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(From The West Indies)
LONG lay the ocean-paths from man concealed; | |
| Light came from heaven,—the magnet was revealed, | |
| A surer star to guide the seaman’s eye | |
| Than the pale glory of the northern sky; | |
| Alike ordained to shine by night and day, | 5 |
| Through calm and tempest, with unsetting ray; | |
| Where’er the mountains rise, the billows roll, | |
| Still with strong impulse turning to the pole, | |
| True as the sun is to the morning true, | |
| Though light as film, and trembling as the dew. | 10 |
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| Then man no longer plied with timid oar | |
| And failing heart along the windward shore; | |
| Broad to the sky he turned his fearless sail, | |
| Defied the adverse, wooed the favoring gale, | |
| Bared to the storm his adamantine breast, | 15 |
| Or soft on ocean’s lap lay down to rest; | |
| While, free as clouds the liquid ether sweep, | |
| His white-winged vessels coursed the unbounded deep; | |
| From clime to clime the wanderer loved to roam, | |
| The waves his heritage, the world his home. | 20 |
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| Then first Columbus, with the mighty hand | |
| Of grasping genius, weighed the sea and land; | |
| The floods o’erbalanced: where the tide of light, | |
| Day after day, rolled down the gulf of night, | |
| There seemed one waste of waters: long in vain | 25 |
| His spirit brooded o’er the Atlantic main; | |
| When, sudden as creation burst from naught, | |
| Sprang a new world through his stupendous thought, | |
| Light, order, beauty! While his mind explored | |
| The unveiling mystery, his heart adored; | 30 |
| Where’er sublime imagination trod, | |
| He heard the voice, he saw the face, of God. | |
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| Far from the western cliffs he cast his eye, | |
| O’er the wide ocean stretching to the sky; | |
| In calm magnificence the sun declined, | 35 |
| And left a paradise of clouds behind; | |
| Proud at his feet, with pomp of pearl and gold, | |
| The billows in a sea of glory rolled. | |
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