golden dream:
Southward ever southward, in our laden ship
Idling, dawdling, loafing, down the Mississipp

Sometimes in Missouri we delayed an hour
Taking in a cargo, butter, carn, and flour:
Sometimes in Kentucky shipped a pile of logs
Sometimes sheep and poultry, once drove of hogs a
Ruthlessly the negroes drove them down the bank
Stubbornly the porkers eyed the narrow plank
Til at length rebellious, snuing danger near
They turned their long snouts landward and grunt- ed out their fear
And the white teethed negroes, grinning with de- light
Rode them and bestrode them and charged them in the fight
And then came shrill lamenting and agony and wall
And pommeling and holsting and tugging at the tall
Until the swine were conquered, and southward possed our ship
I’anting, steaming, snorting, down the Mississipp

Thus flew by the slow hours till the afternoon,
‘Mid a winter landscape and a sky like June,
And the mighty river, brown with clay and sand curves majestic through the forest land
Swept in curves And stuck into its bosom, heaving fair and large,
Were many a lowly cypress that grew upon the matge,
Stumps and trunks and branches, as maids would stick a pin
To vex the daring fingers that dare to venture in
O, travelers, bold travelers, who roam in wild un- rest
Reware the pins and brooches that guard this riv- er’s breast,
For danger ever follows the captain and the ship
Who scorn the snags and sawyers that gem the Missission

Three days on the river, nights and mornings three,
Ere we stopped at Memphis, the port of Tennes see
And wondered why they gave it such a name of old renown
A dirty, dingy, muddy melancholy town
But rich in bales of cotton, o’er all the lundings apread
And bound for merry England to earn the people’s bread
And here O, shame to freedom, that boasts wiha tongue and pen
We took on board a cargo of miserable men!
A freight of human creatures, bargained, bought and sold
Like hegs or sheep or poultry-the living blood for gold,
And then I groaned remorastul, and thought in
A curse might come upon us for suffering the pity strong wrong:
A cures upon the cargo, a curse upon the ship Panting, moaning, groaning down the Mississipp

Here our songster fled w the little gypsy queen
Leaving us a niemory of sadness the Chao
And through the dark night passing, dark without
Have the Hall we earried, we hold upon our way
Darkness on the water, darkness in the sky
Rain goods beating o’er us, wild winds howling high
But, safely fed and guided by pilots, who could tell
The pulses of the river-its windings and its swell-
Who know its closest secret by dark as well as
Each bluff and fringing forest, cach swamp and looming height
Its gambols and caprices-its current’s steady law,
And at the fourth day dawning we skirted Arkan-
Southward, ever southward In our trusty ship
Floating, steaming, panting, down the Mississipp

Weary were the foresta, dark on either side
Weary were the marshes, stretching far and wide:
Weary were the wood piles strewn along the bank
Weary were the the cane groves, and dank,
Weary were the tree stumps, charred and black
with fire, Weary was the wilderness, without a house or spire:
Wenry were the loc huts, bollt upon the pand;
Weary was the water, weary was the land
Weary was the cabin, with its gilded wall:
Weary was the deck we trod-weary, weary all
Nothing seemed so pleasant to hope for or to keep
Nothing in the wide world so beautiful as sleep
As we journeved southward in our lazy ship
Dawdling, Idiing, loafing, down the Mississipp

Shone the blaze of forests red against the sky
Forests burnt for clearing to spare the woodman’s stroke
Cottonwood and cypress and ash and giant oak
And from sleep uprising, when the morning care
Seemed the lengthening landscape everinore the same:
Evermore the forest and the rolling flood
And the sparse plantations and the fertile mud,
Thus we came to Princeton, threading-countless Isles
Thus we came to Vicksburg, thrice three hundred miles,
Thus we came to Natchez when the starlight shone,
Glad to see it, glad to leave it, glad to hurry on
Southward, ever ev so southward In our laden ship
Fuming, tolling, heaving, down the Mississipp

Whence the sound of music? whence the merry laugh?
Surely boon companions, who jest and sing and quaff:
No! the slaves rejoicing, happler than the free,
With guitar and banjo, and burst of revelry
Hark, the volleyed laughter! bark the joyous shout!
Hark the negro chprus, ringing sharply out!
Merry is the bondman, gloomy is his lord,
For merciful i Justice and kind is fate’s award
And God, who ever tempers the winter to the shorn,
Dulls the edge of sorrow to these his lambe for- lorn
And gives them cheerful natures and thoughts that never soar
Into the dark tomorrow, which wiser men deplore
So sing ye careless negroes, in our joyous ship
Floating, steaming, dancing, down the Mississipp

On the sixth day dawning, all around us lay
Fog and mist and vapor, motionless and gray:
Dimly stood the cane swamps, dimly rolled the
stream
Bayou Sara’s housetops faded like a dream
Nothing seemed substantial in the dreary-fog
Nothing but our vessel drifting like a log
Not a breath of motion around our pathway blew
Idle was our pilot, idie were our crew: Idle were our paddles, idle free and slave,
Everything was idle but the restless wave
Bearing down the tribute of three thousand miles
To the Southern ocean and Its Indian isles,
Thus all morn we lingered in our lazy ship
Dozing, dreaming, nodding, down the Mississipp

But ere noon uprising blew the Southern breeze
Rolling off the vapor from the cypress treest
Opening up the blue sky to the South and West
Driving off the white clouds from the river’s breast;
Breathing in our faces, balmy from the land
A roamer from the garden, as all might under-stand
Happy as the swallows and cuckoos on the wing
We’d cheated Father Winter an sailed into the spring
And beheld it round us with its sounds and sights
Its odors and its balsams, Its glories and delights:
The green grass, green as England, the apple trees In bloom
The waves alert with music and freighted with perfume
As we journeyed southward in our gallant ship and rejoicing down the Mississipp
Singing and joining down teh MIssissipp

On the seventh day morning we entered New Or- leans
The joyous Crescent elty, a queen among the queens,
And saw its pleasant harbor, alive with tapering spars,
With unton facks front England, the flaunting Stripes and Stars,
And all her swarming lever, for miles upon the shore
Buzzing, humming, surging, with trade’s inces-sant ronr
With negroes holsting hogshends or casks of pork and all
Or rolling bales of cotton and singing at their toll;
And downward widening downward, the broad majestic river
Hasting not nor lingering, but rolling on forever,
And here from travel resting, in soft ambrosial bowers,
We plucked the growing orange and gathered sum mer flowers,
And thanked our trusty captain, our pilot, and the ship
For bearing us in safety down the Mississippi