University of Virginia Library

Miami Woods! From busy scenes of life,
Of vaunting littleness and fretting state,
Of vain ambitions and repulsive pride,
Of sin, and sorrow, and nefarious wrong,
I come again for meditation, peace,
And healthful exercise, to these far haunts,
Where human passions have not yet destroy'd
The calm repose, the majesty, the might,
Of Nature. Summer here has garlanded
The pillars of these glorious temples round,
And laid the light mosaic floor, and built
The groinèd arches, and spread out above
The fretted roof. And here I gladly steal
From the hot glare of day, and from the strife
Of ever-clashing interests, that make
Society the thing it should not be,
Not only to commune with my own soul
In solitude, but 'mid these calm retreats
To contemplate the busy world without,
Its higher aims, its littleness, its pride,
And the gigantic meannesses that make
Sin of repute by contrast! ... Come with me,
Ye whose hearts sicken at the tales of woe,
Oppression, avarice, hatred, lust and war,
Which faster than the winds now fly about:
Stand with me here upon the forest's edge,
And look out on the quiet, happy homes,
That dot the landscape, each with plenty bless'd,
And crown'd with sweet content, so rarely found:
See the broad, sunny fields of ripening grain,
How peacefully they lie! the orchards see,
Loaded with shining fruits! the garden spots,
Bright with their vegetation! and the wide,
Smooth meadow-lands, with lowing herds alive,
And bleating flocks! Look out upon it all—
Its peace, its plenty, its sequestered joys—
And say if this shall e'er become the scene
Of blood and carnage: if disastrous war,
With rampant horrors and unsparing lust,
Shall ever desolate these happy homes!
—The plains of Greece, Italia's sunny vales,
All Europe's broad expanse, fit answer give,
If human passions rule without restraint,
And bold ambition be not held in check.

What is the lesson of the past? O'er earth,—
So runs the bloody chronicle,—the sword
Has claim'd dominion ever. By the plow
Patient and toiling industry has striven,
And turn'd the soil, and planted; but the sword
Has cut the harvest, and its myrmidons
Have filled their garners first. To charge and hold
The distaff, and to ply the busy wheel,
Has been the woman's office; but the spear
Has caught the thread upon its gory point,
And had it woven into trappings gay
For conquering legions. Where the falchion flash'd
The cross has crumbled: where the battle-shout
Has risen, there the prayer has died away:
And in the populous valleys, where the tramp
Of armèd hosts has sounded like the sea,
'Mid rapine, and debauch, and smoke, and flame,
The happy homes of innocence and peace
Have disappeared. Ambition, leagued with lust,
Laid his red hand upon the ancient world,
And it stood still with terror.—Earth again,
In these the later years, has been the scene
Of deadliest conflicts, till terrific throes
Have rent the bosom of society.
Thrones then have rock'd, and rulers stood aghast,
As if this solid and substantial orb
Were quaking under them, and gaping seams
Hissed for their quick engulfment. Wild, and fierce,
And desolating periods have pass'd,
Till Horror's maw was glutted, and he sank
Sated with blood. Peace then has come again,
With her benignant voice, and countenance
Haloed like a divinity's; and men,
Led captive by her many beautiful ways,
And by the majesty that girt her round,
And by the providence that she displayed,
And by the prosperous arts that sprung to life
Where'er she pass'd, have risen and followed her.

But still the sword asserts dominion; still
War eateth out the substance of the lands:
And when, oh! when shall human tongue proclaim,
Peace is the throned divinity of Earth!
Order and Freedom are her ministers!

Order and Freedom! this God's highest gift,
That his primordial law—distinct, yet one—
For without union neither can endure,
This running wild, that darting from the grooves
Of due adjustment. How the equipoise
Fails in the roll of nations from the first!
That is not Freedom, which of old in Greece
Oiled the glib tongues of cunning orators,
Till with proclaimed respect for human rights
The walls of senates echoed that which was,
If not the hollowest mockery and scorn,
A blistering satire on the very name
Of Liberty. That is not Freedom which
Has fed so oft Parisian guillotines
With blood that cried to God and man for quick
And terrible revenge. Nor freedom that,
No matter who or what may call it so,
Which is, in any form, but foul misuse
Of liberty to think, and speak, and act:
'T is but licentiousness, and soon or late,
By boisterous and brutish courses, thwarts
The end it aims at. Nor is Order that
Which reigned in Warsaw, when the red-winged scourge
From Russia madly swept o'er Poland's plains.
Nor Order that which gave to modern Rome
A seeming quiet, when the serried ranks
Pass'd from the bubbling chaos that is France,
And stifled the awakening soul of Right
And Freedom on the fields of old renown.
Order is never that, whate'er its name,
Which moves engirt by intellectual thralls,
Or bristling iron flashing stern command:
This is but chain'd disorder, that, with eyes
Which never sleep, and sinews ne'er unbraced,
Watches and waits its moment, when, self-loosed,
It breaks all bounds, and mocks all consequence—
Prostrating by its fierce, convulsive throes,
Order and freedom both: then Chaos reigns.

