William Cullen Bryant

All that tread, The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom.

Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste.

The hills, Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun.

Go forth under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings.

To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language.

Wild was the day; the wintry sea Moaned sadly on New England's strand, When first the thoughtful and the free, Our fathers, trod the desert land.

The rugged trees are mingling Their flowery sprays in love; The ivy climbs the laurel To clasp the boughs above.

And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, And the year smiles as it draws near its death.

These struggling tides of life that seem In wayward, aimless course to tend, Are eddies of the mighty stream That rolls to its appointed end.

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again; The eternal years of God are hers; But Error, wounded, writhes with pain, And dies among his worshippers.

The victory of endurance born.

When April winds Grew soft, the maple burst into a flush Of scarlet flowers. The tulip tree, high up, Opened in airs of June her multitude Of golden chalices to humming-birds And silken-wing'd insects of the sky.

Heed not the night; a summer lodge amid the wild is mine — 'Tis shadowed by the tulip-tree, 'tis mantled by the vine.

The summer morn is bright and fresh, the birds are darting by, As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool clear sky.

These are the gardens of the Desert, these The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, For which the speech of England has no name— The Prairies.