EXPULSION FROM EGYPT.
The seasons pass, till on their hands they countFour palms, and to the third, a score and threeIn life's meridian how the circles mountThat measure our existence, if there beNo canker worm that clogs the ready wheel;If care hangs not upon the skirts of time;And if, like most mankind, we only feelIts gentle passing, by the hills we climbIn ambling, easy way, and retrospectSurprises into thought, and we wake upTo feel how swift we journey. We reflectAfter reflection barrens of its fruit, the cupWhich we have mixed we drink; if it be gallWe gulp it down the same; we cannot changeThe current of our lives, and useless is the callOn any but the hand of God. 'Tis strangeThe miracle of life should ever passAnd print no letters deep into the soul!The years go by, and, but the tuft of grassMore reverent than we, tells o'er our dust its rosary, in deep green scroll.
MIZRAIM AND LUD.
Near the rim of Karoun, where the pyramids drink the dew that should dampen the soil;And the Nilus pours over its green level banks, its annual freightage of spoil;Where the date ripens dark to the child of the sun, and the pomegranate colors for fruit;The ibis is sounding the damps of the land, and earth in its plethory mute.The fat of the fields husks the voice of the morn, while Demeteris weighingher sheaves;The lotus has honied its lips for the kiss, "and the turtle in mockery grieves."What is that, where the Orient gathers her gold, and the eye wanders back to the sea?What cloud on the horizon's breach can be seen? What wakens the vulture's rude glee?'Tis the shock of the battle that burdens the air, and the armies that burden the eye;They have met (could Elysian give landscape more fair?), have met to embrace and to die.The Prophet still lives, and has led to the sun all Egypt; and gathered as oneThe people to hallow the harvest-moon feast, ere the work of the year is done.But Mizraim outnumbers the children of Lud, and the shepherd kings, crafty and weak,Have laid tasks on their shoulders too heavy to bear, till the voice of their burden must speak.In vain the gray Prophet lifts up to his god his winglet of prayer for peace;The tempest of war has broke over the plain, and his altars can bring no surcease.The black and the bronze, the iron and brass; how they struggle and grip for the field!The spear and the arrow, the halbert and lance, and who shall be first to yield?Not the iron; it is strong and resistless in weight. Not the brass; it is beaten and firm.What a hecate of agony burdens the plain! what a banquet for vulture and worm!But the iron is too heavy, the brass is too thin, and under the weight it gives way,As a wall, that is breached and toppled by time; and Mizraim gains the day.
Oppression, when reversed, is double weight;The Slave pours lead into the lash he bore;And, as the Master adds recruited hateTo blows, that he has learned to feel before,The soul its letters of forgiveness learnsFrom only one great Master, in all time;Revenge is human, and forever burnsUpon the trackway of retreating crime.The text and testwork of their lives was lost;And when the King was slain, and they o'erthrown,His people paid their tyranny with cost.Only the Prophet, with his magic stone,Could purchase their withdrawal; they must leave(They were the early jewels of the sun)And Uri pledged their fortunes to retrieve,If they would journey, where the day begun,And seek the closer presence of their god,In paths where human feet had never trod.They must divide with Egypt; but go outWell laden for the journey; should they dareTo turn, the heavy hand of Mizraim would not spare.Ægyptus! thou above thy gates hath writSo many times the monosylbic "when."We, weary of conjecture; round us flitThe phantoms of the past; and we againPass in review thy pages, black with mold;Intemporate within a crumbling earth,Against the char of empires thou dost holdThe charms that emulate immortal birth.We write mutation on the brow of Time;Thou art the changeless one of all the world—Thou hast no brotherhood in any clime;All mortal barbets have in vain been hurled."Time conquers all things?" Thou giv'st back the lie;Above its ruins, thou dost stand, serene—Eternity!—Must thou, perforce, then die?What tragedy hast thou, indeed, not seen?Must thou, too, look on death? thou wilt not dim;But in impassive slumber, thou wilt fallAs sinks the sun, beneath the horizon's rim,And answer only the Archangel's call.We leave thee loathely, for our souls are wedTo thy enchanted gardenhood of lore."The morning stars sang joy" above thy bed,The nations, in their cerements, shall pass thy door,And earth be wrapped in ashes ere thy brow shall bear the fatal legend, "Nevermore."
