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(Excerpt)
MORNING upon the lone and silent Pampas, | |
| Those dewless plains of long and stirless grass | |
| O’erarched by skies unshadowed by a cloud, | |
| And all unbroken in their sea-like calm, | |
| Except where, here and there, a parching palm | 5 |
| Uprears its barren stem, and marks to sight | |
| Some space between the mingling earth and heaven, | |
| Or musky odors of the arid ground | |
| Thicken the air, amid whose torrid heat | |
| Rise vapory columns like the smoke of fires! | 10 |
| Solemn and still those vast savannas reach | |
| Through level solitudes of countless miles, | |
| Unsought by man, and whose untrodden depths | |
| No taint, perchance, have borne of human death! | |
| And thus they seemed upon this fervid morn, | 15 |
| When the hot sun, like a great flaming eye, | |
| Saw motion mid those withering waves of green, | |
| That onward swelled from the horizon’s verge, | |
| And stirred to life a myriad hidden things, | |
| That fluttering swarmed from midst the sheltering blades | 20 |
| Before the advancing dust that broke their rest, | |
| As, panting, snorting in their thirsty haste, | |
| A troop of desert horses rushed along, | |
| Trampling the crackling verdure in their race, | |
| Startling the brooding silence of the waste | 25 |
| With insect voices and their own wild tones. | |
| On, on they dash, creating with their speed | |
| And noisy breaths the movement of a wind, | |
| And raining foam on long unwatered soil. | |
| They pause; they wheel; they circle in a group,— | 30 |
| Impatient paw the ground,—take counsel short,— | |
| Break,—toss their flowing manes,—and start again, | |
| In compact throng, towards their unreachèd goal, | |
| Still straining bloodshot eyes in search of streams, | |
| And following one that ever leads the way, | 35 |
| Chief of the horde in speed, in grace, in choice,— | |
| A chestnut mare, with stately, curving neck, | |
| And small, proud head, that on the forehead bore | |
| A snowy star, as though to mark command, | |
| Whose tapering limbs had borne her in the van, | 40 |
| With silky hair and shining coat unflecked. * * * * * | |
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