With budding, fading, faded flowers
They stand the wonder of the bowers
From morn to evening dews.

He told of the Magnolia, spread
High as a cloud, high over head!
The Cypress and her spire;

Of flowers that with one scarlet gleam Cover a hundred leagues, and seem

To set the hills on fire.

The Youth of green savannahs spake,
And many an endless, endless lake,
With all its fairy crowds

Of islands, that together lie
As quietly as spots of sky

Among the evening clouds.

And then he said, "How sweet it were

A fisher or a hunter there,

A gardener in the shade,

Still wandering with an easy mind
To build a household fire, and find

A home in every glade!

"What days and what sweet years! Ah me!

Our life were life indeed, with thee

So passed in quiet bliss,

And all the while," said he, " to know

That we were in a world of woe,

On such an earth as this!"

And then he sometimes interwove

Dear thoughts about a Father's love:

"For there," said he,

66

are spun

Around the heart such tender ties,

That our own children to our eyes

Are dearer than the sun.

"Sweet Ruth! and could you go with me

My helpmate in the woods to be,

Our shed at night to rear;

Or run my own adopted Bride,

A sylvan Huntress at my side,
And drive the flying deer!

"Beloved Ruth!"

No more he said.

The wakeful Ruth at midnight shed

A solitary tear:

She thought again and did

agree

With him to sail across the sea,

And drive the flying deer.

"And now, as fitting is and right,

We in the Church our faith will plight, A Husband and a Wife."

Even so they did; and I may say

That to sweet Ruth that happy day
Was more than human life.

Through dream and vision did she sink, Delighted all the while to think

That on those lonesome floods,

And green savannahs, she should share
His board with lawful joy, and bear
His name in the wild woods.

But as you have before been told,

This Stripling, sportive, gay, and bold, And with his dancing crest

So beautiful, through savage lands

Had roamed about, with vagrant bands

Of Indians in the West.

The wind, the tempest roaring high,
The tumult of a tropic sky,

Might well be dangerous food

For him, a Youth to whom was given

So much of earth so much of Heaven,

And such impetuous blood.

Whatever in those Climes he found

Irregular in sight or sound

Did to his mind impart

A kindred impulse, seemed allied

To his own powers, and justified
The workings of his heart.

Nor less, to feed voluptuous thought,

The beauteous forms of nature wrought,

Fair trees and lovely flowers;

The breezes their own languor lent;

The stars had feelings, which they sent

Into those gorgeous bowers.

Yet, in his worst pursuits, I ween

That sometimes there did intervene

Pure hopes of high intent:

For passions linked to forms so fair

And stately, needs must have their share Of noble sentiment.

But ill he lived, much evil saw

With men to whom no better law

Nor better life was known;

Deliberately, and undeceived,

Those wild men's vices he received,
And gave them back his own.

His genius and his moral frame
Were thus impaired, and he became
The slave of low desires;

A Man who without self-control

Would seek what the degraded soul
Unworthily admires.

And yet he with no feigned delight
Had wooed the Maiden, day and night

Had loved her, night and morn :

What could he less than love a Maid

Whose heart with so much nature played?

So kind and so forlorn!