| |
| 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 | 5 |
| 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 forever.—Motionless? | 10 |
| 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! | 15 |
| 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 | 20 |
| 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 | 25 |
| 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 | 30 |
| 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, | 35 |
| 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 | 40 |
| 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, | 45 |
| 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 | 50 |
| Nourished their harvests, here their herds were fed, | |
| When haply by their stalls the bison lowed, | |
| And bowed his manèd shoulder to the yoke. | |
| All day this desert murmured with their toils, | |
| Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked, and wooed | 55 |
| 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. | 60 |
| 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,— | 65 |
| 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, | 70 |
| 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, | 75 |
| 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. Kindly words | |
| Welcomed and soothed him; the rude conquerors | 80 |
| 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. | 85 |
| 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, | 90 |
| And, nearer to the Rocky Mountains, sought | |
| A wider 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, | 95 |
| And pools whose issues swell the Oregon, | |
| 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 | 100 |
| 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, | 105 |
| 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, | 110 |
| 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 | 115 |
| 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 | 120 |
| 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. | |
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