And lavishly beneath the sun, In liberal splendour rolled, The Fennel fills the dipping plain With floods of flowery gold; And widely weaves the Iron-Weed A woof of purple dyes Where Autumn's royal feet may tread When bankrupt Summer flies. In verdurous tumult far away The prairie-billows gleam, Upon their crests in blessing rests The noontide's gracious beam. Low quivering vapours steaming dim The level splendours break Where languid Lilies deck the rim Of some land-circled lake. Far in the east like low-hung clouds The waving woodlands lie; Far in the west the glowing plain Melts warmly in the sky. No accent wounds the reverent air, No footprint dints the sod, Lone in the light the prairie lies Rapt in a dream of God. ILLINOIS, 1858. CENTENNIAL. A hundred times the bells of Brown Have rung to sleep the idle summers, And still to-day clangs clamouring down A greeting to the welcome comers. And far, like waves of morning, pours Her call, in airy ripples breaking, And wanders to the farthest shores, Her children's drowsy hearts awaking. The wild vibration floats along, O'er heart-strings tense its magic plying, And wakes in every breast its song Of love and gratitude undying. My heart to meet the summons leaps At limit of its straining tether, Where the fresh western sunlight steeps In golden flame the prairie heather. And others, happier, rise and fare To pass within the hallowed portal, And see the glory shining there Shrined in her steadfast eyes immortal. What though their eyes be dim and dull, Their heads be white in reverend blossom; Our mothers smile is beautiful As when she bore them on her bosom! Her heavenly forehead bears no line Of Time's iconolastic fingers, But o'er her form the grace divine Of deathless youth and wisdom lingers. We fade and pass, grow faint and old, Till youth and joy and hope are banished, And still her beauty seems to fold The sum of all the glory vanished. As while Tithonus faltered on The threshold of the Olympian dawnings, Aurora's front eternal shone With lustre of the myriad mornings. So joys that slip like dead leaves down, And hopes burnt out that die in ashes, Rise restless from their graves to crown Our mother's brow with fadeless flashes. And lives wrapped in traditions mist These honoured halls to-day are haunting, And lips by lips long withered kissed The sagas of the past are chanting. Scornful of absence' envious bar BROWN smiles upon the mystic meeting Of those her sons, who, sundered far, In brotherhood of heart are greeting; Her wayward children wandering on Where setting stars are lowly burning, But still in worship toward the dawn That gilds their souls' dear Mecca turning;