In infamy now the bold slanderer slumbers, Who falsely declared 'twas a land without song! Had he listened, as I, to those musical numbers That liven its woods through the summer-day long-- Had he slept in the shade of its blossoming trees, Or inhaled their sweet balm ever loading the breeze, He would scarcely have ventured on statement so wrong-- "Her plants without perfume, her birds without song." Ah! closet-philosopher, sure, in that hour, You had never beheld the magnolia's flower? Surely here the Hesperian gardens were found-- For how could such land to the gods be unknown? And where is there spot upon African ground So like to a garden a goddess would own? And the dragon so carelessly guarding the tree, Which the hero, whose guide was a god of the sea, Destroyed before plucking the apples of gold-- Was nought but that monster--the mammoth of old. If earth ever owned spot so divinely caressed, Sure that region of eld was the Land of the West! The memory of that scene attunes my soul to song, awaking any muse from the silence in which she has long slumbered. But the voice of the coy maiden is less melodious than of yore: she shies _me_ for my neglect: and despite the gentlest courting, refusing to breathe her divine spirit over a scene worthy of a sweeter strain. And this scene lay not upon the classic shores of the Hellespont--not in the famed valleys of Alp and Apennine--not by the romantic borders of the Rhine, but upon the banks of _Mud Creek_ in the state of Tennessee! In truth, it was a lovely landscape, or rather a succession of landscapes, through which I rode, after leaving the cabin of my hospitable host. It was the season of "Indian summer"--that singular phenomenon of the occidental clime, when the sun, as if rueing his southern declension, appears to return along the line of the zodiac. He loves better the "Virgin" than "Aquarius;" and lingering to take a fond look on that fair land he has fertilised by his beams, dispels for a time his intruding antagonist, the hoary Boreas. But his last kiss kills: there is too much passion in his parting glance. The forest is fired by its fervour; and many of its fairest forms the rival trod of the north may never clasp in his cold embrace. In suttee-like devotion, they scorn to shun the flame; but, with outstretched arms inviting it; offer themselves as a holocaust to him who, through the long summer-day, has smiled upon their trembling existence.