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Upon the rocky
mountain stood
the boy,
goblet of pure water in his
hand;
His face and form spoke him one made for joy,
A willing servant to sweet love's command,
But a strange pain was written on his brow,
And thrilled throughout his silver accents
now[—].
"My bird,"
he cries,
"my destined brother friend,
O whither fleets to-day thy wayward flight?
Hast thou forgotten that I here attend,
From the full noon until this sad twilight?
A hundred times, at least, from the clear spring,
the full noon o'er hill and valley glowed,
I've filled the vase which our Olympian king
Upon my care for thy sole use bestowed;
That, at the moment when thou
should'st descend,
A pure refreshment might thy thirst attend.
41
"Hast thou forgotten earth,
forgotten
me,
Thy fellow bondsman in a royal cause,
Who, from the sadness of infinity,
Only with thee can know that peaceful pause
In which we catch the flowing strain of love,
Which binds our dim fates to the throne of Jove?
"Before I saw thee, I was like
the May,
Longing for summer that must mar its bloom,
Or like the morning star that calls the day,
Whose glories to its promise are the tomb;
And as the eager fountain rises higher
To throw itself more strongly back to
earth,
Still, as more sweet and full rose my desire,
More fondly it reverted to its birth,
For, what the rosebud seeks tells not the rose,
The meaning foretold by the boy the man cannot disclose.
"I was all Spring, for in my
being dwelt
Eternal youth, where flowers are the
fruit;
Full feeling was the thought of what was felt,
Its music was the meaning of the lute;
But heaven and earth such life will still deny,
For earth, divorced from heaven, still asks the question Why?
"Upon the highest mountains my
young feet
Ached, that no pinions from their lightness
grew,
My starlike eyes the stars would fondly greet,
Yet win no greeting from the circling blue;
Fair, self-subsistent each in its own sphere,
They had no care that there was none for
me;
Alike to them that I was far or near,
Alike to them, time and eternity.
"But, from the violet of lower
air,
Sometimes an answer to my wishing
came;
Those lightning-births my nature seemed to
share,
They told the secrets of its fiery frame,
The sudden messengers of hate and love,
The thunderbolts that arm the hand of Jove,
And strike sometimes the sacred spire, and strike the sacred
grove.
42
"Come in a moment, in a moment
gone,
They answered me, then left me still more lone;
They told me that the thought which ruled the world,
As yet no sail upon its course had furled,
That the creation was but just begun,
New leaves still leaving from the primal one,
But spoke not of the goal to which my rapid wheels would
run.
"Still, still my eyes, though
tearfully,
I strained
To the far future which my heart contained,
And no dull doubt my proper hope profaned.
"At last, O bliss!
thy living form I spied,
Then a mere speck upon a distant
sky;
Yet my keen glance discerned its noble pride,
And the full answer of that sun-filled eye;
I knew it was the wing that must upbear
My earthlier form into the realms of air.
"Thou knowest how we gained
that beauteous
height,
Where dwells the monarch of the sons of light;
Thou knowest he declared us two to be
The chosen servants of his ministry,
Thou as his messenger, a sacred sign
Of conquest, or with omen more benign,
To give its due weight to the righteous cause,
To express the verdict of Olympian laws.
And I to wait upon
the lonely
spring,
Which slakes the thirst of bards to whom
'tis given
The destined dues of hopes divine to sing,
And weave the needed chain to bind to
heaven.
Only from such could be obtained a draught
For him who in his early home from Jove's own cup has
quaffed.
"To
wait, to wait, but not to wait too long,
Till heavy grows the burden of a song;
O bird! too long hast thou been gone to-day,
My feet are weary of their frequent way,
The spell that opes the spring my tongue no more can say.
43
"If soon thou com'st not,
night will fall
around,
My head with a sad slumber will be bound,
And the pure draught be spilt upon the ground.
"Remember that I am not yet
divine,
Long years of service to the fatal Nine
Are yet to make a Delphian vigor mine.
O, make them not too
hard, thou
bird of Jove!
