Romantic the rocky and fern-scented regions,
Miami, the grots where thy rambles begin,
By cedars and hemlocks, in evergreen legions,
With silence and twilight seclusion shut in.
There darkling recesses in miniature mountains
Recall to my fancy the haunts of the gnome;
There fabled Undina might rise from the fountains,
Or sport in the waterfalls’ glistening foam.
Now laughing in ripples and dancing the sedges,
Now fretting the minnows in eddy and whirl,
Now kissing the pebbles that sprinkle thy edges,
And laving the pearl and the mother-of-pearl;
Glide, whispering now under sycamore shadow,
Now singing by hamlet and cottage and mill,
Now shimmering onward through flowery meadow,
Now glassing the image of foresty hill.
The farm boy, as careless he follows the harrow
O’er lowlands which quicken and ripen the maize,
Reads oft in some token of stone,—axe or arrow,
The wars and the loves of unchronicled days.
Then steals on the air with thy murmuring numbers
A moan of lament for a race and its lore,—
A sigh for yon chieftain forgotten, who slumbers
Beneath the lone mound on thy emerald shore.