Wearily I mount this steep eminence, and on its bald summit take off my hat, that I may feel the cool breeze. It comes fresh with the dew that it has snatched in its flight from the bosom of Lake Superior. It rolls over the tall grass of the prairie, which bends beneath its weight, sighs by me, and seems to cling to me as it passes, and moves on toward the arid plains of the South. The Ohio sweeps down in calmness and majesty. With its surface of quicksilver, and the little waves dancing up in gladness, and its heavy dull wash, it rolls along its mighty mass of waters, hastening to pour itself into the mightier mass of the Mississippi. Occasionally a giant tree, torn from its place, and cast root and branch into the flood, comes booming down, and glides swiftly past on its long, long race. Pleasantly the ripples break over the prostrate monarch of the forest that is lodged against the beach, and projects, branchless and barkless, into the stream; and mournfully the worn trunk sways up and down, as though tired of this rocking which has continued the same year after year; weary, and desiring to be at rest. Floods come rushing down upon floods with heavy tread, glance successively under the moonlight that is poured into the channel before me, and then are forced forward into the darkness of the future. But every wave seems as full of joy as though for it alone was the moonlight sent, and as though there were not unnumbered millions of waves to succeed it. Every little wave leaps up as it comes under the light, and smiles toward the round-faced orb above, who seems to smile back upon it. Thou small thing, thou art a fool! The queen, in the beam of whose countenance thou disportest thyself, is altogether deceitful and loves thee not. She has smiled as kindly on thousands who have gone before thee, and will upon thousands who shall come after thee. And more than all, she would send down just as bright and loving a glance, if thou and all thy race had never existed. How then canst thou say, ‘I love her,’ or, ‘she loves me?’
But perhaps it is not so. When I look again, each one of the great multitude appears aware of its own insignificance. Jostled, confined, crowded and confused, they go tumbling by, regardless of all above or below, and engrossed with their own fleeting existence. Not remembering whence they came, they take no thought of the present, and are utterly careless of the future. For what would it profit? Their business, and it is business enough, is to dispute and fight with each other for room to move in. All thoughts as to whither they are hastening, must be doubtful, angry and despairing; and care of any thing present, except what concerns the present instant, would be useless. Therefore they resign themselves to be drawn onward and downward unresistingly; and therein are they wise. But whether joyful, or despairing, or not feeling at all, the waters roll by, an unceasing flood; and with their rushing dull roar in my ear, my eye rests on a scene of beauty and quietness. Far away to the northward and westward, and still farther away, stretches an immense plain. Rolling hillocks, like the waves of the sea after a storm, and at long intervals, a few stunted shrubs, alone diversify the prospect. Vast, unmeasured, Nature’s unenclosed meadow, the prairie, is spread out! The tall grass waves gently and rustlingly to the breeze; and down upon it settles the moonlight, in a dim silver-gossamer veil, like that which to the mind’s eye is thrown over the mountains and ruins and castles of the Old World, by the high-born daring and graces of chivalry, the wand of Genius, and the lapse of solemn years. With the same painful feeling of boundlessness, of vastness that will not be grasped by the imagination, that one feels in sailing on the ocean, there is also an air of still, stern desolation brooding upon the plain. It may be that at some former day, the punishment of fire swept over it, consuming its towering offspring, and laying bare and scorching its bosom; and now the proud sufferer, naked and chained, endures the summer’s heat and the winter’s storms, with no sighing herbage or wailing tree to tell to the winds its wo.
A single snow-white cloud slumbers and floats far up in the heavens; the moon is gliding slowly down the western arch; and the vast dome, studded with innumerable brilliants, ‘fretted with golden fires,’ rests its northern and western edge on the plain, its southern on blue mountain-tops, its eastern on the forests, and shuts us, the river, the prairie, the moon and I, together and alone. And here will we dwell together alone! Sweet companions will ye be to me; and standing here on this eminence, I promise to love you. I promise to come here often, and to hold communion with you. I will put away all thoughts of sorrow, all swellings of bitterness, from my mind. Contentedly, calmly, unheedingly, will we let the years pass by; for what will it matter to us? Oh! ye are dear to me! Your voice is not heard, yet comes there constantly to my ear the murmur of your song. You speak to me in music and poetry; and while I listen, my thoughts revert only with shuddering to the vain world I have left behind. Thus let us converse always. This vaulted firmament which shuts down upon us now, let it be immoveable, and enclose us forever; here let the wanderings of the wanderer cease, and here will we live together and alone!
And we have lived here many years. The lessons of my constant companions have calmed and elevated me to a gentler and better spirit. From them I have learned humility as well as self-reliance; while from the history of the actions and thoughts of men in past ages, I have learned perhaps something of the machinery of human nature. The forms of the noblest of preceding generations, and the shapes of beauty which their imaginations have conceived and made to live, visit me at my bidding. But among all the pictures that daily rise up before my eyes, the brightest, the most beautiful, the most loved, are the sweet faces of the friends of my early years. There are no regrets or repinings when I look back now; it must be that it has all been for the best, that every thing is for the best, and I am at peace. The recollection of madness and folly, of a life useless, of energies wasted, do not disturb the calmness of my soul. The error has been great, but I feel it; and in the next state of existence I shall be wiser and more active. If I have wantonly and recklessly turned away from the offered happiness of society and of the world, it has, in the end, been better for me, for I have found another, a purer and more lasting.
Thus I look cheerfully on, and see the sands of my life run out. They fall faster and faster, as their number is diminished, and time flies by me with constantly accelerating speed. ‘Oh, my days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle!’—the last one I see but a little distance before me; it will soon be here; and I shall step forth with a joyful, courageous heart, into the indistinct, dimly-revealed future!
TRANSLATION FROM CATULLUS.
BY REV. GEORGE W. BETHUNE.
Suffenus, whom we both have known so well,
No other man in manners can excel;
Facetious, courteous, affable, urbane.