THE MOURNING SHEPHERDS
The tambour' is silent, O god of the Nile!The harp has been hung in acacian shade.We are bowed to the earth, we are broken and bent,And the blade of our fathers in dust has been laid.We came, as the simoom creeps over the plain;We came, as the tiger its covert forsakes;As the hurricane brushes the dust from the brakes;As the lightning leaps out and the thunder-god shakes.We are shorn of our strength as with plague we are smote;The axe has been wrenched from the hands that are brawn,And the arms whose strong sinews till now were unbentHave been broken as brittles; our prowess is gone.O! thou bright shining god! with thy scintles of gold;If thy children have gathered the glow of thy face,If thy kisses, ere warmed to the lips that are cold,O we pray! let us feel thy impassioned embrace.We are journeying forth to the cradle of morn,Where thy lids feel the weight of their slumbering still;We would kneel at thy bed where the seasons are born,And learn from thy lips the whole law of thy will.Have we sinned in thy sight? have we slackened our pace?Are we paying the forfeit in wormwood of shame?We draw nearer to thee, and our lives we would placeIn the hands of the Maker, that out of thy flameWe may gather that fire that shall glow with thy love;And will never grow dim through the future of years,That shall make us like thee, and our fealty prove'Till we learn to forget this dark trackhood of tears.As we turn to the East, wilt thou smile on our way?Wilt thou lessen the distance between us and thee?Or our hearts remain hungry, the shadow still stayWith its wizard arm lifted to smite as we flee.We doubt thee no longer—we know thou wilt aid;We turn to the path where thy morning rays shine;We will seek thy first footfall, and all unafraid,We feel thee, we love thee, we know we are thine.We leave the old life, with the graves of our kin,We turn from the sunset of dampness and death,We turn where the light with its god doth begin,And the praise of the day-king embalms every breath;Where the sun slakes his thirst with the dew of the flowers,Where the night flees before him far into the west,Where the honey-dewclings tothe fruit-laden hours,Where the soul sets its table, with Joy as its guest.So does our faith stand out against our grief;So does our hope grow up into belief.One God? Yes, Father, Thou! and only One.We praise thee; yet, our praise is only done,When we extol thee for the gift of faith.Not every one can name thee; but each breathMay be enladen with the thought of praiseAnd all adore thy attributes—the waysThat they adore thee are not always thine;Yet, do they bend to thy great thoroughfare and shineWith light from the Eternal throne; 'tis well,Nor otherwise than good—it can but swellThe choral of thy praise; and in the endThese thousand thoughts of Deity, in thee, not fail to blend.
THE JOURNEY.
O thou! who charmed the demons in the breastOf Saul, and set the universal voiceOf all the earth to thy unflagging song;Thou royal shepherd! bend for us acrossThe bridge of ages thy leant lips, and pourThe echo of thy music on our souls.And Thou of Nazareth! whose very lifeWas as the cadence of a well-strung harp,Thyself the instrument, upon whose strings,Ten thousand symphonies are left entranced;Pour in the empty vial of our verse,Some of thy soul of music, and let shineThrough every darkened crevice of the heart,Rays of celestial sunshine. Not in vainOur humble dalliance, if thou set the charmOf thine approval. Let our song be praiseAnd devotate our hands, that there be leftNo tissue, but is animate of Thee!The seas reach out to clasp each other's hands,The greater and the less, and leap the sandsThat tear in two their waters; but not soShe of the Nile; her rights will not forego.The hand that rocks the crib of empire holdsA charm, that locks the East and West in oneThe track of nations is her beaten path,And undisputed, till the earth be done.Man may disturb it, but the hand of GodHas placed a thousand tokens on this sod.The flocks are gathered, and the flight began,Old Uri and attendants in the van;The portents were of good as far as seen,Each breast a shrine of hope; thus early manGave little time to sorrow—after yearsWere left for its fruition; light of heart,These early-planted germlets of the earth,Took their reverses in the better partOf hardihood; they had thus early learned,That in the chafe of fortune there is gain;That scars are coronets, though they be burnedDeep in the brow of care; each gem a pain.Our philosophic age with heavy draught,Drinks deep in phantasies, but fails to learnThe wiser lesson of this early craft,To catch the wheel of fortune with each turn.East over Syria they bent their steps,Meeting Euphrates many leagues aboveWhere Babylon since molded into formHer mystical proportions; and so strovePersistently the mastery of earth.Crossing