He marks the brief recoil, the fiercer onset, The struggling waver of the deathful shock, And hosts convulsed around each god-like hero, Like storms impetuous torn by mountain rock. His snowy hair streams wild, his withered bosom Heaves as the troubled surges rise and fall, And hot Promethean fire, intensely gathering, Now blazing leaps from either sightless ball. “And night came down and all the ways were shaded,” Dark green the last hot footsteps of the sun, Still sat the bard entranced with glowing visions, His night ended, and his day begun. And still he sat and felt the cooling night-wind, And listened to the wave’s untiring beat, And sang of earth, and heaven, and hell, till morning Recalled him, hungering, to the dusty street. Sad was the hour that scourged thy spirit homeward, While yet her pinions were untired and strong, From those bright fields where she had found and tasted The honied lotus, mighty one of song. Loneness of soul, phantasies bright and wayward, Neglect and sorrow, longings sad and wild, Well didst thou prove, and faithfully bequeath them, E’en to thy latest and thy meanest child. O, pitied, jeered, adored! Time’s latest offspring Shall turn with reverent heed those pages o’er, Great with thy deathless thoughts—thy peerless glory Shall brighten aye, till time shall be no more. * * * * * THE PAMPAS FIRED BY THE INDIANS.[3] The sun had yet scarce tinged the horizon with the first dawn of light, when, with a body hot and unrefreshed, I issued from the door of the hacienda of San Jacinto, to enjoy the cool air of morning, and soothe my limbs with the clear, pure water of a rivulet that coursed past the rear of my last night’s resting-place. All was yet still around—none seemed to be stirring—and as I glanced over the extensive plains that extended on one side as far as the eye could reach, I could only discern by the misty light a herd of wild horses, as they swept along through the tall, wiry grass that arose above their shoulders. Buckling my pistol-belt around me, I threw my short rifle carelessly across my back, where it hung by its own strap, and rapidly proceeded to descend the steep gully, at the bottom of which the stream, one of the many that descend from the Andes, ran bubbling and boiling, as it glanced over its rocky bed. Uneven and stony, with the footing concealed beneath thick matted grass and small stunted brushwood, I found my task any thing but an easy one, and almost regretted that I had not gone round by the path used by the people of the hacienda. Yet, as I swung from rock to rock by aid of the rank herbage, I felt that the course I had chosen was most in consonance with that wild, reckless spirit that had conducted me over so many lands.