Remembering A Prairie Poet

From: The Prairies by William Cullen Bryant

The prairies. 

Lo! they stretch, in airy undulations, far away…

As if the ocean in his gentlest swell, stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed, and motionless forever.  

Motionless? No — they are all unchained again…

The clouds sweep over with their shadows…

 And, beneath, the surface rolls…

And fluctuates to the eye.

Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase the sunny ridges.

In these plains, the bison feeds no more.

Still this great solitude is quick with life;

Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers…

And birds, that scarce have learned the fear of man are here.

The graceful deer bounds to the wood at my approach.

The bee, a more adventurous colonist than man, with whom he came across the eastern deep…

Fills the savannas with his murmurings.

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) was a keen observer of the natural world. He was editor of the New York Evening Post, and one of the first American writers and romantic poets to be recognized internationally at that time. Martin Luther King, Jr., quoted this immortal phrase from Bryant, “Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again.” The above excerpts are all taken from his poem, The Prairies.

All photos by Cindy Crosby (top to bottom): Autumn on the Schulenberg Prairie at The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL; October, SP; little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) and pale purple coneflower (Echinacea pallida) seedheads, SP; compass plant (Silphium laciniatum), SP; clouds, SP: prairie dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum); grasses, SP; grasses, SP; bison, Nachusa Grasslands, Franklin Grove, IL; grasshopper, SP; milkweed bugs, SP; red-tailed hawk, SP; fawn, SP; bumblebee in cream gentian (Gentiana flavida), SP;  savanna, SP.