XXI
"To him who, in the love of Nature, holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language."
Thanatopsis.
"The sunny Italy may boast
The beauteous tints that flush her skies,
And lovely round the Grecian coast
May thy blue pillars rise:
I only know how fair they stand
About my own beloved land."
The Skies.—Bryant.
To the man of cultivated imagination and delicate taste, the study of nature never fails to afford a gratification, refined as it is exquisite. In the pencilled petals of the flower as it bows to the evening breeze; in the glittering scales of the fish leaping from the wave; in the splendid plumage of the forest-bird, and in the music-tinklings of the wreathed and enamelled sea-shell rocked by the billow, he recognises an eloquence of beauty which he alone can appreciate. For him, too, the myriad forms of animate creation unite with inanimate nature in one mighty hymn of glory to their Maker, from the hum of the sparkling ephemeroid as he blithely dances away his little life in the beams of a summer sun, and the rustling music of the prairie-weed swept by the winds, to the roar of the shaggy woods upon the mountain-side, and the fierce, wild shriek of the ocean-eagle. To investigate [234] the more minute and delicate of Nature's workings is indeed a delightful task; and along this fairy and flowery pathway the cultivated fancy revels with unmingled gratification; but, as the mind approaches the vaster exhibitions of might and majesty, the booming of the troubled ocean, the terrible sublimity of the midnight storm, the cloudy magnificence of the mountain height, the venerable grandeur of the aged forest, it expands itself in unison till lost in the immensity of created things. Reflections like these are constantly suggesting themselves to the traveller's thoughts amid the grand scenery of the West; but at no season do they rise more vividly upon the mind than when the lengthened shadows of evening are stealing over the landscape, and the summer sun is sinking to his rest. This is the "magic hour" when
"Bright clouds are gathering one by one,
Sweeping in pomp round the dying sun;
With crimson banner and golden pall,
Like a host to their chieftain's funeral."
There is not a more magnificent spectacle in nature than summer sunset on the Western prairie. I have beheld the orb of day, after careering his course like a giant through the firmament, go down into the fresh tumbling billows of ocean; and sunset on the prairies, which recalls that scene, is alone equalled by it.
Near nightfall one evening I found myself in the middle of one of these vast extended plains, where the eye roves unconfined over the scene, for miles unrelieved by a stump, or a tree, or a thicket, and meets only the deep blue of the horizon on [235] every side, blending with the billowy foliage of the distant woodland. Descending a graceful slope, even this object is lost, and a boundless landscape of blue above and green below is unfolded to the traveller's vision; again, approaching the summit of the succeeding slope, the forest rises in clear outline in the margin of the vast panorama. For some hours the heavens had been so enveloped in huge masses of brassy clouds, that now, when the shadows deepened over sky and earth, one was at a loss to determine whether the sun had yet gone down, except for a broad zone of sapphire girding the whole western firmament. Upon the superior edge of this deep belt now glistened the luminary, gradually revealing itself to the eye, and blazing forth at length "like angels' locks unshorn," flinging a halo of golden effulgence far athwart the dim evening prairie. A metamorphosis so abrupt, so rapid, so unlooked for, seemed almost to realize the fables of enchantment. One moment, and the whole vast landscape lay veiled in shadowy dimness; the next, and every grass blade, and spray, and floweret, and nodding wild-weed seemed suffused in a flood of liquid effulgence; while far along, the uniform ridges of the heaving plain gleamed in the rich light like waves of a moonlit sea, sweeping away, roll upon roll, till lost in distance to the eye. Slowly the splendid disk went down behind the sea of waving verdure, until at length a single point of intense, bewildering brightness flamed out above the mass of green. An instant, this too was gone—as
"An angel's wing through an opening cloud,
Is seen and then withdrawn:"—
[236] and then those deep, lurid funeral fires of departing day streamed, flaring upward even to the zenith, flinging over the vast concave a robe of unearthly, terrible magnificence! Then, as the fount of all this splendour sank deeper and deeper beneath the horizon, the blood-red flames died gently away into the mellow glories of summer evening skylight, bathing the brow of heaven in a tender roseate, which hours after cheered the lonely traveller across the waste.
The pilgrim wanderer in other climes comes back to tell us of sunnier skies and softer winds! The blue heavens of Italy have tasked the inspiration of an hundred bards, and the warm brush of her own Lorraine has swept the canvass with their gorgeous transcript! But what pencil has wandered over the grander scenes of the North American prairie? What bard has struck his lyre to the wild melody of loveliness of the prairie sunset? Yet who shall tell us that there exists not a glory in the scene, amid the untrod wastes of the wilderness West, which even the skies of "sunny Italy" might not blush anew to acknowledge? No wandering Harold has roamed on a pilgrimage of poetry over the sublime and romantic scenery of our land, to hymn its praise in breathing thoughts and glowing words; yet here as there,