the Tigris but a span below,Where Taurus from his fountains feeds the stream,They traverse Persia with its after-glowOf conquest; where Ispahan gave touch,To chords that deify the voice of song,And mellow through the ages, if so muchAs but an echo would inspire the tongue,With that enchantment, that rolls down the courseOf her great history. We seek in vainAnother Cyrus, or another forceOf Scripture fulfillment, with lesser pain,And Time's repleted garner has no riper grain.Still East they cross the Amoo, and aboveWhere now, Bokhara's languor and reposeInvites the Sclavic hordes in summer questOf forage. And Belor, giant like, still throwsIts shadow o'er the landscape; and the KooshShortens the noon of summer, from the South;A thousand sparkling torrents downward rush,And pour their waste of waters in the mouthOf Indus. They cross where Belor melts its snow,To placid Cashgar's arms, sending belowA current to the waste of farther Nor.They stand on Cobis' southern girt, and drinkThe final retrospective of the West;And keep the gloomy borders to the brinkOf far-off Koulon, where the Argoon lendsIts mite of wastage to the vast Amour;And the impetuous Shilka, swiftly sendsIts tribute to the master of Mantchoor.One winter they had spent upon the way,Within the vale of Cashgar, where the flocksFound generous herbage; but they could not stayLonger than opening spring, when from the rocksAnd passes of the Koosh, a savage tribeCame fiercely on them; and again the fireFrom Uri's sacred pebble, as a bribeSaved them from ruin, and the warlike ireOf Lama's devotees, for even thenOn upper Ind, his worship had begun;But superstition, ranks us all as men,And mystery doth mold us into one.The Argoon and the Shilka passed; they keepTheir steady march, down Armour's limpid tide.Yet summer wastes to autumn. Seasons creepSo noiselessly, that our souls are open wide,If we set watch upon them; unawareThey find us napping, in our wakeful age;And how much more, in the unrisen sunOf ancient man! We wonder that the pageIs not more blurred and blotted in the yearsThat are far gone, when knowledge only bubbled up through tears.A Winter on the Amour near the sea;The Frost King strokes his heavy beard in glee,In surfeit of his triumph, o'er the foeThat dares invade his borders; and the snowScatters its fleecy fullness o'er the land,Hiding the face of Nature with its handSo cold and clasping. O 'tis very hard!To see familiar faces pass the wardOf our immediate contact, and the earthDraw back into its arms, with tightening girthOur loved ones. But 'tis a heavier lotTo see our mother Earth, whose faithful breastHas never failed to aid; so chilled in deathThat it cannot respond, though it be rest,Recuperent and needful; still the sameWhen we are starving for its warm caress,And cannot spare its nursing, when our claimIs mortal, and we feel the strong hand pressOur vitals; and we labor for our breath;And Famine lends its wizard hand, to fill the tooth of death.Old Uri vainly calls the shining god;Though it may light his altar, still the flameIs but a weakling; and the weary hostWere wrangling at his impotence, and tameHis efforts to assuage them. He had taughtHis followers of a near approach; the sunSeemed coy of his endeavors, for the thoughtOf zone or solstice, had not then begun,And Winter was their time of penance, whenTheir god rode low, and frowned him out of sight.They offered for his anger many gifts,And set their watchmen to outwake the night.In question of his rising. Why should heKeep so much closer the horizon's rimWhen they were in his quest, and sought the vergeOf farthest empire, in their reach of him?O empty arms! and ever reaching out,Fold in the blessings that your hands enclose.There is nor reason, nor excuse for doubt,The river of God's love so near you flows.Your very feet are on the water's brink,His very arms are all around you thrown,You touch him in your timidness, and shrinkTo his embraces; no human soul was ever yet alone.They settle down to Winter, and their flocksMust furnish sustenance, until the sunShall break their penance, and embrown the locksOf the o'ergristled seasons; and this won,They counsel further movement. Uri speaks:"Sons of the Summer God, I little thoughtWhen we set out from Egypt, that our feetWould be thus bruised and bled; but it is well.We learn the lesson of our latent sin;This trial of our faith will make us whole,If we but draw the diamond out of it.We have not vainly trod the heavy pressOf our affliction, if we firmly breastThe waters. I have kept faithful watch—We are but self-styled lords, and forfeit muchOf our asserted masterhood; the birdsMake many less mistakes—we used to noteThe flight of waterfowl in Egypt. WhyShould we not learn their wisdom in this clime?Before the sun sank low, and Winter came(Led by a providence that makes all thingsTo minister our