_Written on board Packet Ship Algonquin, Captain Cheney--Bay of
Delaware--pilot about to quit the ship--two p.m.--June 21st, 1835._
Adieu, Columbia! I have mark'd thee well,
Nor yet for ever do I leave thee now;
And busy thoughts of thee my bosom swell,
And thronging recollections load my brow:
I've pierced, from North to South, thy eternal woods,
Have dream'd in fair St. Lawrence' sweetest isle;[5]
Have breasted Mississippi's hundred floods,
And woo'd, on Alleghany's top, Aurora's smile.
And now we part! The ship is flying fast,
Her pathway deck'd with whirling wreaths of foam;
And all the swelling sails that bend each mast
Obey the flag, which, fluttering, points to "Home!"
Home! home! that tender word let me retrace,
And bid each letter conjure o'er the sea
Some cherish'd wish, and every well-loved face,
To banish thought of those from whom I flee.
Yet shame I not to bear an o'er-full heart,
Nor blush to turn behind my tearful eyes:
'Tis from no stranger-land I now depart:
'Tis to no strangers left I yield these sighs.
Welcome and home were mine within the land
Whose sons I leave, whose fading shore I see;
And cold must be mine eyes, and heart, and hand,
When, fair Columbia! they turn cold to thee.
At three P.M. our pilot quitted us; by four we had lost sight of the
coast of Jersey, and, with a flowing sheet, were bounding over the
Atlantic. Except a week's bad weather on the Banks of Newfoundland, this
was a most delightful passage. No ship could be better found than the
Algonquin, and no man more solicitous about the comfort of his
passengers than the excellent Captain Cheney.
On July the 14th we made Cape Clear; and on the 16th I once more entered
the Mersey, about the same hour, and on the same day of the month, in
which I had left it two years before; and to make the coincidence more
striking, we passed the Europe, in which I had gone out, so close, as
she quitted the harbour, that our letters for America were tossed on
board.