Yonder bird, 
Which floats, as if at rest, 
In those blue tracts above the thunder, where 
No vapors cloud the stainless air, 
And never sound is heard, 
Unless at such rare time 
When, from the City of the Blest, 
Rings down some golden chime, 
Sees not from his high place, 
So vast a cirque of summer space 
As widens round me in one mighty field, 
Which, rimmed by seas and sands, 
Doth hail its earliest daylight in the beams 
Of gray Atlantic dawns; 
And, broad as realms made up of many lands, 
Is lost afar 
Behind the crimson hills and purple lawns 
Of sunset, among plains which roll their streams 
Against the Evening Star ! 
And lo! 
To the remotest point of sight, 
Although I gaze upon no waste of snow, 
The endless field is white; 
And the whole landscape glows, 
For many a shining league away, 
With such accumulated light 
As Polar lands would flash beneath a tropic day! 
—From ‘The Cotton Boll,” by Henry Timrod. 
