The Fall of the Leaf :: :: University of Virginia Library

Which love thee most of all the timid race
That traverse the wide region of the air?
—The bird of wisdom and the bird of love.—
Deep in his solitude immured the day,
At thy approach, the Owl,—pensive and wise,—
Forsakes his haunts, and flits from tree to tree,
As if he fear'd the earth.—The Nightingale?
With many a deep-toned orison she hails
Thy rising beam, and fills the forest wide
With warblings, grateful to a poet's ear.—
Beneath thy ray, in other climes, the moth
Flits with light wing, from slumbering shrub to shrub:

The Hippotamus, in circumference vast,
From whose rich blood the Indian artist draws
His tints of purple, leaves the slimy bed
Of Nile or Niger; and, as evening draws
Her mystic robe, devours the sugary cane.
The Armadillo, too, with pliant bands
Circling its back, and cover'd with a shell,
Forming an animal, distinct from all
That live on herbage, slumbers through the day;
And like the Tapir, roving through the woods
Of sea-girt Darien, or the Amazon,
Crops its pure food from sunset to the morn.