And they who fly in terror deem
A mighty host behind,

And hear the tramp of thousands

Upon the hollow wind.

Then sweet the hour that brings release

From danger and from toil:

We talk the battle over,

And share the battle's spoil.

The woodland rings with laugh and shout,

As if a hunt were up,

And woodland flowers are gathered

To crown the soldier's cup.
With merry songs we mock the wind

That in the pine-top grieves,

And slumber long and sweetly

On beds of oaken leaves.

Well knows the fair and friendly moon

The band that Marion leads

The glitter of their rifles,

The scampering of their steeds. 'Tis life to guide the fiery barb Across the moonlight plain; 'Tis life to feel the night-wind

That lifts the tossing mane.

A moment in the British camp

A moment-and away
Back to the pathless forest,

Before the peep of day.

Grave men there are by broad Santee,
Grave men with hoary hairs;
Their hearts are all with Marion,
For Marion are their prayers.
And lovely ladies greet our band
With kindliest welcoming,

With smiles like those of summer,
And tears like those of spring.
For them we wear these trusty arms,
And lay them down no more
Till we have driven the Briton,
Forever, from our shore.

New York, 1831.

"New York Mirror," November, 1831.

THE PRAIRIES.

'HESE are the gardens of the Desert, these

TH

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!
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 power 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 our 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
That overlook the rivers, or that rise

In the dim forest crowded with old oaks,
Answer. A race, that long has passed away,
Built them; a disciplined and populous race

Heaped, with long toil, the earth, while yet the Greek

Was hewing the Pentelicus to forms

Of symmetry, and rearing on its rock

The glittering Parthenon. These ample fields
Nourished their harvests, here their herds were fed,
When haply by their stalls the bison lowed,
And bowed his manèd shoulder to the yoke.

All day this desert murmured with their toils,
Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked, and wooed
In a forgotten language, and old tunes,

From instruments of unremembered form,

Gave the soft winds a voice. The red man came-
The roaming hunter tribes, warlike and fierce,
And the mound-builders vanished from the earth.
The solitude of centuries untold

Has settled where they dwelt. The prairie-wolf
Hunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug den
Yawns by my path. The gopher mines the ground
Where stood their swarming cities. All is gone;
All-save the piles of earth that hold their bones,
The platforms where they worshipped unknown gods,
The barriers which they builded from the soil
To keep the foe at bay-till o'er the walls.
The wild beleaguerers broke, and, one by one,

The strongholds of the plain were forced, and heaped
With corpses. The brown vultures of the wood
Flocked to those vast uncovered sepulchres,

And sat unscared and silent at their feast.
Haply some solitary fugitive,