Page:Summer on the lakes, in 1843.djvu/82

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72
SUMMER ON THE LAKES.
III.
O fair, but fickle lady-moon,
 Why must thy full form ever wane?
O love! O friendship! why so soon
 Must your sweet light recede again?
I wake me in the dead of night,
 And start, — for through the misty gloom
Red Hecate stares — a boding sight! —
 Looks in, but never fills my room.
 
Thou music of my boyhood's hour!
 Thou shining light on manhood's way!
No more dost thou fair influence shower
 To move my soul by night or day.
O strange! that while in hall and street
 Thy hand I touch, thy grace I meet,
Such miles of polar ice should part
 The slightest touch of mind and heart!
But all thy love has waned, and so
 I gladly let thy beauty go.


Now that I am borrowing, I will also give a letter received at this time, and extracts from others from an earlier traveller, and in a different region of the country from that I saw, which, I think, in different ways, admirably descriptive of the country.

“And you, too, love the Prairies, flying voyager of a summer hour; but I have only there owned the wild forest, the wide-spread meadows; there only built my house, and seen the livelong day the thoughtful shadows of the great clouds color, with all-transient browns, the untrampled floor of grass; there has Spring pranked the long smooth reaches with