Homeward serenely she walked with God’s benediction upon her.
When she had passed it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.”
The descriptions of rural life in Acadie, of the scenery of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, of the wilds of Oregon, are replete with force, beauty, and finely chosen details. They are all too long for short extracts to give an adequate impression of their excellence; and besides, the author has connected the scenery which surrounds the heroine with her feelings on the occasion of viewing it. The description of the burning village is grand, but we have space only for a few lines:
“Columns of shining smoke uprose, and flashes of flame were
Thrust through their folds and withdrawn, like the quivering hands of a martyr.
Then as the winds seized the gleeds and the burning thatch, and, uplifting,
Whirled them aloft through the air, at once from a hundred house-tops
Started the sheeted smoke with flashes of flame intermingled.”
The following exquisite passage, on the mocking-bird in the far west, is, perhaps, the finest and most life-like description in the poem:
“Then from a neighboring thicket, the mocking-bird, wildest of singers,