Fair is the scene; its sweetness oft beguiled From their dim paths the children of the wild; The dark-haired maiden loved its grassy dells, The feathered warrior claimed its wooded swells, Still on its slopes the ploughman's ridges show The pointed flints that left his fatal bow, Chipped with rough art and slow barbarian toil,-- Last of his wrecks that strews the alien soil! Here spread the fields that heaped their ripened store Till the brown arms of Labor held no more; The scythe's broad meadow with its dusky blush; The sickle's harvest with its velvet flush; The green-haired maize, her silken tresses laid, In soft luxuriance, on her harsh brocade; The gourd that swells beneath her tossing plume; The coarser wheat that rolls in lakes of bloom,-- Its coral stems and milk-white flowers alive With the wide murmurs of the scattered hive; Here glowed the apple with the pencilled streak Of morning painted on its southern cheek; The pear's long necklace strung with golden drops, Arched, like the banian, o'er its pillared props; Here crept the growths that paid the laborer's care With the cheap luxuries wealth consents to spare; Here sprang the healing herbs which could not save The hand that reared them from the neighboring grave. Yet all its varied charms, forever free From task and tribute, Labor yields to thee No more, when April sheds her fitful rain, The sower's hand shall cast its flying grain; No more, when Autumn strews the flaming leaves, The reaper's band shall gird its yellow sheaves; For thee alike the circling seasons flow Till the first blossoms heave the latest snow. In the stiff clod below the whirling drifts, In the loose soil the springing herbage lifts, In the hot dust beneath the parching weeds, Life's withering flower shall drop its shrivelled seeds; Its germ entranced in thy unbreathing sleep Till what thou sowest mightier angels reap!