"A Scene Along the Rio de las Plumas" by John Rollin Ridge
A dark and dismal place,
Where moss with trailing ends,
From heavy boughs depends;
Where day resembles night,
And birds of sullen flight
Pierce darkness with their screams;
Where slow and sluggish streams
Crawl through the sleeping woods
And weirdful solitudes.
In dreamy languor bound,
Upon their slimy breast
The lolling lilies rest,
And from their depths profound
Strange things, with staring eyes
And uncouth limbs, arise—
A moment with mute surprise sink
Then sink adown like lead,
And seek their oozy bed.
What looks a spirit there,
Snow-white upon the air,
And hov'ring over these
Deep pools and drooping trees,
As if some heavenly sprite
Had come from Day to Night,
Is but the crane that feeds,
When hungered 'mong the reeds;
Or sloughs, flag-margined, wades,
Meandering 'neath the shades,
And makes his vulgar dish
Of creeping things and fish.
Yon ermined flits owl that flits
Through dusky leaves, or sits
In somber silence now
On yonder ivyed bough,
And looks a druid priest—
No higher thoughts inspire
Than lowest wants require,
As how to make his feast,
When lurking mouse or bird
Hath from its covert stirred.
Those flaming eyes awake
In yonder thorny brake,
Which dilate as I pass,
Illumining the grass
And lighting darksome ground,
Are not from that profound,
Where cries of woe resound
And Dante's damned abound,
Nor yet the wandering ghouls, —
The dread of dead men's souls,—
(Because their flesh he craves,
And digs it from their graves),
But orbs of sinuous snake
Who from the neighboring lake,
Or vapor-breeding bog,
His victim soon shall take—
Some luckless dozing frog.
Nor will thy lither shape,
Thou rodent sly escape,
If once thine eye hath caught
The fire within that head,
From venomed sources fed,
With fascination fraught.
I reach a dimmer nook,
And warily I look,
For where yon night-shades grow
And baneful blossoms blow,
Beneath the toadstools, well
I know ill-creatures dwell—
Tarantula, whose bite
Would strongest heart affright;
The stinging centipede,
Whose hundred-footed speed,
And hundred arm-ed feet
Bring death and danger fleet,
That, with Briarean clasp,
The fated victim grasp,
And scorpion, single-stinged,
Fabled erst as winged,
And still reported wide,
If pressed, a suicide.
And here I see—but lo!
I can no further go,
For what’s this hum I hear
Which fills the atmosphere,
And drums the tingling ear
Till, half distraught, I reel?
I heard, but now feel!
Good sakes, wingéd forms!
What singing, dizzing swarms!
Ten thousand needles flamed
Could not with them be named.