The Prairies.

These are the gardens of the Desert, these     The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,     For which the speech of England has no name,     The Prairies. I behold them for the first,     And my heart swells, while the dilated sight     Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo! they stretch     In airy undulations, far away,     As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell,     Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed,     And motionless for ever. Motionless?     No, they are all unchained again. The clouds     Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath,     The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye;     Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase     The sunny ridges. Breezes of the South!     Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers,     And pass the prairie-hawk that, poised on high,     Flaps his broad wings, yet moves not, ye have played     Among the palms of Mexico and vines     Of Texas, and have crisped the limpid brooks     That from the fountains of Sonora glide     Into the calm Pacific, have ye fanned     A nobler or a lovelier scene than this?     Man hath no part in all this glorious work:     The hand that built the firmament hath heaved     And smoothed these verdant swells, and sown their slopes     With herbage, planted them with island groves,     And hedged them round with forests. Fitting floor     For this magnificent temple of the sky,     With flowers whose glory and whose multitude     Rival the constellations! The great heavens     Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love,     A nearer vault, and of a tenderer blue,     Than that which bends above the eastern hills.     As o'er the verdant waste I guide my steed,     Among the high rank grass that sweeps his sides     The hollow beating of his footstep seems     A sacrilegious sound. I think of those     Upon whose rest he tramples. Are they here,     The dead of other days? and did the dust     Of these fair solitudes once stir with life     And burn with passion? Let the mighty mounds     That overlook the rivers, or that rise     In the dim forest crowded with old oaks,     Answer. A race, that long has passed away,     Built them; a disciplined and populous race     Heaped, with long toil, the earth, while yet the Greek     Was hewing the Pentelicus to forms     Of symmetry, and rearing on its rock     The glittering Parthenon. These ample fields     Nourished their harvests, here their herds were fed,     When haply by their stalls the bison lowed,     And bowed his maned shoulder to the yoke.     All day this desert murmured with their toils,     Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked, and wooed     In a forgotten language, and old tunes,     From instruments of unremembered form,     Gave the soft winds a voice. The red man came,     The roaming hunter tribes, warlike and fierce,     And the mound-builders vanished from the earth.     The solitude of centuries untold     Has settled where they dwelt. The prairie-wolf     Hunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug den     Yawns by my path. The gopher mines the ground     Where stood their swarming cities. All is gone,     All, save the piles of earth that hold their bones,     The platforms where they worshipped unknown gods,     The barriers which they builded from the soil     To keep the foe at bay, till o'er the walls     The wild beleaguerers broke, and, one by one,     The strongholds of the plain were forced, and heaped     With corpses. The brown vultures of the wood     Flocked to those vast uncovered sepulchres,     And sat, unscared and silent, at their feast.     Haply some solitary fugitive,     Lurking in marsh and forest, till the sense     Of desolation and of fear became     Bitterer than death, yielded himself to die.     Man's better nature triumphed then. Kind words     Welcomed and soothed him; the rude conquerors     Seated the captive with their chiefs; he chose     A bride among their maidens, and at length     Seemed to forget, yet ne'er forgot, the wife     Of his first love, and her sweet little ones,     Butchered, amid their shrieks, with all his race.     Thus change the forms of being. Thus arise     Races of living things, glorious in strength,     And perish, as the quickening breath of God     Fills them, or is withdrawn. The red man, too,     Has left the blooming wilds he ranged so long,     And, nearer to the Rocky Mountains, sought     A wilder hunting-ground. The beaver builds     No longer by these streams, but far away,     On waters whose blue surface ne'er gave back     The white man's face, among Missouri's springs,     And pools whose issues swell the Oregan,     He rears his little Venice. In these plains     The bison feeds no more. Twice twenty leagues     Beyond remotest smoke of hunter's camp,     Roams the majestic brute, in herds that shake     The earth with thundering steps, yet here I meet     His ancient footprints stamped beside the pool.     Still this great solitude is quick with life.     Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers     They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds,     And birds, that scarce have learned the fear of man,     Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground,     Startlingly beautiful. The graceful deer     Bounds to the wood at my approach. The bee,     A more adventurous colonist than man,     With whom he came across the eastern deep,     Fills the savannas with his murmurings,     And hides his sweets, as in the golden age,     Within the hollow oak. I listen long     To his domestic hum, and think I hear     The sound of that advancing multitude     Which soon shall fill these deserts. From the ground     Comes up the laugh of children, the soft voice     Of maidens, and the sweet and solemn hymn     Of Sabbath worshippers. The low of herds     Blends with the rustling of the heavy grain     Over the dark-brown furrows. All at once     A fresher wind sweeps by, and breaks my dream,     And I am in the wilderness alone.