Adventure, and endurance, and emprise And quick to draw the sword in private feud. As ever shaven cenobite. He loved As fiercely as he fought. He would have borne The maid that pleased him from her bower by night, To his hill-castle, as the eagle bears His victim from the fold, and rolled the rocks On his pursuers. He aspired to see His native Pisa queen and arbitress Of cities: earnestly for her he raised "He lived, the impersonation of an age That never shall return. His soul of fire Was kindled by the breath of the rude time He lived in. Now a gentler race succeeds, Shuddering at blood; the effeminate cavalier, Turning his eyes from the reproachful past, And from the hopeless future, gives to ease, And love, and music, his inglorious life." THE HUNTER OF THE PRAIRIES. Ay, this is freedom!-these pure skies And her who left the world for me, For here the fair savannas know No barriers in the bloomy grass ; In pastures, measureless as air, The bison is my noble game; The bounding elk, whose antlers tear Mine are the river-fowl that scream From the long stripe of waving sedge; The bear that marks my weapon's gleam, Hides vainly in the forest's edge; In vain the she-wolf stands at bay; The brinded catamount, that lies High in the boughs to watch his prey, Even in the act of springing, dies. With what free growth the elm and plane Of vines, as huge, and old, and gray! No taint in these fresh lawns and shades; Free spring the flowers that scent the wind Where never scythe has swept the glades. Alone the Fire, when frost-winds sere With roaring like the battle's sound, And hurrying flames that sweep the plain, And smoke-streams gushing up the sky: I meet the flames with flames again, Here, from dim woods, the aged past The boundless future in the vast And lonely river, seaward rolled. Who feeds its founts with rain and dew; Who moves, I ask, its gliding mass, And trains the bordering vines, whose blue Bright clusters tempt me as I pass? Broad are these streams-my steed obeys, That welcome my return at night. |