'These are the times, when in his whale-boat

the rover softly feels a certain filial,

confident, land-like feeling towards the sea;

that he regards it as so much flowery earth;

and the distant ship revealing only the tops

of her masts, seems struggling forward,

not through high rolling waves, but through

the tall grass of a rolling prairie: as when

the western emigrants’ horses only show

their erected ears, while their hidden bodies

widely wade through the amazing verdure.

'The long-drawn virgin vales; the mild

blue hill-sides; as over these there steals

the hush, the hum; you almost swear

that play-wearied children lie sleeping

in these solitudes, in some glad May-time,

when the flowers of the woods are plucked.

And all this mixes with your most mystic mood;

so that fact and fancy, half-way meeting,

interpenetrate, and form one seamless whole.'

—Herman Melville