wants), I watched the birds,And many, turned to East, across the sea.We lose our way sometimes, they never do;They are much closer children to the sunThan we, by their dependence—we need helpAs much as any feathered wingster does—And yet we push it back, when we might reachAnd find a steady hand. Let us go toAnd make us ships; that when the SpringShall beckon back to life the dormant earth,And all the birds turn back in countermarch,We fly against their flight, and reach the climeFrom whence the sun has warned them to returnTo this cold country of the nether earth."Behold! these rugged trees stand stout for us,And ready for our architrave; and weWere better wont to labor than to doleOur time in murmurs at our fate. Up! up!And do! and though we suffer overmuch,Our labor shall not vainly mock at us.Even old Kohen saw a journey South,When he did burn our eyes, as he went up,And he saw fat and plenty in the landWhere his prophetic eye did cast our lot;And we will not mistrust what leads to light,Though it be lifted in a demon's hand."The forests gave to them their virgin palms,And they did rudely shape them into crafts;Made ready for the flood, when the warm sunShould waken nature with enlivening draughts;But Spring wore into Summer, ere the birdsGave the unspoken pledge of their return.The sun, still coy, refused to climb as highAs it had done in Egypt; still they burnWith new-born hope, as they float down to sea,And, moving counter to their winged friends,Cross to Lopatka, where they only waitReplenishment, which nature always sends,Where faith is instinct as in lower life,(The birds teach providence, without a chance,)And so they wander on, to the Aleutes;Passing and calling, as they still advance,They reach to where Alaska strikes the sea,In severance to meet them. They kept on,Feeding on eggs of seabirds, and the meatsThat everywhere supplied them. They have goneSo far on Nature's very track, and nowA narrow river beckons their research,And they pass upward, till a mountain rangeConfronts their passage, like a royal perchFrom which the gods might frown their hardihood,For this intrusion of another world.But they have battled with the plague and flood;And though Olympus all his thunders hurled,They had not turned; they saw the earnest needOf pushing forward ere the sun turned back,And so they crossed to where the eastern slope,Feeds the McKenzie. Here an easy trackLeads down and cuts the stronger range in two,A little while among its shadows grope,When the broad prospect opened to their view.They follow the receding sun in hope,Still bearing to the east their steady trend,Hoping to win their God to close embrace;And morn and eve around their altars bendIn thankfulness, that they still see his face.Through many valleys, virgin to their sight,And many lakes, whose bosoms never stirredTo man, the weak pretender of God's might;But nature spreads her happy hearth with beast and flower and bird.
THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
Father of Waters! Nilus of the West!Thou holdst thy secrets from the sons of men;A knowledge of the past which none would wrestOr wish to circumscribe with tongue or penTo the weak bonds of history; but rather standWith old De Soto on thy banks, and reverence the handThat drew the fetters from thy limbs, and set thee first at birth,On thy unmuzzled pilgrimage, without a peer on earth.Better thy unbroke seal, if it would teachThe ponderous worm of destiny, called man;How great things may be hidden from his reach,And mighty things be silent, that his spanIs but a hand-breadth to the great unknown,A thistle-down, before the breezes blown,That silent and unseen God turns the mighty mill,And on the brow of giant force he writes his words, "Be still."The possibles of time, are all thine own.Thou hast not reared thy monuments of stoneTo overtop the pyramids, yet wroughtIn shapely mounds, thy sculpturehood, and caughtFrom flying Time, the lustre of his wing,Which gives the semblance of perpetual SpringTo thy vast lap of luxuries; in thee(Since man first pinioned thee to history)Is found the acme of a world's desire.Thy unknown crucial test, has passed the fireOf many fading centuries; let none inquireThe secrets of thy conquest: be thou shut up with God,The master molding of his hand—the jewel of his rod!Yet in the book of Nature there is writ,Without exception, all her energies,As line by line, her page becomes enlit;Yielding to man some new and glad surprise,As Agassiz, together works with her,To make the earth, her own interpreter;And such a giant, must not hope to hideThe unfading Sanscrit, written on its side.Thy brow wast glistered with the frost of years,Ere man's first rapture, at the sight of thee;Yet, were thy banks unswelled, by falling tearsTill he tore back thy splendid tapestry—The bison and the deer unfrighted cameTo lave upon