htful east
Chaunted their wild songs nearer to the stars;
Even the roses had more exquisite hues,
And for one blossom I had left behind
I found a bower in this fragrant land.
Bright birds, no larger than the costly gems
The river bedded in their golden sands,
Sparkle like prismal rain-drops 'mong the leaves;
And others sang, or flashed their plumage gay
Like rainbow fragments on my dazzled eyes.
The sky had warmer teints: I could not tell
Whether the heavens lent color to the flowers,
Or but reflected that which glowed in them.
The gales that blew from off the cloud-lost hills,
Struck from the clambering vines Eolian songs,
That mingled with the splashing noise of founts,
In music such as stirs to passionate thought:
This peerless land was thronged with souls like mine,
Straying from East to South, impelled unseen,
And lost, like mine, in its enchanted vales:--
Souls that conversed apart in pairs, or sang
Low breeze-like airs, more tender than sweet words;
Save here and there a wanderer like myself,
Dreaming alone, and dropping silent tears,
Scarce knowing why, upon the little group
Of Eastern flowers we had not yet resigned:--
'Till one came softly smiling in my eyes,
And dried their tears with radiance from his own.

"At last it came--I knew not how it came--
But a tornado swept this sunny South,
And when I woke once more, I stood alone.
My senses sickened at the dismal waste,
And caring not, now all things bright were dead,
That a volcano rolled its burning tide
In fiery rivers far athwart the land,
I turned my feet to aimless wanderings.
The equatorial sun poured scorching beams,
On my defenceless head. The burning winds
Seemed drying up the blood within my veins.
The straggling flowers that had outlived the storm
Won but a feeble, half-contemptuous smile;
And if a bird attempted a brief song,
I closed my ears lest it should burst my brain.
After much wandering I came at last
To cooler skies and a less stifling air;
And finally to this more temperate clime.
Where every beauty is of milder type--
Where the simoon nor tempest ever come,
And I can soothe the fever of my soul
In the bland breezes blowing from the West."

NEVADA.

Sphinx, down whose rugged face
The sliding centuries their fu