While some lone boatman from the deck
    Poured his soft numbers to that tide,
  As if to charm from storm and wreck
    The boat where all his fortunes ride! 
  Delighted Nature drank the sound,
    Enchanted Echo bore it round
  In whispers soft and softer still,
  From hill to plain, and plain to hill.

[Footnote 80:  A native of Kentucky; a favorite Western poet; at one time prominent as a politician.]

* * * * *

=_337._= THE BATTLE-FIELD OF RAISIN.

  The battle’s o’er; the din is past;
  Night’s mantle on the field is cast;
  The Indian yell is heard no more;
  The silence broods o’er Erie’s shore. 
  At this lone hour I go to tread
  The field where valor vainly bled;
  To raise the wounded warrior’s crest,
  Or warm with tears his icy breast;
  To treasure up his last command,
  And bear it to his native land. 
  It may one pulse of joy impart
  To a fond mother’s bleeding heart,
  Or, for a moment, it may dry
  The tear-drop in the widow’s eye. 
  Vain hopes, away!  The widow ne’er
  Her warrior’s dying wish shall hear. 
  The passing zephyr bears no sigh;
  No wounded warrior meets the eye;
  Death is his sleep by Erie’s wave;
  Of Raisin’s snow we heap his grave. 
  How many hopes lie buried here—­
    The mother’s joy, the father’s pride,
  The country’s boast, the foeman’s fear,
    In ’wildered havoc, side by side! 
  Lend me, thou silent queen of night,
  Lend me a while thy waning light,
  That I may see each well-loved form
  That sank beneath the morning storm.

* * * * *

=_William Cullen Bryant, 1794-._= (Manual, pp. 487, 524.)

From his “Poems.”

=_338._= LINES TO A WATER FOWL.

          Whither, midst falling dew,
  While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
  Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue
          Thy solitary way?

          Vainly the fowler’s eye
  Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
  As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,
          Thy figure floats along.

          Seek’st thou the plashy brink
  Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
  Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
          On the chafed ocean side?

          There is a Power whose care
  Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,—­
  The desert and illimitable air,—­
          Lone wandering, but not lost.

          All day thy wings have fanned,
  At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
  Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
          Though the dark night is near.

          And soon that toil shall end,
  Soon shalt thou find a summer home and rest,
  And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend
          Soon, o’er thy sheltered nest.