S6 THE BOROUGH OF THE BRONX 



There were the dark cedars, with loose mossy tresses, 



White-powder'd dog trees, and stiff hollies flaunting, 

 Gaudy as rustics in their May-day dresses, 

 Blue pellorets from purple leaves upslanting 

 A modest gaze, like eyes of a young maiden 

 Shining beneath dropp'd lids the evening of her wedding. 



The breeze fresh springing from the lips of morn, 



Kissing the leaves, and sighing so to lose 'em, 

 The winding of the merry locust's horn, 



The glad sighs spring gushing from the rock's bare bosom, 

 Sweet sighs, sweet sounds, all sights, all sounds excelling; 

 Oh ! 'twas a ravishing spot, form'd for a poet's dwelling. 



And I did leave thy loveliness, to stand 



Again in the dull world of earthly blindness, 

 Pain'd with the pressure of unfriendly hands, 

 Sick of smooth looks, agued with icy kindness; 

 Left I for this thy shades, where none intrude, 

 To prison wandering thought and mar sweet solitude. 



Yet I will look upon thy face again 



My own romantic Bronx, and it will be 

 A face more pleasant than the face of men. 

 Thy waves are old companions, I shall see 

 A well-remembered form in each old tree, 

 And hear a voice long loved in thy wild minstrelsy. 



Joseph Rodman Drake was born in New York City on August 

 7, 1795, and was a lineal descendant of the Colonial Drakes, set- 

 tlers of Eastchester. Left an orphan at an early age, he was placed 

 under the care of a guardian. As a boy he was fond of rowing 

 his boat among the inlets of the upper East River where he could 

 steal off by himself unmolested and spend the long summer after- 

 noons in the shade of some willow tree along the river bank. 



The happiest hours of his boyhood days he passed in the 

 environs of Hunt's Point which gave inspiration to his verses. It 

 was while he lived in the old "Grange" that he became acquainted 

 with the daughter of Henry Eckford, the well-known shipbuilder. 

 He commenced the study of medicine under Dr. Nicholas Romayne 

 in 1813, received his degree in 1816, and in the same year he mar- 

 ried Miss Eckford. After a visit to Europe and to New Orleans 

 in a vain effort to restore his failing health, Drake died of con- 



