Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/212

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208
VALE OF WYOMING.

She helps to beautify. Yea, go not forth,
Till from the brow of yonder mountain height
Through interlacing branches, rich with bloom,
The tulip, or magnolia, thou dost part
The canopy of close-enwreathed vines,
And through a mass of foliage, looking down
On copse, and cultured field, and village spire,
Behold the Susquehannah, like a bride,
Glide on in beauty, to her nuptial hour.
Here, too, are gloomy haunts, where roam the bear,
Or the insatiate wolf, and sunny glades,
Where with light foot the red deer leads her fawn,
And quiet, shaded brooklets, where leap up
The speckled trout.
                             Yet still, deceitful Vale,
So lulled, and saturate in deep content
With thine exceeding beauty, thou dost hide
A blotted history, of tears and blood,
A dire, Vesuvian, lava-written scroll,
Which the confiding lover at thy feet
But little wots of. Thy romantic groves.
And fairy islets, have sent up the cry
Of wounded men, and o'er the embroidered bank
Where violets grow, the carnage-tint hath lain
Deep as a plague-spot.
                                   Ask yon monument.
That o'er the velvet verdure lifts so high
Its lettered chronicle, who sleeps below?
And why, so many lustrums, tearful Spring