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Act I. Scene 2
LEFROY THIS region is as lavish of its flowers | |
| As Heaven of its primrose blooms by night. | |
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| This is the Arum, which within its root | |
| Folds life and death; and this the Prince’s Pine, | |
| Fadeless as love and truth—the fairest form | 5 |
| That ever sun-shower washed with sudden rain. | |
| This golden cradle is the Moccasin Flower, | |
| Wherein the Indian hunter sees his hound; | |
| And this dark chalice is the Pitcher-Plant, | |
| Stored with the water of forgetfulness. | 10 |
| Whoever drinks of it, whose heart is pure, | |
| Will sleep for ay ’neath foodful asphodel, | |
| And dream of endless love. * * * * * | |
| There was a time on this fair continent | |
| When all things throve in spacious peacefulness. | 15 |
| The prosperous forests unmolested stood, | |
| For where the stalwart oak grew there it lived | |
| Long ages, and then died among its kind. | |
| The hoary pines—those ancients of the earth— | |
| Brimful of legends of the early world, | 20 |
| Stood thick on their own mountains unsubdued. | |
| And all things else illumined by the sun, | |
| Inland or by the lifted wave, had rest. | |
| The passionate or calm pageants of the skies | |
| No artist drew; but in the auburn west | 25 |
| Innumerable faces of fair cloud | |
| Vanished in silent darkness with the day. | |
| The prairie realm—vast ocean’s paraphrase— | |
| Rich in wild grasses numberless, and flowers | |
| Unnamed save in mute Nature’s inventory, | 30 |
| No civilized barbarian trenched for gain. | |
| And all that flowed was sweet and uncorrupt. | |
| The rivers and their tributary streams, | |
| Undammed, wound on for ever, and gave up | |
| Their lonely torrents to weird gulfs of sea, | 35 |
| And ocean wastes unshadowed by a sail. | |
| And all the wild life of this western world | |
| Knew not the fear of man; yet in those woods, | |
| And by those plenteous streams and mighty lakes, | |
| And on stupendous steppes of peerless plain, | 40 |
| And in the rocky gloom of canyons deep, | |
| Screened by the stony ribs of mountains hoar | |
| Which steeped their snowy peaks in purging cloud, | |
| And down the continent where tropic suns | |
| Warmed to her very heart the mother earth, | 45 |
| And in the congeal’d north where silence’ self | |
| Ached with intensity of stubborn frost, | |
| There lived a soul more wild than barbarous; | |
| A tameless soul—the sunburnt savage free— | |
| Free and untainted by the greed of gain, | 50 |
| Great Nature’s man, content with Nature’s food. | |
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