THE PLAINS.

OOOM! Room to turn round in, to breathe and be

ROOM

free,

And to grow to be giant, to sail as at sea

With the speed of the wind on a steed with his mane
To the wind, without pathway or route or a rein.
Room! Room to be free where the white-bordered sea
Blows a kiss to a brother as boundless as he ;
And to east and to west, to the north and the sun,
Blue skies and brown grasses are welded as one,
And the buffalo come like a cloud on the plain,
Pouring on like the tide of a storm-driven main,
And the lodge of the hunter to friend or to foe
Offers rest; and unquestioned you come or you go.
My plains of America! Seas of wild lands!
From a land in the seas in a raiment of foam,
That has reached to a stranger the welcome of home,
I turn to you, lean to you, lift you my hands.

Point Lobos, Cal.

AT POINT LOBOS.

YLEAR noon without obscurity.

CLEAR

Joaquin Miller.

No flake of cloud 'twixt heaven and me;

No mist athwart the Golden Gate:

The hearty sun doth wilfully

His profuse beams precipitate.

I cling to humpèd rocks that kneel
On unswept sands, where breakers reel

In splendid curves, and pile their foam In spongy hills, that slow congeal,

And dulse and drift-wood find a home.

We clasp the silver crescent set
Within the hazy parapet

That belts the horizon: in glee
I count the fitful puffs that fret
The eternal levels of the sea.

I watch the waves that seem to breathe
And pant unceasingly beneath

Their silken coverings, that cringe,
As flecked with swirls of froth, they seethe,
And whip, and flutter to a fringe.

Brown pipers run upon the sand
Like shadows; far out from the land
Gray gulls slide up against the blue ;

One shining spar is sudden manned
By squadrons of their wrecking crew.

My city is beyond the hill;
I cannot hear its voices shrill:

I little heed its gains and greeds:
Here is my song, where waters spill
Their liquid strophes in the reeds.

And to this music I forswear
Whatever soils the world with care:

I see the listless waters toss,

I track the swift lark through the air, I lie with sunlight on the moss.

White caravans of cloud go by
Across the desert of bright sky,

And burly winds are following
The trailing pilgrims, as they fly

Over the grassy hills of spring.

What Mecca are they hastening to?
What princess journeying to woo

In the rich Orient? I am thrilled With spice and odor they imbue,

I feed upon their manna spilled!

I strip my breast with eager mind,
To tarry and invite the wind

To my embrace by curious spell
It quickens me with praises kind,—
"Tis Ariel that blows his shell!

Invisible, and soft as dews
Descending, he his love renews,
Delighting daisy colonies

That gloss them with the lustrous ooze
Of meadows steeped in ecstasies.

Until the homely, sunburnt Heads,
The tumbling hills, in browns and reds,
And gray sand-hillocks, everywhere

Are buried in the mist that sheds

Its subtle snow upon the air.

And Prospero, aroused from sleep,
Recalls his spirits from the deep, -

They cross the wave with stealthy tread,
Their shadows down upon me sweep,
And day is past, and joy is fled.

I hear the dismal bells that shout
Their warning to the ships without :

The dripping sails are reefed and furled,

The pilots sound and grope about, —
The Gate is barred against the world!

Charles Warren Stoddard.

Prairies, The.

THE PRAIRIES.

HESE are the Gardens of the Desert, these

THES

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 forever. - 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!
That toss the golden and the flame-like flowers,
And pass the prairie-hawk that, poised on high,
Flaps his broad wings, yet moves not,
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?

ye have played

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.

As o'er the verdant waste I guide my steed,
Among the high rank grass that sweeps his sides,
The hollow beating of his footstep seems

A sacrilegious sound. I think of those

Upon whose rest he tramples. Are they here, —
The dead of other days? — and did the dust
Of these fair solitudes once stir with life

And burn with passion? Let the mighty mounds