Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader · Chapter 284=364.= Nature Inspires Sentiment
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It was a night of calm. O'er Ashley's waters Crept the sweet billows to their own soft tune, While she, most bright of Keawah's fair daughters, Whose voice might spell the footsteps of the moon, As slow we swept along, Poured forth her own sweet song— A lay of rapture not forgotten soon.
Hushed was our breathing, stayed the lifted oar, Our spirits rapt, our souls no longer free, While the boat, drifting softly to the shore, Brought us within the shades of Accabee. "Ah!" sudden cried the maid, In the dim light afraid, "'Tis here the ghost still walks of the old Yemassee."
And sure the spot was haunted by a power To fix the pulses in each youthful heart; Never was moon more gracious in a bower, Making delicious fancy-work for art, Weaving so meekly bright Her pictures of delight, That, though afraid to stay, we sorrowed to depart.
"If these old groves are haunted"—sudden then, Said she, our sweet companion,—"it must be By one who loved, and was beloved again, And joy'd all forms of loveliness to see:— Here, in these groves they went, Where love and worship, blent, Still framed the proper God for each idolatry.
"It could not be that love should here be stern, Or beauty fail to sway with sov'reign might; These from so blesséd scenes should something learn, And swell with tenderness, and shape delight: These groves have had their power, And bliss, in by-gone hour, Hath charm'd with sight and song the passage of the night."
"It were a bliss to think so;" made reply Our Hubert—"yet the tale is something old, That checks us with denial;—and our sky, And these brown woods that, in its glittering fold, Look like a fairy clime, Still unsubdued by time, Have evermore the tale of wrong'd devotion told."
"Give us thy legend, Hubert;" cried the maid;— And, with down-dropping oars, our yielding prow Shot to a still lagoon, whose ample shade Droop'd from the gray moss of an old oak's brow: The groves, meanwhile, lay bright, Like the broad stream, in light, Soft, sweet as ever yet the lunar loom display'd.
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=Nathaniel Parker Willis, 1807-1867.= (Manual, pp. 504, 519.)
From the "Sacred Poems."