The second sunset at his back
From Navesink Highlands threw the shade
Of horse and Herman, long and black,
Across the golden ripples' track,
Where with the Kills the ocean played
A measured serenade;
There where to sea a river ran,
Between tall hills of brown and sand,
A mountain island rose to span
The outlet of the Raritan,
And made a world on either hand,
Soft as a poet planned:
Fair marshes pierced with brimming creeks,
Where wild-fowl dived to oyster caves;
And shores that swung to wooded peaks,
Where many a falling water seeks
The cascade's plunge to reach the waves,
And greenest farmland laves:
Deep tide to every roadstead slips,
And many capes confuse the shore,
Yet none do with their forms eclipse
Yon ocean, made for royal ships,
Whose swells on silver beaches roar
And rock forevermore.
Old Herman gazed through lengthening shades
Far up the inland, where the spires,
Defined on rocky palisades,
Flung sunset from their burnished blades,
And with their bells in evening choirs
Breathed homesick men's desires:
"New Amsterdam! 'tis thine or mine--
The foreground of this stately plan!
To me the Indian did assign
Totem on totem, line on line--
Both Staten and the groves that ran
Far up the Raritan.
"By spiteful Stuyvesant long restrained,
Now, while the English break his power,
Be Achter Kill again regained
And Herman's title entertained,
Here float my banner from my tower,
Here is my right, my hour!"