Dread picture—dark and dread! My Country, thou
Who sitt'st among the nations like a queen
On whom all eyes are fixed, upon thy brow
The Khoinoor of regal gems in worn—
The Mount of Light, within whose steady ray
The wandering feet of millions hither tend:
Oh, may the blight of faction, and the curse
Of dark cabal, be spared thy generous breast!
Thou art the hope of Freedom, and the dread
Of Tyranny. Within thy bosom lies
A nursling giant, slumbering now, who thence
Shall draw the strength which fabling bards of old
Bestowed on world-sustaining Atlas. Grant,
Oh, Thou who mak'st the courses of the stars,
And art no less the guide and guard of man,
That when this germ of mightiest power shall reach
Its certain and its due development,
It shall not smite, with matricidal hand,
The bosom that hath nourished it; but give
Its majesty of strength, its cumulate
Of wisdom, its capacity for good,
To Man, to Truth, to Freedom, and to God!

Time writes upon the earth, in many ways,
Wise admonition, that man's eagle eye,
Bent on the stars in cold ambition's heaven,
Stoops not to read. The far-away, the dim,
The difficult, who sees not? 'T is the plain,
Whose lessons lie along our daily paths,
That none behold, or comprehend. And yet,
The palpable is eloquent. There lies
A column, where a Grecian temple stood:
There stands a crumbling wall where Roman might
Built up its proudest structure:—Both relate
The self-same story of aggressive power,
Of wild ambition for extended rule,
And of intestine strifes that live on blood,
And die in desolation. Far away
From these dark relics and their lesson—far,
Where the adventurous Genoese descried
Another world, and gave it to the free,
There hangs a picture of gigantic size
And wonderful design. Although, as yet,
In any part unfinished, and in some
Almost untouched, it still displays in all
A towering genius, and a master hand.
It shows a nearly limitless expanse
Of hill and vale, of mountain and of plain.
Wide-spreading forests strike the wildered eye,
At first, of gorgeous foliage, varied hue,
And most majestic height. Savannas green
Between the mountain ranges stretch away,
Till in the endless wood they lose themselves,
Or mingle with the sky, and of its blue
Become an undistinguishable part.
Down the deep gorges of the mountain sides
Careering torrents tumble. Runnels leap
In cataracts white as wool from rock to rock,
And plunge in dark abysses. O'er the plains
Gigantic rivers hold their solemn way,
Now disappearing in the wilderness,
Now flashing back the light of sun and stars.
Far in the background of this wondrous scene,
Where matchless Power has stooped and hollowed out
Stupendous basins in the eternal rock,
Vast lakes repose in majesty, that have
No parallels on earth. Minuter view,
Scanning the picture close in all its parts,
Discloses habitations on the slopes
Of gentle hills, and sunny intervales
Covered with grain, and orchards bending low
With rich and ripening fruits, and grassy fields
Where the cow fills her udder, and the lamb
Crops undisturbed. And other scrutiny
Reveals the prosperous city here and there,
Wherein are practiced the fair arts of peace,
And virtue brings its crowning joy, content.
The prostrate column, and the crumbling wall,
That tell of desolation, are not here.
No footprints of the Past reveal themselves
O'er all this wide domain, save in the wrecks
Of an extinguished race that lie around—
The tomb, the altar and the citadel,
Which Time in his long lapse has robed in green
Softer than velvet, making beautiful
Not only what were desolation else,
But the wide prospect round. The pillar'd pride
Of lofty groves, the dark luxuriant growth
Of virgin plains, and the resistless sweep
Of rivers on whose marge the bison-herd
And antlered elk feed quietly, proclaim,
That for the footsteps of the Future, here
Lie the appointed ways. Above the lone
And prostrate column, Memory may weep,
And by the crumbling wall: but joyous Hope
Comes with high courage and elastic limb,
And to each mountain of this marvelous scene,
And to each valley, points and leads the way.

Ah! Hope is strong to nations—strong to me:
But the bright ray that broke upon my path
When last I wandered in these silent shades,
Soon blackened like the night around my heart:
For darkness dreader than its first eclipse
O'erwhelmed again that young and struggling mind,
Which here had opened first to gleams of Truth,
And brightened to the Beautiful around.

Miami Woods! from these sequestered haunts
For many a long and weary month, till now,
Again I've been an exile, sick at heart,
And brooding o'er the sorrow of my life—
A sorrow that has been baptized in tears
So often, it is holier grown than love,
Or hope, or memories that perish not.

Again I stand by the remembered shrines
At which she earliest worship'd God with me.
How strongly seems her youthful impress fixed
On every thing around! E'en now my soul
Is busy with a faint and simple chime,
To which the waving leaf and murmuring breeze
Bear sweet accompaniment, in full accord.

Sad, soothing chime—it lingers on the air
In sweet reverberations, like the sounds
Of far-off bells, that in the hush of night
Cease not, but pass into our dreams; and now,
The waving leaf and murmuring breeze prolong
Its closing cadence, till the creeping brook,
The tinkling water-fall, the drowsy eve,
Repeat the burden, echoing to my heart
In plaintive measures, “Far, ah! far away!”