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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=538078" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Prairies</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">These are the gardens of the Desert, these<br>The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,<br>For which the speech of England has no name--<br>The Prairies. I behold them for the first,<br>And my heart swells, while the dilated sight<br>Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo! they stretch<br>In airy undulations, far away,<br>As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell,<br>Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed,<br>And motionless for ever.--Motionless?--<br>No--they are all unchained again. The clouds<br>Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath,<br>The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye;<br>Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase<br>The sunny ridges. Breezes of the South!<br>Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers,<br>And pass the prairie-hawk that, poised on high,<br>Flaps his broad wings, yet moves not--ye have played<br>Among the palms of Mexico and vines<br>Of Texas, and have crisped the limpid brooks<br>That from the fountains of Sonora glide<br>Into the calm Pacific--have ye fanned<br>A nobler or a lovelier scene than this?<br>Man hath no part in all this glorious work:<br>The hand that built the firmament hath heaved<br>And smoothed these verdant swells, and sown their slopes<br>With herbage, planted them with island groves,<br>And hedged them round with forests. Fitting floor<br>For this magnificent temple of the sky--<br>With flowers whose glory and whose multitude<br>Rival the constellations! The great heavens<br>Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love,--<br>A nearer vault, and of a tenderer blue,<br>Than that which bends above the eastern hills.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As o'er the verdant waste I guide my steed,<br>Among the high rank grass that sweeps his sides<br>The hollow beating of his footstep seems<br>A sacrilegious sound. I think of those<br>Upon whose rest he tramples. Are they here--<br>The dead of other days?--and did the dust<br>Of these fair solitudes once stir with life<br>And burn with passion? Let the mighty mounds<br>That overlook the rivers, or that rise<br>In the dim forest crowded with old oaks,<br>Answer. A race, that long has passed away,<br>Built them;--a disciplined and populous race<br>Heaped, with long toil, the earth, while yet the Greek<br>Was hewing the Pentelicus to forms<br>Of symmetry, and rearing on its rock<br>The glittering Parthenon. These ample fields<br>Nourished their harvests, here their herds were fed,<br>When haply by their stalls the bison lowed,<br>And bowed his maned shoulder to the yoke.<br>All day this desert murmured with their toils,<br>Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked, and wooed<br>In a forgotten language, and old tunes,<br>From instruments of unremembered form,<br>Gave the soft winds a voice. The red man came--<br>The roaming hunter tribes, warlike and fierce,<br>And the mound-builders vanished from the earth.<br>The solitude of centuries untold<br>Has settled where they dwelt. The prairie-wolf<br>Hunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug den<br>Yawns by my path. The gopher mines the ground<br>Where stood their swarming cities. All is gone--<br>All--save the piles of earth that hold their bones--<br>The platforms where they worshipped unknown gods--<br>The barriers which they builded from the soil<br>To keep the foe at bay--till o'er the walls<br>The wild beleaguerers broke, and, one by one,<br>The strongholds of the plain were forced, and heaped<br>With corpses. The brown vultures of the wood<br>Flocked to those vast uncovered sepulchres,<br>And sat, unscared and silent, at their feast.<br>Haply some solitary fugitive,<br>Lurking in marsh and forest, till the sense<br>Of desolation and of fear became<br>Bitterer than death, yielded himself to die.<br>Man's better nature triumphed then. Kind words<br>Welcomed and soothed him; the rude conquerors<br>Seated the captive with their chiefs; he chose<br>A bride among their maidens, and at length<br>Seemed to forget,--yet ne'er forgot,--the wife<br>Of his first love, and her sweet little ones,<br>Butchered, amid their shrieks, with all his race.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thus change the forms of being. Thus arise<br>Races of living things, glorious in strength,<br>And perish, as the quickening breath of God<br>Fills them, or is withdrawn. The red man, too,<br>Has left the blooming wilds he ranged so long,<br>And, nearer to the Rocky Mountains, sought<br>A wilder hunting-ground. The beaver builds<br>No longer by these streams, but far away,<br>On waters whose blue surface ne'er gave back<br>The white man's face--among Missouri's springs,<br>And pools whose issues swell the Oregan,<br>He rears his little Venice. In these plains<br>The bison feeds no more. Twice twenty leagues<br>Beyond remotest smoke of hunter's camp,<br>Roams the majestic brute, in herds that shake<br>The earth with thundering steps--yet here I meet<br>His ancient footprints stamped beside the pool.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Still this great solitude is quick with life.<br>Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers<br>They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds,<br>And birds, that scarce have learned the fear of man,<br>Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground,<br>Startlingly beautiful. The graceful deer<br>Bounds to the wood at my approach. The bee,<br>A more adventurous colonist than man,<br>With whom he came across the eastern deep,<br>Fills the savannas with his murmurings,<br>And hides his sweets, as in the golden age,<br>Within the hollow oak. I listen long<br>To his domestic hum, and think I hear<br>The sound of that advancing multitude<br>Which soon shall fill these deserts. From the ground<br>Comes up the laugh of children, the soft voice<br>Of maidens, and the sweet and solemn hymn<br>Of Sabbath worshippers. The low of herds<br>Blends with the rustling of the heavy grain<br>Over the dark-brown furrows. All at once<br>A fresher wind sweeps by, and breaks my dream,<br>And I am in the wilderness alone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=William+Cullen+Bryant">William Cullen Bryant</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=538078" data-title="The Prairies de William Cullen Bryant" data-description="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
Takes in the encircling v..."></div>
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