Answer the stripling's hope, confirm his love,
Receive the service in which he delights,
And bear him often to the serene heights,
Where hands that were so prompt in serving thee[,]
Shall be allowed the highest ministry,
And Rapture live with bright Fidelity. "
The afternoon was spent
in a very
different manner. The family, whose guests we
were,
possessed a gay and graceful hospitality that gave zest to each
moment.
They possessed that rare politeness which, while fertile in
pleasant expedients
to vary the enjoyment of a friend, leaves him perfectly free the
moment
he wishes to be so. With such hosts, pleasure may be combined
with repose.
They lived on the bank opposite the town, and, as their house was
full,
we slept in the town, and, as their house was full, we slept in
the town,
and
passed three days with them,
passing to
and fro morning and evening in their boats. [ ( ]To
one of these, called the Fairy, in which a sweet little daughter
of the
house moved about lighter than any Scotch Ellen ever sung, I
should indite
a poem, if I had not been guilty of rhyme on the very last
page.[ )
]
At morning this was very pleasant; at evening, I confess I was
generally
too tired with the excitements of the day to think it so.
Their house—a
double log-cabin—was,
to my eye, the model of a Western villa. Nature had laid out
before it grounds
which could not be improved. Within, female taste had veiled
every rudeness—availed
itself of every sylvan grace.
[
LOG CABIN AT ROCK RIVER ]
In this charming abode
what laughter,
what sweet thoughts, what pleasing fancies, did we not enjoy! May
such never
desert those who reared it, and made us so kindly welcome
to all
its pleasures!
Fragments of city life
were dexterously
crumbled into the dish
44
prepared for general
entertainment.
Ice-creams followed the
dinner, which
was drawn by the gentlemen from
the river,
and music and fireworks wound up the evening of days spent on the
Eagle's
Nest. Now they had prepared a little fleet to pass over to the
Fourth of
July celebration, which some queer drumming and fifing, from the
opposite
bank, had announced to be "on hand."
We found the free and
independent
citizens there collected beneath the trees, among whom many a
round Irish
visage dimpled at the usual puffs of "Ameriky."
The orator was a New
Englander,
and the speech smacked loudly of Boston, but was received with
much applause[,]
and followed by a plentiful dinner, provided by and for the
Sovereign People,
to which Hail Columbia served as grace.
Returning, the gay
flotilla [hailed]
cheered
the little flag which the children had raised from a log-cabin,
prettier
than any president ever saw, and drank the health of [their]
our country and all
mankind,
with a clear conscience.
Dance and song wound up
the day.
I know not when the mere local habitation has seemed to me to
afford so
fair a chance of happiness as this. To a person of unspoiled
tastes, the
beauty alone would afford stimulus enough. But with it would be
naturally
associated all kinds of wild sports, experiments, and the studies
of natural
history. In these regards, the poet, the sportsman, the
naturalist, would
alike rejoice in this wide range of untouched loveliness.
Then, with a very
little money,
a ducal estate may be purchased, and by a very little more, and
moderate
labor, a family be maintained upon it with raiment,
food,
and shelter. The luxurious and minute comforts of a city life are
not yet
to be had without effort disproportionate to their value. But,
where there
is so great a counterpoise, cannot these be given up once for
all? If the
houses are imperfectly built, they can afford immense fires and
plenty of
covering; if they are small, who cares,—with such fields to roam
in?
in winter, it may be borne; in
summer,
is of no consequence. With plenty of fish, and game, and wheat,
45
can they not dispense
with a baker
to bring "muffins hot" every morning to the door for
their breakfast?
Here a man need not
take a small
slice from the landscape, and fence it in from the obtrusions of
an uncongenial
neighbor, and there cut down his fancies to
miniature improvements which a chicken could run over in ten
minutes. He
may have water and wood and land enough, to dread no incursions
on his prospect
from some chance Vandal that may enter his neighborhood. He need
not painfully
economize and manage how he may use it
all; he
can afford to leave some of it wild, and to carry out his own
plans without
obliterating those of Nature.