thy borders, all were tame,In their untoilsome frolics; and the beasts and birdsMade rolic at thy feet, in songs not marred with words.But sorrow comes with knowledge; 'tis the tree,That bears the samest fruit in every zone—The tale of Eden is no mystery,The tree will verify wherever grown.And yet, in God's own providence 'tis best,That Eden be repeated East and West;If knowledge in the first, brought sorrowhood to earth,The power to laugh and cry, were purchased at one birth.They stand upon thy borders: Mighty Stream!We will not pry thy silent lips apart,To ask thee when, and how, the Prophet's dreamReached its fulfillment; treasured in thy heart,Let it remain as many other thingsAre left; our language lessens their effect,And makes them small in words,—the very springsOf our existence, are not shown correct,When crowded into verbage,—so we layOur beys upon thee, and we feel 'tis thine;Thine every secret, of the grand emprise,With only one unlicensed hand, the Hand of the Divine.It is enough that after waste and wantAnd weariness of spirit they have foundA rest upon thy margin, that thy armsAre opened to enclose them, and the soundOf human voices mingle with the notesOf myriad waterfowl. The thousand throatsOf thy unmeasured pasture, blend in praiseTo the All Father for the countless waysThat point his providence. The raven's cryStrikes never vainly, thy omniscient ear,No effort, but is answered "here am I,"No prayer but finds the parent very near.The unconscious hallelujahs of the plain,The untaught praises of the lofty trees,The waving upward palms of laden grain,The mellow notes upon the evening breeze,The "reveillies" from off the mountain tops,The nightingale's "tattoo," the many lipsTouched only once by God, the faithful dropsThat wear unceasing at the granite mine,The praise that never sinks to prayer, the finger tipsThat span the universal zone of life; all, all inclineTo adoration. If we lose our way(As these poor souls had done) we need but turnTo catch the choral of the passing day.Behold on every branch and beam the altars burn!And all things beckon us of God, if we but bendThe enquiring ear, and catch the keynote of the mighty songThat swells from all the universe; we too may blendIn the vast concord, happiest of the throng.The rhythmal of the angels, is not farFrom the first prattle of the infant's tongueBoth caught the glitter of the Eastern star;The harps were both, by the same Master strung;The glory of the one, glows from the face;The other lifts, to meet its parent's kiss.Not very far, the border land of bliss,From every infant of the human race.The sacred fane of childhood, when first reared,How like a prophecy it should be read—A thing to be adored, and sometimes feared!So many unseen hands, smooth down the bedOf infancy; we can but jostle with our utmost careAgainst angelic presences that bendAnd print their unseen kisses on the brow,And with the infant earth, the Heavenly essence blend.The wheel that never tires, and ever turns,Crushing the neck of nations in its round,Before whose tread, the star of empire burns,Behind whose trend, the ridged and furrowed groundGives mute quiescence, to the Master hand;This wheel rolls on; and now upon thy banksGreat River of the West the infant's cryIs mingled with the forest din; thy ranksAre opened to admit the "lullaby"Of earth's last entity; thou did'st not groanWhen buffalo and beaver found thy side,Nor when thy trees, first echoed to the moanOf the despondent turtle, to his bride;And thou did'st smile on this invading race,And open thy broad prairies, as the palmOf some great hearted giant, to embraceThe sea-tossed wanderers, the healing balmOf thy great heaving breast, rubbed almost outThe wrinkles from the faces of these siresOf early Egypt; they forgot the droughtAnd mildew of their wanderings, and the firesOf their thanksgiving altars, gave a zestThey never yet had felt; an empire spreadAround them, in the flush of its full growthA bride, inviting the espousal bed.Their ranks had been depleted; yet a fewStill lingered with the Prophet, who had stoodAt the first altar; when the fervent sunFirst answered their entreaty, and the bloodWas lapped by solar flame; and now, that peaceEnshrines their hearts, and plenty spreads their board,They warm towards their leader, and returnTo their old-fashioned loyalty; his wordIs sacred as the smiling of the sunWhose burnished mirror likenesses their forms,And in whose bosom after life is done,The weary find a shelter from all storms.Nor do they want a psalmist for his praise,But he is found with ready harp and voice,To turn the multitude, with rapturous gaze,Upon the god of their unshaken choice.Their morning song is mingled with the mirth,That rolics from the sycamore and oak,The song that swells the green and fruent earth,That needs no trumpet's blare, nor kettle stroke.
