And consecrated ground it is, The last, the hallowed home of one Who lives upon all memories, Though with the buried gone. Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines, Sages, with wisdom's garland wreathed, Crowned kings, and mitred priests of power, And warriors with their bright swords sheathed, The mightiest of the hour; And lowlier names, whose humble home Is lit by Fortune's dimmer star, Are there-o'er wave and mountain come, From countries near and far; Pilgrims whose wandering feet have prest All ask the cottage of his birth, Gaze on the scenes he loved and sung, And gather feelings not of earth His fields and streams among. They linger by the Doon's low trees, But what to them the sculptor's art, His funeral columns, wreaths, and urns? Wear they not graven on the heart The name of Robert Burns? WYOMING. 5 "Dites si la Nature n'a pas fait ce beau pays pour une Julie, pour une Claire, et pour un St. Preux, mais ne les y cherchez pas.” ROUSSEAU. I. THOU Com'st, in beauty, on my gaze at last, I breathed, in fancy, 'neath thy cloudless skies, The summer's air, and heard her echoed harmonies. II. I then but dreamed: thou art before me now, I've stood upon the wooded mountain's brow, And now, where winds thy river's greenest shore, And winds, as soft and sweet as ever bore The fragrance of wild flowers through sun and shade, Are singing in the trees, whose low boughs press my head. III. Nature hath made thee lovelier than the power With more of truth, and made each rock and tree In the dark legends of thy border war, With woes of deeper tint than his own Gertrude's are. IV. But where are they, the beings of the mind, We need not ask. The people of to-day With manners like their roads, a little rough, And hands whose grasp is warm and welcoming, tho' tough. V. Judge Hallenbach, who keeps the toll-bridge gate, Of Wyoming: like him, in church and state, The thin hairs, white with seventy winters' snow, To frighten flocks of crows and blackbirds from the grain. |