Learn from the tuneful woods rare madrigals,
To make our flowering pastures here harmonious?
Caught’st thou thy carol from Ottawa maid,
Where through the liquid fields of wild rice plashing—
Brushing the ears from off the burden’d blade,
Her birch canoe o’er some lone lake is flashing?
Or did the reeds of some savanna South,
Detain thee while thy northern flight pursuing,
To place those melodies in thy sweet mouth,
The spice-fed winds had taught them in their wooing?