Here, whole families
might live
together; if they would. The sons might return from their
pilgrimages to
settle near the parent hearth; the daughters might find room near
their
mother. Those painful separations, which already desecrate and
desolate
the Atlantic coast, are not enforced here by the stern need of
seeking bread;
and where they are voluntary, it is no matter. To me, too, used
to the feelings
which haunt a society of struggling men, it was delightful to
look upon
a scene where Nature still wore her motherly
smile,
and seemed to promise room, not only for those favored or
cursed
with the qualities best adapting for the strifes of competition,
but for
the delicate, the thoughtful, even the indolent or eccentric. She
did not
say, Fight or starve; nor even, Work or cease to exist; but,
merely showing
that the apple was a finer fruit than the wild crab, gave both
room to grow
in the garden.
A pleasant society is
formed of
the families who live along the banks of this
stream
upon farms. They are from various parts of the world, and have
much to communicate
to one another. Many have cultivated minds and refined manners,
all a varied
experience, while they have in common the interests of
a new country and a new life. They must traverse some space to
get at one
another, but the journey is through scenes that make it a
separate pleasure.
They must bear inconveniences to stay in one another's houses;
but these,
to the well-disposed, are only a source of amusement and
adventure.
46
The great drawback upon
the lives
of these settlers, at present, is the unfitness of the women for
their new
lot. It has generally been the choice of the men, and the women
follow,
as women will, doing their best for affection's sake, but too
often in heart-sickness
and weariness. Beside, it frequently not being a
choice or conviction
of their own minds that it is best to be here, their part is the
hardest,
and they are least fitted for it. The men can find assistance in
field labor,
and recreation with the gun and fishing-rod. Their bodily
strength is greater,
and enables them to bear and enjoy both these forms of life.
The women can rarely
find any
aid in domestic labor. All its various and careful tasks must
often be performed,
sick, or well, by the mother and
daughters,
to whom a city education has imparted neither the strength nor
skill now
demanded.
The wives of the poorer
settlers,
having more hard work to do than before, very frequently become
slatterns;
but the ladies, accustomed to a refined neatness, feel that they
cannot
degrade themselves by its absence, and struggle under every
disadvantage
to keep up the necessary routine of small arrangements.
With all these
disadvantages for
work, their resources for pleasure are fewer. When they can
leave
the housework, they have
not learnt
to ride, to drive, to row, alone. Their culture has too generally
been that
given to women to make them "the ornaments of society."
They can
dance, but not draw; talk French, but know nothing of the
language of flowers;
neither in childhood were allowed to cultivate them, lest they
should tan
their complexions. Accustomed to the pavement of Broadway, they
dare not
tread the wildwood paths for fear of rattlesnakes!
Seeing much of this
joylessness,
and inaptitude, both of body and mind, for a lot which would be
full of
blessings for those prepared for it, we could not but look with
deep interest
on the little girls, and hope they would grow up with the
strength of body,
dexterity, simple tastes, and resources that would fit them to
enjoy and
refine the Western farmer's life.
But they have a great
deal to
war with in the habits of thought acquired by their mothers from
their own
early life.
47
Everywhere the fatal
spirit of
imitation, of reference to European standards, penetrates, and
threatens
to blight whatever of original growth might adorn the soil.
If the little girls
grow up strong,
resolute, able to exert their faculties, their mothers mourn over
their
want of fashionable delicacy. Are they gay, enterprising, ready
to fly about
in the various ways that teach them so much, these ladies lament
that "they
cannot go to school, where they might learn to be quiet."
They lament
the want of "education" for their daughters, as if the
thousand
needs which call out their young energies, and the language of
nature around,
yielded no education.
Their grand ambition
for their
children, is to send them to school in some Eastern
city, the measure most likely to make them useless and unhappy at
home.
I earnestly hope that, ere long, the existence of good schools
near themselves,
planned by persons of sufficient thought to meet the wants of the
place
and time, instead of copying New York or Boston, will correct
this mania.
