English

O never ask how I came to this place:
What cannot strong necessity find out?
Rather bemoan my miserable case,
Constrain'd to wander the wide world about.
With wild Sylvanus and his woody crew
In forests, I, at liberty and free,
Liv'd in such pleasures as the world ne'er knew,
Nor any rightly can conceive but we.
This jocond life we many a day enjoy'd,
Till this last age those beastly men forth brought
That all those great and goodly woods destroy'd
Whose growth their grandsires with such sufferance sought:

A bark went forth, with the morning's smile,
That bore the maids of the western isle
Far, where the southern summers shine
On the glorious world beyond the line.
Theirs was a weary lot of toil,
And their hopes were turned to a better soil,
While their tears were shed for the island-shore —
They should look on its greenness never more!

But one was there — who shed no tears! —
A girl, in the blossom of her years; —
Yet bloom had she none from the roses caught,
For her cheek was withered with early thought, —

Cease, Wilberforce, to urge thy generous aim —
Thy country knows the sin and stands the shame!
The preacher, poet, senator, in vain
Has rattled in her sight the Negro's chain,
With his deep groans assailed her startled ear
And rent the veil that hid his constant tear,
Forced her averted eyes his stripes to scan,
Beneath the bloody scourge laid bare the man,
Claimed pity's tear, urged conscience's strong control
And flashed conviction on her shrinking soul.
The muse, too soon awaked, with ready tongue

'Tis passed! — the sultry tyrant of the south
Has spent his short-lived rage. More grateful hours
Move silent on; the skies no more repel
The dazzled sight, but with mild maiden beams
Of tempered light invite the cherished eye
To wander o'er their sphere, where, hung aloft,
Dian's bright crescent, like a silver bow
New-strung in heaven, lifts high its beamy horns
Impatient for the night, and seems to push
Her brother down the sky. Fair Venus shines
Even in the eye of day — with sweetest beam

We wove a web in childhood,
A web of sunny air;
We dug a spring in infancy
Of water pure and fair;

We sowed in youth a mustard seed,
We cut an almond rod;
We are now grown up to riper age —
Are they withered in the sod?

Are they blighted, failed and faded,
Are they mouldered back to clay?
For life is darkly shaded;
And its joys fleet fast away.

Faded! the web is still of air,
But how its folds are spread,
And from its tints of crimson clear
How deep a glow is shed.

The Farewell

XVII.

" Stranger, farewell! The deepening eve doth warn,
And the mild moonlight beckons thee away;
And, ere the lingering night shall melt to morn,
Let thy swift foot across the prairie stray.
Nay, tempt me not! for I alone am cast,
A wretch from all I used to grieve or bless;
And doomed to wail and wander here at last,
Am deeply wedded to the wilderness.

The Moonlit Prairie

XIV.

" Stranger, — thy bosom cannot know
The desolation of the soul,
When the rough, gale hath ceased to blow,
Yet o'er it bids the billow roll.
A helmless wreck upon the tide —
An earthquake's ruin wrapped in gloom —
A gnarled oak blasted in its pride
Are feeble emblems of my doom.
There is a tongue in every leaf,
A sigh in every tossing tree —

" My native hills, " &c.

V.

" My native hills are far away,
Beneath a soft and sunny sky;
Green as the sea, the forests play,
'Mid the fresh winds that sweep them by.
I loved those hills, I loved the flowers,
That dashed with gems their sunny swells,
And oft I fondly dreamed for hours,
By streams within those mountain dells.
I loved the wood — each tree and leaf,

I.

Far, far away, where sunsets weave
Their golden tissues o'er the scene,
And distant glaciers, dimly heave,
Like trailing ghosts, their peaks between —
Where, at the Rocky Mountain's base,
Arkansas, yet an infant, lingers,
A while the drifting leaves to chase,
Like laughing youth, with playful fingers —
There Nature, in her childhood, wrought
'Mid rock and rill, with leaf and flower,

As here on earth's soil God's Son Eternal
Mounted by leaps above the high hills,
Bold on the mountains, so we mortal men
In our hearts' musings must mount by leaps
From strength to strength, and strive for glory,
That we may ascend by holy works
To the highest heavens, where are joy and hope,
A goodly band of thanes. Great is our need
In our secret souls that we seek salvation,
If we have in our hearts a fervent faith
That the Healing Son, the Living Saviour,
With our own body ascended from earth.