Introduction to Beyond the Dam – The four sonnets
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We begin with Allan’s amazing adventure with Leonard, his brother, going down the Penobscot River in Maine on a homemade wooden raft.
Allan wrote several versions of the sonnets Before and Beyond the Dam over the years when a student in 1963 at Florida State University, in the 70s, and in 1983.
We begin this blog with the first of the four sonnets:
Before the Dam
What goes upon the river cool and wide?
Penobscot, you have seen and felt the change
That man has wrought on you, so that each side
Now catches parts of pulp from mills so strange
.
To you at first with blue your skies and green
Your banks. And now two lonely men on raft
Come floating down upon your surface seen
By those before the mills were built and graft
.
Of shore was changed. The minds of men now act
Upon your waters search the shores and skies.
So green with trees your banks that hearts could shout
With joy when seen through God-inspired eyes.
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What wordless feelings creep through mind and heart
To see Penobscot’s smiling, natural art.
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Future blogs will include the next three sonnets beginning with a humorous version Penobscot Perversed, then followed by Before and Beyond the Dam and Beyond the Dam.