Thou music of my boyhood's hour!
Thou shining light on manhood's way!
No more dost thou fair influence shower
To move my soul by night or day.
O strange! that while in hall and street
Thy hand I touch, thy grace I meet,
Such miles of polar ice should part
The slightest touch of mind and heart!
But all thy love has waned, and so
I gladly let thy beauty go.

Now that I am borrowing, I will also give a letter received at this
time, and extracts from others from an earlier traveller, and in a
different region of the country from that I saw, which, I think, in
different ways, admirably descriptive of the country.

[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