"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 vastness. Lo! they stretch In airy undulations far away, As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell, Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed, And motionless forever. Motionless? No!--they are all unchained again. The clouds Sweep over with the shadows, and beneath The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye; Dark hollows seem to glide along, and chase The sunny ridges.... * * * * * 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 Bounds 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 long To his domestic hum, and think I hear The sound of that advancing multitude Which soon shall fill these deserts. _From the ground 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." It is a natural sentiment, though somewhat difficult to justify, which poets, and others than poets, entertain when they look about for some calm and beautiful spot, some green and sunny slope, for their final resting-place. Imagination still attributes something of sensation, or of consciousness, to what was once the warm abode of life. Mr Bryant, in a poem called "June," after indulging in this sentiment, gives us one of the best apologies for it we remember to have met with. There is much grace and pathos in the following verses:-- "I know, I know I should not see The seasons' glorious show, Nor would its brightness shine for me, Nor its wild music flow; But if around my place of sleep, The friends I love should come to weep, _They might not haste to go_. Soft airs, and song, and light and bloom Should keep them lingering by my tomb.