Long before it officially became the Borough of Highlands in 1900, Highlands was well known as the part of Middletown that drew tourists and new businesses related to tourism to the area.William Cullen Bryant
The borough was highlighted in the first of two volumes of Picturesque America when it was published in 1872. It includes a wooden engraving of the Twin Lights with passenger boats unloading visitors at a dock along the Shrewsbury River just below the historic lighthouse.
The year after publication, Picturesque America was edited by noted New York newspaper editor William Cullen Bryant who curated its 950 wood or steel engravings in the book that captured the most beautiful, unique, and tourist-sought after locations of the 19th century.
In addition to being a journalist, as well as an attorney, Bryant was a well-known poet of his era, his Thanatopsis being his most famous work, followed by “To a Waterfowl”.
Unlike Thanatopsis, which deals with concentration on death, “To a Waterfowl” is a story in poetry about the speaker’s reactions when he observed a lone waterfowl in flight at dusk and uses the bird’s journey as a metaphor for faith and divine guidance. The poem is designed to concentrate on trust in an unseen force steering both the bird and the speaker through life’s isolating passages.
The poet was 21 years of age when he wrote To a Waterfowl. At that time, he was concerned about his own future as a lawyer, and was inspired to write the poem when he saw a solitary bird flying against a sunset sky. He felt a deep sense of loneliness for himself thinking about his life as an attorney, but then recognized it was a divine power guiding the bird . He put it to verse, thinking the same could be true of himself. While Bryant saw the bird while walking near his home in Massachusetts, he could well be describing a scene in Highlands especially in the stanza
Seek’st thou the splashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chaféd ocean side?
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