Till where the sun, with softer fires, Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep, The children of the pilgrim sires This hallowed day like us shall keep. HYMN OF THE CITY. Not in the solitude Alone may man commune with Heaven, or see Only in savage wood And sunny vale, the present Deity; Or only hear his voice Where the winds whisper and the waves rejoice. Even here do I behold Thy steps, Almighty!--here, amidst the crowd, Through the great city rolled, With everlasting murmur deep and loud-- Choking the ways that wind 'Mongst the proud piles, the work of human kind. Thy golden sunshine comes From the round heaven, and on their dwellings lies, And lights their inner homes; For them thou fill'st with air the unbounded skies, And givest them the stores Of ocean, and the harvests of its shores. Thy Spirit is around, Quickening the restless mass that sweeps along; And this eternal sound-- Voices and footfalls of the numberless throng-- Like the resounding sea, Or like the rainy tempest, speaks of thee. And when the hours of rest Come, like a calm upon the mid-sea brine, Hushing its billowy breast-- The quiet of that moment too is thine, It breathes of Him who keeps The vast and helpless city while it sleeps. THE PRAIRIES. deg. 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 for ever.--Motionless?-- No--they are all unchained again. The clouds Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath, The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye; Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase The sunny ridges. Breezes of the South! Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers, And pass the prairie-hawk that, poised on high, Flaps his broad wings, yet moves not--ye have played Among the palms of Mexico and vines Of Texas, and have crisped the limpid brooks That from the fountains of Sonora glide Into the calm Pacific--have ye fanned A nobler or a lovelier scene than this? Man hath no part in all this glorious work: The hand that built the firmament hath heaved And smoothed these verdant swells, and sown their slopes With herbage, planted them with island groves, And hedged them round with forests. Fitting floor For this magnificent temple of the sky-- With flowers whose glory and whose multitude Rival the constellations! The great heavens Seem to stoop down upon the scene in love,-- A nearer vault, and of a tenderer blue, Than that which bends above the eastern hills.