Whose bright, airy tents filled the prairies with joy,
And the rain-plover sings o’er their white bones beside
The gray, crumbling Rock of the blue Illinois!
But often the boatman his moonlit oar lifts,
And holds in the air, and his boat gliding slow,
He listens—and o’er him a thin echo drifts.
“Ho! Ho!” and re-echoes “Ho! Ho!” and “Ho! Ho!”
Like the breath of the dying it comes, and is gone;
Like the shuddering leaves that the still frosts destroy,
And sweetly the rain-plover sings in the corn,