The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1869-02-14
THE HAPPY VALLEY.

Selected for the Sunday Crescent
IL was valley filed with sweetest sounds,
langud music haunted everywhere,
Like that with which summer eve abounds,
From rustlinc corn and song birds calling clear,
Down sloping uplands which some WOOD sur
rounds,
With tinkling rills Just heard but not too near,
And low Of cattle on the distant plain,
And peal Of far-of bells, now caught, then iost
again.
II seemed like Eden's sngeI.peopled vale,
So bright the sky, SO soft the streams did how;
And tones came riding on the muskwinged gales,
The very air seemed sleepily to blow,
And choicest flowers enameled every dale,
Eusas s. S9 a the richest sq.sss rosy
Such fragrance floated round such beauty dimmed
the sight.
The golden belted bees hummed in the air;
The tall silk grasses bent and waved along;
The trees slept In the sleeping sunoeams glare;
The dreamy river chimed its under song,
And took its own full course without care:
Amid the boughs did lute-tongued songsters
And the green valley throbbed beneath their lays,
While echo echo chased through many leafy
maze.
And shapes were there, like spirits OF the flowers,
sent down to see the summer beauties dress.
And feed their fragrant mouths with silver show
Their eyes peep'd out from many green recess,
And their fair forms made light the thickset bow
The very flowers seemed eager to csress,
Such living sisters and the boaghs, long.lesved,
Clustered to catch the signs their pearl. flushed
bosoms heaved.
One, though her long loose hair was backward
passing,
Another, high q pile of flowers was heaping.
Or looking sore askance, and when deserted,
Her coy glance on the bedded greensward keep
ing,
She pulled the flowers to pieces as she sighed,
Then blushed like timid dsy-break when the dawn
Looks crimson on the night. and then again with
drawn.
| One, with her warm and milk-white arms out
spread,
On tip.toe tripped along a sunlit glade;
Half turned the matchless sculpture of her head,
| And half shook down her silken, circling braid,
| She seemed to float on air, so light she sped;
Her back.blown scarf an arched rainbow made
| She skinned the wavy flowers as she passed by,
With fair and printess feet, like clouds along the
the sky.
| One sat alone within shady nook
With wild wood songs the weary hours beguil
Or looking at her shadow in the brook
| Trying to frown, then at the effort smiling
| Her laughing eyes Knocked every serious look;
| Twas as if Love stood at himself reviling;
| She threw in flowers and watched them float away
| Then 81 ner Deauty LOOKUP, tnen sang O s"eeso
lay. Ha4
| Others on beds OF roses lay reclined,
| The regal flowers athwart their full lips thrown
| And in one fragrance both their sweets combined
As if they on the self same stem had grown.
| So close were rose and lip together twined,
double flower that from one bud had howD,
Till none could tell SO sweetly were they blended
Where sweled the curving lip, or where the rose
bloom ended.
One. half asleep, crushing the twined flowers
Upon velvet slope like Dian lay,
Still as a lark that mid the daisies covers;
Her looped up tunic tossed in disarray,
Shelves rounded limbs too fair for earthly bower
They looked like roses on cloudy day,
| The warm white dnlled amid the colder green,
The flowers too sought couch that lovely shaI
| to screen. l...r
| Some lay like Hebe's nymphs along the shore,
| With ocean pearl combing their golden locks,
| And singing 70 the waves for evermore;
Sinking like flowers at eve aside the rocks,
II but sound above the muffied roar
OF the low waves was heard. In little tocks
Others went trooping through the wooded alley
Their knittles streaming white, Ike streams
sunny valleys.
They were such forms as, imsged In the night,
Sail In our dreams across the heavens steep blu
When the closed lid sees visions streaming brigt
Too beautiful TO meet the naked view,
Like faces formed in clouds of silver Light
Women they were-such as the Angels knew
Such as the Mammoth looked on, ere he fed
Scared by the Lovers wings, that streamed
sunset red.