[Illustration: PRAIRIE & LONG GROVE IN THE DISTANCE]
"And you, too, love the Prairies, flying voyager of a summer hour; but
_I_ have only there owned the wild forest, the wide-spread meadows;
there only built my house, and seen the livelong day the thoughtful
shadows of the great clouds color, with all-transient browns, the
untrampled floor of grass; there has Spring pranked the long smooth
reaches with those golden flowers, whereby became the fields a sea
too golden to o'erlast the heats. Yes! and with many a yellow bell she
gilded our unbounded path, that sank in the light swells of the varied
surface, skirted the unfilled barrens, nor shunned the steep banks of
rivers darting merrily on. There has the white snow frolicsomely strown
itself, till all that vast, outstretched distance glittered like a
mirror in which only the heavens were reflected, and among these drifts
our steps have been curbed. Ah! many days of precious weather are on the
Prairies!
"You have then found, after many a weary hour, when Time has locked your
temples as in a circle of heated metal, some cool, sweet, swift-gliding
moments, the iron ring of necessity ungirt, and the fevered pulses at
rest. You have also found this where fresh nature suffers no ravage,
amid those bowers of wild-wood, those dream-like, bee-sung, murmuring
and musical plains, swimming under their hazy distances, as if there, in
that warm and deep back ground, stood the fairy castle of our hopes,
with its fountains, its pictures, its many mystical figures in repose.
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