THE MORNING SONG OF THE MOUND BUILDERS.
Once more do we turn onthyface our glad eyes,Great god of the Summer! and sing,With the lark and the linnet we gladly ariseTo welcome the smile of our King.Our hearts are made glad when we feel thee advanceOn thy mission of mercy and might,For we know that the stroke of thy conquering lance,Has shattered the bulwarks of night.We look on thy face, and our doubts are dispelledBy the glance of thy mellowing eye;For we feel that the rains by our Master are held,And we fear not to do or to die.We felt thy embrace, many long weary years,Yet the scales were not torn from our eyes;We sought for a father, with prayers and with tearsTill we woke with a welcome surprise.And beheld from thy face,allthe fatherhood shine,And thy great glowing heartallablazeWith the love, that had lingered and grown more divine,In the yearn of our wandering days.How we leaped to thy arms, when we saw them extend!How we drank of thy fervent embrace!With its love like thyself, glowing on without end,In the gold of thy deified face.For our eyes were unscaled, and our hearts were unsealed;We were melted to tears at the thought,Of the blessings so near, that had stood unrevealed,Of the Providence waiting unsought.How could we have lost the firm grasp of thy hand,With its daily improvise of love,With its unsounded depths, like the count of the sand,As an index, to point us above?And now hover o'er us, great god of the day!Let us never escape from thy wing,For ever and ever, drive famine away,Give wealth to our Summer and Spring.Give us harvests of fruit, give us Winters of rest—Let thy Provident hand never cease;Grant the aged a home, on thy great shining breast,When their labors shall purchase release.Be more than weask, giveus more than our prayer—All our wants, let thy wisdom disclose,Till our souls shall be ripe with thy fostering care,And made white for our future repose.
EVENING THANKSGIVING AND PRAYER.
Sinking down to thy rest,In the deep crimson West,Great God! thou hast taught us repose;With thy promised return,Without doubting, we learn,To wait for thy further disclose.In thy tenement high,Blazing over the sky,Are thy sentinels, pledge of the night;And we know by their shine,That thy care is divine,And we rest without fear, till the lightSprings again from the EastWith its glory increasedBy the wakening pulse of the day;And we never will doubt,That thy naked arm, stout,Will drive all the shadows away.Yet we cannot forebear,To lift up our prayer,For we know we are wanton and weak;And if once thou shouldst fail,Or thy face shouldst grow pale,Where else in the world should we seek?For a father so kind,To a people so blind,In our weakness, thy strength we may trace.Then fail not to return,Leave us never to mourn,The wealth of thy daily embrace.O continue, we pray,To bring back the glad day;Give us always, to look on thy face!The trembling lisp of every human soul,Of names more potent, then their own can be,Breathes the same lesson through, from pole to poleTo prove the certitude of Deity.Not every eye turned upward can beholdThe face that faith alone shapes into form;Not every hand can touch the gates of goldThat outward swing in welcome from the storm.Yet is the "Abba Father" pendant from each tongue,And every soul a furnace for its fires;And sacred is each song in earnest sung,When creature to Creator thus aspires.We blindly grope in this, our broad of day,The two eternities to thus unite;The silk of infancy is turned to grayEre we have learned to tread the path aright.We force our providences out of reach,Throw back the hand our Father doth extend,And shut our ears that he may vainly teach,And all the wealth of heaven may expendTo warm us to reliance,—shall we dareTo sneer at those who grope? We grapple airWhen it is all refulgent with our God,And we may touch his garment's hem in prayer.
THE PROPHET'S DEATH.
