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Contented river! in thy dreamy realm–
The cloudy willow and the plumy elm:
Thou beautiful! from every dreamy hill
What eye but wanders with thee at thy will…

Contented river! And yet over-shy
To mask thy beauty from the eager eye;
Hast thou a thought to hide from field and town?
In some deep current of the sunlit brown…

Ah! there’s a restive ripple, and the swift
Red leaves –September’s firstlings–faster drift;

Wouldst thou away, dear stream? Come, whisper near!
I also of much resting have a fear:
Let me to-morrow thy companion be
By fall and shallow to the adventurous sea!

‘To the Housatonic at Stockbridge’
Robert Underwood Johnson, excerpted by Charles Ives

Ives – Three Places in New England, The Housatonic at Stockbridge
WCFSO – March 2009