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
