University of Virginia Library

Who at danger never laughed,
Let him ride upon a raft
Down Guyan, when from the drains
Pours the flood of many rains,
And a stream no plummet gauges
In a furious freshet rages.
With a strange and rapturous fear,
Rushing water he will hear;
Woods and cliff-sides darting by,
These shall terribly glad his eye.
He shall find his life-blood leaping
Faster with the current's sweeping;

Feel his brain with frenzy swell;
Hear his voice in sudden yell
Rising to a joyous scream
O'er the roar of the raging stream.
Never a horseman bold who strides
Mettled steed and headlong rides,
With a loose and flowing rein,
On a bare and boundless plain;
Never a soldier in a fight,
When the strife was at its height,
Charging through the slippery gore
'Mid bayonet-gleam and cannon-roar;
Never a sailor helm in hand,
Out of sight of dangerous land,
With the storm-winds driving clouds
And howling through the spars and shrouds—
Feels such wild delight as he
On the June rise riding free.

Thrice a hundred logs together
Float as lightly as a feather;
On the freshet's foaming flow,
Swift as arrows shoot, they go
Past the overhanging trees,
Jutting rocks—beware of these!
Over rapids, round the crooks,
Over eddies that fill the nooks,
Swirling, whirling, hard to steer,
Manned by those who know no fear.
Tough-armed raftsmen guide each oar,
Keeping off the mass from shore;
While between the toiling hands
Mid-raft there the pilot stands,
Watching the course of the rushing sluice
From the top of the dirt-floored, rough caboose.
Well it is, in the seething hiss
Of a boiling, foaming flood like this,
That the oars are stoutly boarded,
And each log so safely corded
That we might ride on the salt-sea tide,
Or over a cataract safely glide.
If the pins from hickory riven
Were not stout and firmly driven,
Were the cross-trees weak and limber,
Woe befall your raft of timber!
If the withes and staples start
And the logs asunder part,
Off each raftsman then would go
In the seething, turbid flow,
And the torrent quick would bear him
To a place where they could spare him.
Brawny though he be of limb,
Full of life and nerve and vim,
Like a merman though he swim,
Little hope would be for him.
Hither the logs would go and thither;
But the jolly raftsman—whither?

Now we pass the hills that throw
Glassy shadows far below;
Pass the leaping, trembling rills,
Ploughing channels in the hills;
Pass the cornfields green that glide
(We seem moveless on the tide)
In a belt of verdure wide,
Skirting us on either side.
Now a cabin meets us here,
Coming but to disappear.
Now a lean and russet deer
Perks his neck and pricks his ear;
Then, as we rise up before him,
Feels some danger looming o'er him,
Thinks the dark mass bodes him ill,
Turns and scurries up the hill.
Now some cattle, at the brink
Stooping of the flood to drink,
Lift their heads awhile to gaze
In a sleepy, dull amaze;
Then they, lest we leap among them,
Start as though a gadfly stung them.
Past us in a moment fly
Fields of maize and wheat and rye;
Dells and forest-mounds and meadows
Float away like fleeting shadows;
But the raftsmen see not these—
Sharp they look for sunken trees,
Stumps with surface rough and ragged,
Sandstone reefs with edges jagged,
Hidden rocks at the rapids' head,
New-made shoals in the river's bed;
Steering straight as they pass the comb
Of the sunken dam and its cradle of foam.
Now through narrow channel darting,
Now upon a wide reach starting,
Now they turn with shake and quiver
In a short bend of the river.
Tasking strength to turn the oar
That averts them from the shore.
Ah! they strike. No! missed it barely;
They have won their safety fairly.
Now they're in the strait chute's centre;
Now the rapids wild they enter.
Whoop! that last quick run has brought her
To the eddying, wide back-water.
There's the saw-mill!—now for landing;
Now to bring her up all standing!
Steady! brace yourselves! a jar
Thrills her, stranded on the bar.
Out with lines! make fast, and rest
On the broad Ohio's breast!

Where's the fiddle? Boys, be gay!
Eighty miles in half a day.
Never a pin nor cross-tie started,
Never a saw-log from us parted,
Never a better journey run
From the morn to set of sun.
Oh, what pleasure! how inviting!
Oh, what rapture! how exciting!
If among your friends there be
One who something rare would see,

One who dulness seeks to change
For a feeling new and strange,
To the loggers' camp-ground send him,
To a ride like this commend him—
Ride that pain and sorrow dulces,
Stirring brains and quickening pulses,
Making him a happier man
Who has coursed the fierce Guyan
When the June-rain freshet swells it,
And to yellow rage impels it.