Instruction the children want to enable them to profit by the
great natural
advantages of their position; but methods copied from the
education of some
English Lady Augusta[,] are as ill suited to the
daughter of
an Illinois farmer, as satin shoes to climb the Indian mounds. An
elegance
she would diffuse around her, if her mind were opened to
appreciate elegance;
it might be of a kind new, original, enchanting, as different
from that
of the city belle as that of the prairie torch-flower from the
shop-worn
article that touches the check of that lady within
her bonnet.
To a girl really
skilled to make
home beautiful and comfortable, with bodily strength to enjoy
plenty of
exercise, the woods, the streams, a few studies, music, and the
sincere
and familiar intercourse, far more easily to be met here than
elsewhere,
would afford happiness enough. Her eyes would not grow dim, nor
her cheeks
sunken, in the absence of parties, morning visits, and milliner's
shops.
As to music, I wish I
could see
in such places the guitar rather than the piano, and good vocal
more than
instrumental music.
48
The piano many carry
with them,
because it is the fashionable instrument in the Eastern
cities. Even there, it is so merely from the habit of imitating
Europe,
for not one in a thousand is willing to
give the
labor requisite to ensure any valuable use of the instrument.
But[,]
out here, where the ladies have so much
less leisure,
it is still less desirable. Add to this, they never know how to
tune their
own instruments, and as persons seldom visit them who can do so,
these pianos
are constantly out of tune, and would spoil the ear of one who
began by
having any.
The guitar, or some
portable instrument
which requires less practice, and could be kept in tune by
themselves, would
be far more desirable for most of these ladies. It would give all
they want
as a household companion to fill up the gaps of life with a
pleasant stimulus
or solace, and be sufficient accompaniment to the voice in social
meetings.
Singing in parts is the
most delightful
family amusement, and those who are constantly together can learn
to sing
in perfect accord. All the practice it needs, after some good
elementary
instruction, is such as meetings by summer twilight, and evening
firelight
naturally suggest. And[,] as music is an universal
language, we
cannot but think a fine Italian duet would be as much at home in
the log
cabin as one of Mrs. Gore's novels.
The 6th of July
we left this beautiful place. It was one of those rich days of
bright sunlight,
varied by the purple shadows of large, sweeping clouds. Many a
backward look
we cast, and left the heart
behind.
Our journey to-day was
no less
delightful than before, still
all new, boundless, limitless. Kinmont says, that limits are
sacred; that
the Greeks were in the right to worship a god of limits. I say,
that what
is limitless is alone divine, that there was neither wall nor
road in Eden,
that those who walked there lost and found their way just as we
did, and
that all the gain from the Fall was that we had a wagon to ride
in. I do
not think, either, that even the horses doubted whether this last
was any
advantage.
Everywhere the
rattlesnake-weed
grows in profusion. The
49
antidote survives the
bane. Soon
the coarser plantain, the "white man's footstep," shall
take its
place.
We saw also the
compass-plant,
and the Western tea-plant.
Of some of the brightest flowers an Indian girl afterwards told
me the medicinal
virtues. I doubt not those students of the soil knew a use to
every fair
emblem, on which we could only look to admire its hues and shape.
After noon we were
ferried by
a girl, (unfortunately not of the most picturesque appearance)
across the
Kishwaukie, the most graceful
of
streams, and on whose bosom rested
many full-blown
water-lilies,— twice as large as any of ours.
I was
told that, en revanche,
they
were scentless,
but I still regret that I could not get at one of them to try.
[deletes paragraph break] Query,
did the lilied fragrance which, in the miraculous times,
accompanied visions
of saints and angels, proceed from water or garden lilies?
Kishwaukie is,
according to tradition,
the scene of a famous battle, and its many grassy mounds
contain
the bones of the valiant. On these waved thickly the mysterious
purple flower,
of which I have spoken before. I think it springs from the blood
of the
Indians, as the hyacinth did from that of Apollo's darling.
