THIS is no pæan sung to ancient kings,
In olden times 'mid oriental things;
Not Babylon, in all her fallen pride,
Nor ruined Memphis by the Nilus' side,
Nor tale of Tarshish, mistress of the sea,
Nor yet Phoenicia, nor the dark Chaldee,
Nor Greece, nor Rome, before their mighty fall-
Who now are nothing, once the head of all;
And, not to speak of each hard fought Crusade,
Where Christian hosts met Paynim blade to blade;
Nor Moors chivalric in their warlike day,
Who held old Spain for years in constant bay;
Nor, later still, when great Napoleon's host
Made Europe tremble, e'en to Egypt's coast-
But o'er Atlantic's undulating breast
To those wild lands within the far, far West,
We take our thoughts, and to the times gone by,
But scarcely faded from the living eye.
Three centuries and but a half have passed
Since first Columbus, with his genius vast,
Proclaimed to Europe, like Omnipotence,
A new found world, of magnitude immense.
Soon thousands came, and settled on its shore,
And coming years but made that number more
And near the margin of the ocean tide
From North to South the multitude spread wide;
Still keeping to the Gulf and seaward beach,
Beyond the native Indian's savage reach.
From where St. Lawrence rushes to the main,
To Guatemala's idol studded plain,
The country's lay all as yet unknown
As El Dorado's monarch's gilded throne—
An endless space of wilderness and waste,
Which none but tribes of native men had traced.
There Speculation turned her puzzled eye,
And doubt to doubt uncertain made reply,
As in a cavern 'neath some waterfall,
An echo answers to an echo's call;
Yet still perplexed and wond'ring stood the world, And Mystery's wings were o'er the forest furled.
Then one arose whose object was to find
A spot to suit his nature and his mind;
Some vast, untrodden, scarce discovered place,
To feed his passion in the silent chase.
Before him lay unmeasured space of wood,
The mountain crags, the barrens, and the flood;
But all unknown-like fog-hid forests seen
Where sunlight rays by chance do intervene,
A partial light, which only at the best
Serves to obscure and mystify the rest.
The people stood, as though before some cave,
Vast, unexplored and fearful as the grave;
All wished to solve the doubt of this new land,
But no one stirred among the hardy band;
'T was as a sphere of shadows, newly found,
Where strangest things were hid in mist profound;
Where phantoms grey in fancy's vision strayed,
And loneliness walked silent through the shade;
Where ambushed danger like the coiléd snake,
With green eyes lurked behind the darksome brake;
But danger, darkness, and the unknown wild,
Held no control o'er Nature's chosen child;
For in the heart of DANIEL BOONE there burned
A flame not made to be by terror turned;
One thought lit up the recess of his breast,
One aim—one goal, to know the lonely West;
This lived within him, like his pulse's flow,
And lit his soul with one bright, ardent glow;
And, Quietude! such was thy wond'rous spell,
For thee, he bade the world and home farewell,
Walked like a palmer to thy forest throne,
Came to thy mystic shrine, one man, alone!
O Solitude! dumb, forest-haunting maid,
Whose constant walk is in the trackless shade,
How doth thy sad, sweet face attract the mind
From human homes and thoughts of human kind,
To stand with thee where precipices stand,
Like Nature's towers, looking o'er the land,
And see beneath some river rolling by,
Reflecting back the cloud shapes of the sky,
While trembling shadows of the sycamore
Dance on the waves, and then upon the shore.
To hear the bittern scream its discord, shrill,
And echo answer from the leafy hill;
To see the deer come fearful to the brink,
Step lightly in the cooling stream and drink
Taught thus to tremble by the Indian's aim,
The dark-eyed hunter stealing on the game,
Whose moccasins upon the leaves are heard,
Light as the tread of summer's smallest bird.
O Solitude! in scenes like this, thou art
The sole companion of the silent heart,
And, when the hunter, on a mossy log
Sees at his feet his ever faithful dog,
Thou sitt'st beside him, when none else are near,
And breathing gentle whispers in his ear,
In such a sweet and melancholy tone,
That man forgets he sitteth there alone,
And only feels thy soft and soothing sighs,
And only sees thy dark and dreamy eyes.
There is a stilness in the ocean caves,
Unbroken, save by gurgling sound of waves;
There is a silence in those weedy trees
Whose roots are in the ooze-bed of the seas,
Whose fan-like leaves move with the giant sway
Of mountain billows in their Titan play.
The desert hath its undisturbed calm,
Where sleeping stand the broad-leaved groves of palm;
And in those caverns, far beneath the ground,
Where day comes not, and neither doth a sound,
There is a silence more profound than reigns
Where Lake Asphaltum, on Judea's plains,
Rests its broad waters, moveless, dark, and dead,
In one black pool o'er Sodom's guilty head.
Yet on the earth there's still another spot
Where dreariness and loathsome death are not;
But silence-deep as was upon the waste
Of waters, ere Jehovah's mandate chased
Old Chaos, with a motion of his hand,
Beyond the far and phantom peopled land.
No, Solitude! thy temple had no fane:
'T was that unbounded wilderness of cane
That spread o'er all the mighty valley's space,
Wide o'er the land, and thick in every place,
Now crowding in among the lofty trees,
Excluding light, and barring half the breeze—
One mass of foliage, making daylight dim,
Where green vines crept upon the dogwood's limb;
The shade below gave Summer's day a gloom,
And emerald leaves entwined the snowy bloom;
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