Before she saw the prairie with her own eyes, Eliza R. Snow
had no doubt read some of the works of other American authors—Cooper
(1789-1851), Bryant (1794-1878), and Irving (1783-1859) among
them—who praised the glories of the American prairie. These
authors not only described the beauty of the prairie but also
saw it as a symbol of freedom, limitlessness, and westward expansion.2
Although Eliza finds herself transported to ancient Greece, her
poem ultimately praises the scene not for its symbolic associations
but for its immediate, breathtaking beauty. Her later poems tend
to make use of nature not as a subject but as a useful metaphor.
This early lyric outpouring, one of her most successful poems,
makes us wish she had continued to write more of these heartfelt
responses to the beauty of the natural world.
The loveliness of Nature, always did
Delight me.
In the days of childhood; when
My young light heart, in all the buoyancy
Of its own bright imagination’s spell,
Beat in accordant consonance to all
For which it cherished an affinity;
The summer glory of the landscape, rous’d
Within my breast a princely feeling. Time’s
Obliterating glance cannot erase,
The impulse with my being interwove;
And oftentimes, in the fond ecstacy
Of youth’s effervescence, I’ve gaz’d
Upon the richly variegated fields;
Which most emphatically spoke the praise
Of Nature, and the cultivator’s skill.
But when I heard the western traveller paint
The splendid beauties of the far-off West;
Where Nature’s pastures, rich and amply broad,
Waving in full abundance, seem to mock
The deepest schemes and boldest efforts of
The cultivators of the eastern soil;
I grew incredulous that Nature’s dress
Should be so rich, and so domestic, and
So beautiful, without the touch of Art;
And thought the picture fancifully wrought.
Yet, in the process of revolving scenes,
I left the place of childhood and of youth;
And as I journey’d t’ward the setting sun,
As if awaking from a nightly dream,
Into a scenery grand and strangely new,
I almost thought myself transported back
Upon the retrograding wheel of time;
To days, and scenes, when Greece presided o’er
The destinies of earth; and when she shone
Like her ador’d Apollo, without one
Tall rival in the field of Literature:
And fancied then, that I was standing on
That tow’ring mount of truly classic fame,
That overlooks the rich, the fertile, and
The far-extended vales of Crissa:3 Or,
That in some wild poetic spell, of deep
Unconscious recklessness, I’d stray’d afar
Upon the flowing plains of Marathon.
But soon reflection’s potent wand dispel’d
The false illusion, and I realiz’d
That I was not inhaling foreign air;
Nor moving in a scene emblazon’d with
The classic legends of antiquity:
O no; the scenery around was not
Enchantment: ’Twas the bright original,
Of those fair images and ideal forms,
Which fancy’s pencil is so prompt to sketch,
Instead of treading on Ionian fields;
I stood upon Columbian soil; and in
The rich and fertile State of Illinois.
Amaz’d, I view’d until my optic nerve
Grew dull and giddy with the phrenzy of
The innocent delight; and I exclaim’d
With Sheba’s queen, ‘one half had not been told.’4
But then my thoughts—can I describe them now?
No: for description’s ablest pow’rs grow lame,
Whenever put upon the chase of things
Of non-existence; and my thoughts had all,
Like liquid matter, melted down; and had
Become, as with a secret touch absorb’d,
In the one all-engrossing feeling of
Deep admiration, vivid and intense.
And my imagination too, for once,
Acknowledged its own imbecility,
And cower’d down, as if to hide away:
For all its pow’rs had been too cold and dull,
Too tame, and too domestic far, to draw
A parallel, with the bold grandeur, and
The native beauty of this “Western World.”
1Quincy Whig (29 June 1839).
2See Steven Olson, The Prairie in Nineteenth Century American Poetry (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994); Robert Thacker, The Great Prairie: Fact and Literary Imagination (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989).
3Crisa: fertile plain of ancient Greece
41 Kings 10:7
The only song Eliza R. Snow composed between Winter Quarters
and the Great Salt Lake Valley, “Song of the Desert”
celebrates nature’s beauty. Toward the end of August the
company traveled among bluffs: “sometimes the red of the
bluffs being strip’d with nearly a chalk color, the little
green shrubs & herbage gave it a romantic appearance,”
she wrote.2 “On our left far in the distance, a ridge or
mountain rises in majesty behind the ranges of smaller bluffs
between having the appearance of dense blue clouds. A show’r
of hail & rain adds variety to the afternoon scenery”
(Ibid., 24 August 1847). When the company rejoined the Platte
River, Eliza recorded, “seems like meeting an old friend.”3
She later included this poem in “Sketch of My Life”
in 1885.
Beneath the cloud-topp’d mountain,
Beside the craggy bluff,
Where every dint of nature
Is rude and wild enough;
Upon the verdant meadow,
Upon the sunburnt plain,
Upon the sandy hillock;
We waken music’s strain.
Beneath the pine’s thick branches,
That has for ages stood;
Beneath the humble cedar,
And the green cotton-wood;
Beside the broad, smooth river,
Beside the flowing spring,
Beside the limpid streamlet;
We often sit and sing.
Beneath the sparkling concave,
When stars in millions come
To cheer the pilgrim strangers,
And bid us feel at home;
Beneath the lovely moonlight,
When Cynthia spreads her rays;
In social groups assembled,
We join in songs of praise.
Cheer’d by the blaze of firelight,
When twilight shadows fall,
And when the darkness gathers
Around our spacious hall,
With all the warm emotion
To saintly bosoms given,
In strains of pure devotion
We praise the God of heaven.
1Eliza R. Snow, Poems, Religious, Historical, and Political (Liverpool, 1856), p. 181.
2The Personal Writings of Eliza Roxcy Snow, ed. Maureen Ursenbach Beecher (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1997), p. 193.
3Ibid, p. 194.
