Enfant, je dis un soir: Adieu, ma bonne mère!
Et je quittai gaîment sa maison et sa terre,
Enfant, dans mon exil, une lettre, un matin,
(O Louise!) m'apprit que j'étais orphelin!
Enfant, je vis les bois du Kentucky sauvage,
Et l'homme se souvient des bois de son jeune âge!
Ah! dans le Kentucky les arbres sont bien beaux:
C'est la terre de sang, aux indiens tombeaux,
Terre aux belles forêts, aux séculaires chênes,
Aux bois suivis de bois, aux magnifiques scènes;
Imposant cimetière, où dorment en repos
Tant de rouges-tribus et tant de blanches-peaux;
Où l'ombre du vieux Boon, immobile génie,
Semble écouter, la nuit, l'éternelle harmonie,
Le murmure êternel des immenses déserts,
Ces mille bruits confus, ces mille bruits divers,
Cet orgue des forêts, cet orchestre sublime,
O Dieu! que seul tu fis, que seul ton souffle anime!
Quand au vaste clavier pèse un seul de tes doigts,
Soudain, roulent dans l'air mille flots à la fois:
Soudain, au fond des bois, sonores basiliques,
Bourdonne un océan de sauvages musiques;
Et l'homme, à tous ces sons de l'orgue universel,
L'homme tombe à genoux, en regardant le ciel!
Il tombe, il croit, il prie; et, chrétien sans étude,
Il retrouve, étonné, Dieu dans la solitude!
A portion of this famous poem was translated by a writer in The Southern Quarterly Review (July, 1854).
Here, with its Indian tombs, the Bloody Land
Spreads out:—majestic forests, secular oaks,
Woods stretching into woods; a witching realm,
Yet haunted with dread shadows;—a vast grave,
Where, laid together in the sleep of death,
Rest myriads of the red men and the pale.
Here, the stern forest genius, veteran Boon,
Still harbors: still he hearkens, as of yore,
To never ceasing harmonies, that blend,
At night, the murmurs of a thousand sounds,
That rise and swell capricious, change yet rise,
Borne from far wastes immense, whose mingling strains—
The forest organ's tones, the sylvan choir—
Thy breath alone, O God! can'st animate,
Making it fruitful in the matchless space!
Thy mighty fingers pressing on its keys,
How suddenly the billowy tones roll up
From the great temples of the solemn depths,
Resounding through the immensity of wood
To the grand gushing harmonies, that speak
For thee, alone, O Father. As we hear
The unanimous concert of this mighty chaunt,
We bow before thee; eyes uplift to Heaven,
We pray thee, and believe. A Christian sense
Informs us, though untaught in Christian books
Awed into worship, as we learn to know
That thou, O God, art in the solitude!
[EMILY V. MASON]
Miss Emily Virginia Mason, biographer and anthologist, was born at Lexington, Kentucky, October 15, 1815, the sister of Stevens Thompson Mason, first governor of Michigan. She was educated in Kentucky schools and in a female seminary at Troy, New York. From 1845 until 1861 Miss Mason lived in Fairfax county, Virginia, but when the Civil War began she left her home and volunteered in the Confederate States hospital service; and she was matron successively of hospitals in the Virginia towns of Greenbrier, White Sulphur Springs, Charlottesville, Lynchburg, and Richmond. Miss Mason won a wide reputation in this work, becoming one of the best loved of Southern women. Almost immediately after the war her first literary work was published, an anthology of The Southern Poems of the War (Baltimore, 1867) which was one of the first collection issued of verse which owed its origin to the war. Her second book was what she always said was the first life of Lee, though John Esten Cooke's account of the great soldier appeared about the same time, entitled A Popular Life of General Robert Edward Lee (Baltimore, 1871). This was followed by her edition of The Journal of a Young Lady of Virginia in 1798 (1871), which enjoyed wide popularity among Virginians of her generation. Miss Mason went to Paris, France, about 1870, and for the following fifteen years she was associate principal of an American school for young women. Upon her return to this country she established herself in an attractive old Southern home at Georgetown, D. C., in which she spent the remainder of her life. Miss Mason's last literary work was Memories of a Hospital Matron, which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly for September and October of 1902. She was an able writer and a most remarkable woman in many respects. Miss Mason died at Georgetown, D. C., February 16, 1909, at the great age of ninety-four years.
Bibliography. Southern Writers, by W. P. Trent (New York, 1905); The Washington Post (February 17, 1909).
THE DEATH OF LEE
[From A Popular Life of General Robert E. Lee (Baltimore, 1871)]
On the evening of this day, 28th of September [1870] after a morning of great fatigue, he attended the vestry meeting referred to, returned home, and seated at the tea-table, opened his lips to give thanks to God.