Groping in undiscovered realms their way,The Prophet and his people give the dayTo finding safest lodgement, till they pressWell down the grand old river, to the mouthOf the great Western confluent—the southSeems to add Summer to the wilderness.They cross the river, and then settle downTo love and labor on its grassy banks;And fortune seems to have forgot its frown.Years of repletion fill their shattered ranks,And youth and vigor take the place of age;The story of their journey is retoldBy only few in number; and the sage,Who turned their faces on their god of gold,Was bent with the plethoric weight of years,And summoned them to worship 'mid the tearsOf many, who misgave his failing strength;He saw their apprehensions and at lengthCalled them together for a final word:"Sons of the Summer God! it is but wiseThat we look out beyond the brace of years,And question of the future. All the wayThe shining surface of our god has ledOur toilsome footsteps; we must not forgetHis daily nurture, nor the cloth of goldWith which he covers us—wakeful with the day,How has he touched our eyelids with his hands,And warmed us with his hovering! The nightHas never failed his promise of the morn.How has his parenthood outwatched the stars;How has the Winter melted at his glance;How has his armor battled with the snows!With what a tenderness he decks the fields,And wooes the grasses from the dormant earth,And clothes the forest with its robes of green,As covert for the bison and the deer,That we may find replenishment of food!His providence has never failed our steps,Our homage cannot cancel his regard."Our father! in this failing cup of years,Help us to be re-sanctified to thee—Thou hast not measured to our helplessness,But with unstinted hand filled up our livesWith blessings. Fill thou alike our hearts,That we may have no room to cherish doubt,But answer thy embraces, as the fieldsLeap up to kiss thy first recumbent rays!Let all our dross become thy burnished gold,Shine through each crevice of our stubbornness,Till in transparent purity, we reachThe very essence of thy godliness!"Brethren of the Sun!This altar is my last: You see the fireLeap as an answer to my late request,And it shall bear my spirit to the sun,And cursed the hand that stays its homeward flight!"Fresh nerved he reached the altar with a bound,And sank without a murmur in the flame;His followers an instant gather round,But he had passed out almost as he came.They did not dare to drag him from the pile,His life and effort had together ceased,He passed into the future with a smile—A smile, that he had been so quick released.Yet, there was one (clear-sighted from the rest),Who said she saw the essence of his form,In brighter effigy, more richly dressed,Fly out into the sunset; and the charmOf her enchanted parable found faithIn many of the multitude; his death,So like his life, had challenged all their thoughtAnd they were ready to quiesce his fate, and soughtSome shadowed miracle to wrap his shade.They gathered up the ashes, and forbadeUnsanctioned hands to touch them; and they rearedA rugged mound above the garnered dust,And left him (one whom they loved less than feared).To that sole arbiter, whose name is Just,Our common parent, Time, whose busy handsRear many a sacred fane above our faults,Flings over our excressences his sands,And leaves no human stain to blot the sacred marble of our vaults.How grand is the economy of time and death!We whet the knife for deep incision on the nameOf some misguided leader, but he fails his breath,And all our better angels give him back to fame;Death carries off the husk, we keep the ripened wheat,And Time refines the kernel into choicest flour;The atmosphere of anger is at last made sweet;Our charity immortal glows; our passion, but an hour.God keep us always so! It is the chosen linkThat binds us to the race, and bids the Christ come in;That holds our hands to near the eternal brink;It saves us from ourselves, and breaks the tooth of sin.The whitened garments at the eternal gate,Must cover those, who have not stained another,Or there will come that awful sentence: "Wait!"Blood crieth from the ground! where is thy brother?"If thus upon the living God doth set the sealOf condemnation for the false witnessingHow will he smite the lips of those who stealHis covering from the dead, and fill the sacred springOf memory, with the debris of their lives;Mixing, what God has kindly torn apart,And making null, the severence he strives,Between the naked soul, and sin encumbered heart!The gem was melted, and his life went outIn unobtrusive secrecy, and allThat he brought with him, passed the silent wayInto eternity, beyond recall.He chose no sponsor to renew his placeBut gave them back to Nature, as he found;Yet was his impress fastened on the race,And every morn they gathered at the mound,For many after years, till they had grownA nation strong in numbers, and had thrownThe seeds of generation far and wide,And found the latent valleys without