and successful warfare which he kept up at the head of a few daring followers, that they sent an officer to remonstrate with him for not coming into the open field and fighting 'like a gentleman and a Christian. (BRYANT.)

On the occasion of a reception given to Bryant in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1873, one of the speak-~ ers said that the 'Song of Marion's Men' had been sung in many a Southern bivouac, and warmed the soldier's heart at many a Confederate camp-fire.' See Godwin's Life of Bryant, vol. ii, pp. 330, 331.

2 In the edition of Bryant's poems published in England in 1832, and edited by Washington Irving, this line was changed to

The foeman trembles in his camp. Considerable discussion over this change arose later in America, of which a full account can be found in Bige low's Life of Bryant, pp. 129–139.

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,

1 See the account of Bryant's first visit to the West, in Godwin's Life, vol. i, pp. 282-286. Especially significant is a passage from Bryant's letter to Richard H. Dana: I have seen the great West, where I ate corn and hominy, slept in log houses, with twenty men, women, and children in the same room. ... At Jacksonville, where my two brothers live, I got on a horse, and travelled about a hundred miles to the northward over the immense prairies, with scattered settlements, on the edges of the groves. These prairies, of a soft, fortile garden soil, and a smooth undulating surface, on which you may put a horse to full speed, covered with high, thinly growing grass, full of weeds and gaudy flowers, and destitute of bushes or trees, perpetually brought to my mind the idea of their having been once cultivated. They looked to me like the fields of a race which had passed away, whose enclosures and habitations had decayed, but on whose vast and rich plains, smoothed and levelled by tillage, the forest had not yet encroached.'

mounds

That overlook the rivers, or that rise

In the dim forest crowded with old oaks, Answer. A race, that long has passed

die.

The white man's face among Missouri's springs,

And pools whose issues swell the Oregon He rears his little Venice. In these plains The bison feeds no more. Twice twenty leagues

Beyond remotest smoke of hunter's camp, Roams the majestic brute, in herds that shake

--

100

The earth with thundering steps — yet here I meet

His ancient footprints stamped beside the pool.

Still this great solitude is quick with life. Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds, And birds, that scarce have learned the fear of man,

Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground, Startlingly beautiful. The graceful deer Bounds to the wood at my approach. Th

bee,

A more adventurous colonist than man. 114

Are strong with struggling. Power at thee has launched

His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee;

They could not quench the life thou hast from heaven;

Merciless Power has dug thy dungeon deep,

And his swart armorers, by a thousand fires,

Have forged thy chain; yet, while he deems thee bound,

The links are shivered, and the prison-walls Fall outward; terribly thou springest forth, As springs the flame above a burning pile, And shoutest to the nations, who return 31 Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies.

Thy birthright was not given by human hands:

Thou wert twin-born with man. In pleasant fields,

While yet our race was few, thou sat'st with him,

To tend the quiet flock and watch the stars,
And teach the reed to utter simple airs.
Thou by his side, amid the tangled wood,
Didst war upon the panther and the wolf,
His only foes; and thou with him didst
draw

The earliest furrow on the mountain-side,
Soft with the deluge. Tyranny himself,
Thy enemy, although of reverend look,
Hoary with many years, and far obeyed,
Is later born than thou; and as he meets
The
grave defiance of thine elder eye,
The usurper trembles in his fastnesses.

40

And spring them on thy careless steps, and clap

His withered hands, and from their ambush call

His hordes to fall upon thee. He shall send

Quaint maskers, wearing fair and gallant forms

To catch thy gaze, and uttering graceful words

To charm thy ear; while his sly imps, by stealth,

Twine round thee threads of steel, light thread on thread,

That grow to fetters; or bind down thy

arms

O MOTHER of a mighty race,
Yet lovely in thy youthful grace!
The elder dames, thy haughty peers,
Admire and hate thy blooming years.
With words of shame
And taunts of scorn they join thy name.

For on thy cheeks the glow is spread
That tints thy morning hills with red;
Thy step the wild-deer's rustling feet
Within thy woods are not more fleet; o
Thy hopeful eye

Is bright as thine own sunny sky.