Likes to write about pleasant, shady talk

Chapter 76 in the second volume of Herman Melville's Mardi (1849) begins:

CHAPTER LXXVI Some Pleasant, Shady Talk In The Groves, Between My Lords Abrazza And Media, Babbalanja, Mohi, And Yoomy

ABRAZZA had a cool retreat—a grove of dates; where we were used to lounge of noons, and mix our converse with the babble of the rills; and mix our punches in goblets chased with grapes. And as ever, King Abrazza was the prince of hosts. 

"Your crown,” he said to Media; and with his own, he hung it on a bough. 

“Be not ceremonious:” and stretched his royal legs upon the turf. 

“Wine!” and his pages poured it out. 

So on the grass we lounged; and King Abrazza, who loved his antique ancestors; and loved old times; and would not talk of moderns;—bade Yoomy sing old songs; bade
Mohi rehearse old histories; bade Babbalanja tell of old ontologies; and commanded all, meanwhile, to drink his old, old wine. 

So, all round we quaffed and quoted.  --Mardi; and a voyage thither v.2

CHAPTER XIII. 

June 27th.

"Reposing from the noontide sultriness,
Couched among fallen columns"—

"How pleasant thus to repose at high noon, of the long hot day, on a bearskin in the deep shadow of our willow; and in full view of the eternal snows, which send this crystal tide with its delightful verdure!"  -- August 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

More of the same:

... If ever, my dear Hawthorne, in the eternal times that are to come, you and I shall sit down in Paradise, in some little shady corner by ourselves; and if we shall by any means be able to smuggle a basket of champagne there (I won't believe in a Temperance Heaven), and if we shall then cross our celestial legs in the celestial grass that is forever tropical, and strike our glasses and our heads together, till both musically ring in concert, then, O my dear fellow-mortal, how shall we pleasantly discourse of all the things manifold which now so distress us,— --Melville's letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, June 1851 (Redated by Hershel Parker to early May 1851.)

Published June 1851, so probably written before but not much before the time of Melville's early May 1851 letter to Hawthorne:

We will talk on all subjects, from the shape of a horseshoe to that of the slipper of the last favorite — say the "divine Fanny," from great battles, or Napier's splendid pictures  of such, down to the obscurest point of the squad drill — from buffalo bulls to elfin sprites....

...At that moment I was in a small prairie "island," "reposing from the noontide sultriness," reclining in that choice part of the shadow of a fine oak that the boll casts; had been reading about the hot red rays of the sun not being reflected by the moon; — gazing listlessly through the gently rustling leaves into the sparkling depths of ether, and wondering why the sun himself could not dispense with some of these same red rays in such very hot weather.

" Suffering for country," thus, in the easiest possible attitude, I could not grow angry, and the very idea of talking, then, was heating; so I only thought. --June 1851 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

I. F.  "Allow me to say that you are to-day quite as interesting—as original." 

"Well, shall we 'talk prairie' alone? Shall we discuss whether this beautiful purple flower, the bulbous root of which overflows with balsam, would hear transplanting into a flower garden— a lady's bower! No? --September 1851; and Scenes and Adventures

We will wait here in this shady grove, and let the horses eat the luxuriant wild pea-vine until the wagons come up....

 ... "It may be so; but it is a tempting recreation to recline against the shady side of one's tent, to smoke, and watch the curling cloud ascend with fantastic grace, until lost in the blue ether—to dream dreams too transparent and airy, or too selfish for other's uses."  --September 1851; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

In 1852 the Captain's Imaginary Friend begins to sound less like Nathaniel Hawthorne, more like Evert Duyckinck. But the writer's object is the same, intimate talk of literary and philosophical matters in the shade, preferably with drinks and tobacco at hand, in view of "grass and river":

After supper.—The Hunter in the mouth of his tent reclines, with a pipe, upon a glossy bearskin;—before him, a desert expanse of grass and river;—his attention is apparently divided between the moon, suspended over the western hills; the flickering blaze of a small fire, and the curling smoke which he deliberately exhales. His friend stirs a toddy, reading with difficulty a crabbed manuscript....

... I. F. Bravo! I have hopes of you! Kill your meat with a good conscience, and daily labour and excitement over, solid indeed is the hunter's comfort! With grass and bear-skin bed, his toddy, and his soothing pipe—the musical ripple of the river sparkling in the moonbeams— I mean"—  

"Fairly caught! I little thought when I heard you abuse my pathos over the noble beast that had yielded his life to my sport, that mere creature comforts would thus inspire you. Dear critic, and lover of bathos! hast thou found poetry in a full stomach?"

--January 1852; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

Bury me by the road, somewhere 
Near spring or brook. Palms plant me there,
And seats with backs to them, all stone:
In peace then go. The years shall run,
And green my grave shall be, and play
The part of host to all that stray
In desert: water, shade, and rest
Their entertainment. So I'll win
Balm to my soul by each poor guest
That solaced leaves the Dead Man's Inn. 

--Clarel 2.15 - The Fountain