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 beleaguers 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. Kindly 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Thus arise Races of living things, glorious in strength, And perish, as the quickening breath of God Fills them, or is withdrawn.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 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, And pools whose issues swell the Oregan,

He rears his little Venice.

The bison feeds no more.

In these plains

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

23-L & B-R

Bounds to the wood at my approach.

A more adventurous colonist than man,

The bee,

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.
ground

From the

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.

EARTH,

A MIDNIGHT black with clouds is in the sky; I seem to feel, upon my limbs, the weight Of its vast brooding shadow. All in vain Turns the tired eye in search of form; no star Pierces the pitchy veil; no ruddy blaze, From dwellings lighted by the cheerful hearth, Tinges the flowering summits of the grass. No sound of life is heard, no village hum, Nor measured tramp of footstep in the path, Nor rush of wing, while, on the breast of Earth, I lie and listen to her mighty voice:

A voice of many tones-sent up from streams That wander through the gloom, from woods

unseen,

Swayed by the sweeping of the tides of air,

From rocky chasms where darkness dwells all

day,

And hollows of the great invisible hills,

And sands that edge the ocean, stretching far

Into the night a melancholy sound!

Oh Earth! dost thou too sorrow for the past
Like man thy offspring? Do I hear thee mourn
Thy childhood's unreturning hours, thy springs
Gone with their genial airs and melodies,
The gentle generations of thy flowers,
And thy majestic groves of olden time,
Perished with all their dwellers?

Dost thou wail

For that fair age of which the poets tell,
Ere the rude winds grew keen with frost, or fire
Fell with the rains, or spouted from the hills,
To blast thy greenness, while the virgin night
Was guiltless and salubrious as the day?

Or haply dost thou grieve for those that die-
For living things that trod awhile thy face,
The love of thee and heaven - and now they

sleep

Mixed with the shapeless dust on which thy

herds

Trample and graze? I too must grieve with thee, O'er loved ones lost their graves are far away

Upon thy mountains, yet, while I recline,
Alone, in darkness, on thy naked soil,
The mighty nourisher and burial-place
Of man, I feel that I embrace their dust.

Ha how the murmur deepens! I perceive And tremble at its dreadful import.

Earth