The ladies of our
host's family
at Oregon, when they first went there, after all the pains and
plagues of
building and settling, found their first pastime in opening one
of these
mounds, in which they found, I think, three of the departed,
seated in the
Indian fashion.
One of these same
ladies, as she
was making bread one winter morning, saw from the window a deer
directly
before the house. She ran out, with her hands covered with dough,
calling
the others, and they caught him bodily before he had time to
escape.
Here (at Kishwaukie) we
received
a visit from a ragged and barefooted, but bright-eyed gentleman,
who seemed
to be the intellectual loafer, the walking Will's coffeehouse of
the place.
He told us many charming snake stories; among others, of himself
having
seen seventeen young ones re-enter the mother snake, on the
[intrusion]
approach
of a visitor.
This night we reached
Belvidere,
a flourishing town in Boon
50
County, where was the tomb, now
despoiled,
of Big Thunder. In this later day we felt happy to find a really
good hotel.
From this place, by two
days of
very leisurely and devious journeying, we reached Chicago, and
thus ended
a journey, which one at least of the party might have wished
unending.
I have not been
particularly anxious
to give the geography of the scene, inasmuch as it seemed to me
no route,
nor series of stations, but a garden interspersed with cottages,
groves,
and flowery lawns, through which a stately river ran. I had no
guide-book,
kept no diary, do not know how many miles we travelled each day,
nor how
many in all. What I got from the journey was the poetic
impression of the
country at large; it is all I have aimed to communicate.
The narrative might
have been
made much more interesting, as life was at the time, by many
piquant anecdotes
and tales drawn from private life. But here courtesy restrains
the pen,
for I know those who received the stranger with such frank
kindness would
feel ill requited by its becoming the means of fixing many
spy-glasses,
even though the scrutiny might be one of admiring interest, upon
their private
homes.
For many of these
anecdotes, too, I was indebted to a
friend, whose
property they more lawfully are. This friend was one of those
rare beings
who are equally at home in nature and with man. He knew a tale of
all that
ran and swam, and flew, or only grew, possessing that extensive
familiarity
with things which shows equal sweetness of sympathy and playful
penetration.
Most refreshing to me was his unstudied lore, the unwritten
poetry which
common life presents to a strong and gentle mind. It was a great
contrast
to the subtleties of analysis, the philosophic strainings of
which I had
seen too much. But I will not attempt to transplant it. May it
profit others
as it did me in the region where it was born, where it belongs.
[Adds
paragraph
break] The evening
of our return
to Chicago, the sunset was of a splendor
and calmness
beyond any we saw at the West. The twilight that succeeded was
equally beautiful;
soft, pathetic, but just so calm. When afterwards I learned this
was the
evening
51
of Allston's death, it seemed to me as if this glorious
pageant was not
without connection with that event; at least, it inspired similar
emotions,—a
heavenly gate closing a path adorned with shows well worthy
Paradise.
FAREWELL TO ROCK RIVER VALLEY.
Farewell, ye soft and sumptuous
solitudes!
Ye fairy distances, ye lordly woods,
Haunted by paths like those that Poussin knew,
When after his all gazers' eyes he drew;
I go, — and if I never more may steep
An eager heart in your enchantments deep,
Yet ever to itself that heart may say,
Be not exacting; thou hast lived one day,—
Hast looked on that which matches with thy mood,
Impassioned sweetness of full being's flood,
Where nothing checked the bold yet gentle wave,
Where nought repelled the lavish love that gave.
A tender blessing lingers o'er the scene,
Like some young mother's thought, fond, yet serene,
And through its life new-born our lives have been.
Once more farewell,— a sad, a
sweet farewell;
And, if I never must behold you more,
In other worlds I will not cease to tell
The rosary I here have numbered o'er;
And bright-haired Hope will lend a gladdened ear,
And Love will free him from the grasp of Fear,
And Gorgon Critics,
while the tale they hear,
Shall dew their stony glances with a tear,
If I but catch one echo from your spell; —
And so farewell,— a grateful, sad farewell!
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