guide.The lakes are made a tribute to their spoil,And all the riches of the virgin soilWere tested by those hardy argonauts of old;And though they sought no fleece of shining gold,They penetrated all the wildernessThat lay unclaimed before them to possess.God drops no nobler anchorage on earth,Than those who mold a nation, and a name;Whose travail in the wilderness gives birthTo some great epoch, without thought of fame.The pioneers of empire, for all time,Are gold-dust, from the placers of our homes—The surface croppings from a nation's prime,The mellow acre of the richest loams.They overgrow the boundaries of life,And push the horizon far out in space.With lethargy they wage a ceaseless strife,And with the whirling earth, they keep their pace.All honor to the soul who sets his stakeWhere human kind have never trenched before;Where only God his thunders o'er it shake,And solitude shall murmur, "nevermore."Such men are sovereigns, though they grasp no crown,And raise no jewelled scepter in the hand;Yet are they Princes, in their bronze and brown,And demonstrate their fitness to command.The Norsemen, on the North Atlantic wave;Columbus, passing out in unknown seas;De Soto, gaining but an unknown grave;The hardy Pilgrims, on their bended knees;The Argonauts, upon the Western slope—These are the souls no human praise can reach.Each, in their turn, gave empire back to hope,And all are greater than the gift of speech.No pen can lustre their unfading claim;No cenotaph do honor to their dust—These are crown jewels on the brow of Fame;Their conquest is supreme, their laurels ever just.Yet, in the van of empire, still is leftThe noiseless print of ancestry more grand;Indentures chiseled in the highest cleft,By giants of a long forgotten land,—The nameless graves of centuries untold;The ashes of the prehistoric age;The self-forgetting litany of gold—How vast their monuments, how broad their page!In what a grand democracy of deathThey lift their silent fingers to our years,Melt our memorials with a single breathIn mute companionship of life and tears!We are but pygmies to the almighty past,The names we honor but the surface-mould;Beneath must lie an empire far more vast,Whose fundaments alone deserve the name of "old."Not many years, till they had found the bedOf copper ore upon Superior's rim;And hither many of the hardy ones were ledBy Orchas, quick in architrave, and fleet of limb;And many the fantastic implements he shapedFor husbandry; no want of theirs escapedHis eager scrutiny—the axe and blade,The rough-made pick, and the encumbered spade,The vessels for the housewife, and the spear,And other weaponry for bison and for deer.All these were fashioned in an uncouth way,And yet they filled the purpose of the day.They had not reached the iron age of thought,And what they made, necessity had taught;But riper years must ope the "Sampson Mine,"And wake the rugged giant, in the shineOf a meridian sunlight; they little thoughtOf what a Hercules remained unsought,So near Missouri's border; yet, not strangeIs their indicted ignorance—their rangeWas circumscribed; and iron was left to rest,Till man had long been cradled on the breastOf patient Mother Earth—not all at onceDid she give up her treasures; and the dunceMust grow into philosopher with years.Experience with its battlehood of tears,Is Nature's great interpreter; we learnBut slowly, till the lessons fervid burnTheir impress into action; then awakesThe slow-taught pupil into higher life—Invention is the furnace-spark of strife;Necessity, the hand that wields the sledgeUpon the patient anvil of our needs,And Providence makes good its wakeful pledgeWith plenteous harvest; from the dormant seedsThat lie unconed beneath our very feetWe stumble on to marvels, and awakeTo find some giant force, in what we meet;And in the insects of our path, leviathans, we greet.Time's wheels, though shaken, never fail to trackThe rut of empire, without turning back;They, ceaseless whirl, with lubricate of blood,Drawn from a thousand channels on the way,Unrusting, through the oxydizing flood,To measure centuries, or mark a day.And thus, the primal pioneers move onTo unaccustomed progress, on the banksOf the confluent streams that scar the faceOf the great Western basin; and their ranksAre filled with happy husbandry; the landGives back its tillage, with a lavish hand.The forests and the streams were over-fullWith fish, and flesh to feed them, and they passOne conquest, to another, in the lullOf untamed nature. Garnered as a massTo fill their open hands, the native cornSoon covered the rich valleys, and the plant,So dalliant to the race, was early born,Tobacco. They were not adamantAgainst the weaknesses so close alliedTo human nature; and there was excess,And envy, emulence, and pride,And all the ills that left their first impress;And yet God gave them peace. No brother's handWas raised against a brother, and the yearsSpread fruit and plenty over a fair landDestined to futurehood of bitter, bitter tears.