The Prairies

These are the gardens of the Desert, theseThe 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 sightTakes in the encircling vastness. Lo! they stretchIn 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 cloudsSweep over with their shadows, and, beneath,The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye;Dark hollows seem to glide along and chaseThe 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 playedAmong the palms of Mexico and vinesOf Texas, and have crisped the limpid brooksThat from the fountains of Sonora glideInto the calm Pacific--have ye fannedA nobler or a lovelier scene than this?Man hath no part in all this glorious work:The hand that built the firmament hath heavedAnd smoothed these verdant swells, and sown their slopesWith herbage, planted them with island groves,And hedged them round with forests. Fitting floorFor this magnificent temple of the sky--With flowers whose glory and whose multitudeRival the constellations! The great heavensSeem 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 sidesThe hollow beating of his footstep seemsA sacrilegious sound. I think of thoseUpon whose rest he tramples. Are they here--The dead of other days?--and did the dustOf these fair solitudes once stir with lifeAnd burn with passion? Let the mighty moundsThat overlook the rivers, or that riseIn the dim forest crowded with old oaks,Answer. A race, that long has passed away,Built them;--a disciplined and populous raceHeaped, with long toil, the earth, while yet the GreekWas hewing the Pentelicus to formsOf symmetry, and rearing on its rockThe glittering Parthenon. These ample fieldsNourished 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 wooedIn 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 untoldHas settled where they dwelt. The prairie-wolfHunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug denYawns by my path. The gopher mines the groundWhere 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 soilTo keep the foe at bay--till o'er the wallsThe wild beleaguerers broke, and, one by one,The strongholds of the plain were forced, and heapedWith corpses. The brown vultures of the woodFlocked to those vast uncovered sepulchres,And sat, unscared and silent, at their feast.Haply some solitary fugitive,Lurking in marsh and forest, till the senseOf desolation and of fear becameBitterer than death, yielded himself to die.Man's better nature triumphed then. Kind wordsWelcomed and soothed him; the rude conquerorsSeated the captive with their chiefs; he choseA bride among their maidens, and at lengthSeemed to forget,--yet ne'er forgot,--the wifeOf his first love, and her sweet little ones,Butchered, amid their shrieks, with all his race.

Thus change the forms of being. Thus ariseRaces of living things, glorious in strength,And perish, as the quickening breath of GodFills them, or is withdrawn. The red man, too,Has left the blooming wilds he ranged so long,And, nearer to the Rocky Mountains, soughtA wilder hunting-ground. The beaver buildsNo longer by these streams, but far away,On waters whose blue surface ne'er gave backThe white man's face--among Missouri's springs,And pools whose issues swell the Oregan,He rears his little Venice. In these plainsThe bison feeds no more. Twice twenty leaguesBeyond remotest smoke of hunter's camp,Roams the majestic brute, in herds that shakeThe earth with thundering steps--yet here I meetHis ancient footprints stamped beside the pool.

Still this great solitude is quick with life.Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowersThey 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 deerBounds 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 longTo his domestic hum, and think I hearThe sound of that advancing multitudeWhich soon shall fill these deserts. From the groundComes up the laugh of children, the soft voiceOf maidens, and the sweet and solemn hymnOf Sabbath worshippers. The low of herdsBlends with the rustling of the heavy grainOver the dark-brown furrows. All at onceA fresher wind sweeps by, and breaks my dream,And I am in the wilderness alone.