Long gazed the Mariner; when thus the Guide:
Here spreads the world thy daring sail descried,
Hesperia call’d, from my anterior claim;
But now Columbia, from thy patriarch name.
So from Phoenicia’s peopled strand of yore
Europa sail’d and sought an unknown shore;
There stampt her sacred name; and thence her race,
Hale, venturous, bold from Jove’s divine embrace,
Ranged o’er the world, predestined to bestride
Earth’s elder continents and each far tide.
Ages unborn shall bless the happier day,
That saw thy streamer shape the guideless way,
Their bravest heroes trace the path you led
And sires of nations through the regions spread.
Behold yon isles, where first thy flag unfurl’d
In bloodless triumph o’er the younger world;
As, awed to silence, savage bands gave place,
And hail’d with joy the sun-descended race.3
Retrace the banks yon rushing waters lave;
There Orinoco checks great ocean’s wave;
Thine is the stream; it cleaves the well known coast,
Where Paria’s walks thy former footsteps boast.
But these no more thy wide discoveries bound,
Superior prospects lead their swelling round,
Nature’s remotest scenes before thee roll,
And years and empires open on thy soul.
With yon bold eminence commence thy view;
See Quito’s plains o’erlook their proud Peru,
On whose huge base, like islands built in heaven,
A vast protuberance forms the gates of even.
Approaching slow they still expand their bounds,
The yielding concave bends sublimer rounds;
Whose wearied stars, high curving to the west,
Pause on the summits for a moment’s rest;
Recumbent there they renovate their force
And roll rejoicing on their downward course.
Another mass invades yon southern skies,
Hills form on hills and peaks o’er peaks arise,
Ascending, whitening, rocks and crags are lost,
O’erhung with headcliffs of eternal frost!
Broad fields of ice give back the morning ray,
Like walls of suns or heaven’s perennial day.
There folding storms on eastern pinions ride,
Veil the black void and wrap the mountains side,
Rude thunders rake the crags, the rains descend
And the long lightnings o’er the valleys bend;
While blasts unburden’d sweep the cliffs of snow,
The whirlwinds wheel above, the floods convolve below.
There molten rocks explosive rend their tomb;
Volcanos, laboring many a nation’s doom,
Wild o’er the regions pour their floods of fire;
The shores heave backward and the seas retire.
There lava waits my late reluctant call,
To roar aloft and shake some guilty wall;
Thy pride, O Lima, swells the sulphurous wave,
And fanes and priests and idols crowd thy grave.
But cease, my son, these dread events to trace,
Nor learn the woes that here await thy race.
Anorth from that broad gulf, where verdant rise
Those gentler mounds that skirt the temperate skies,
A happier hemisphere invites thy view;
The ancient world shall there embrace the new;
There Europe’s better sons their seat shall trace
And change of government improve the race.
Through all the midsky zones, to yon blue pole,
Their green hills lengthen, their bright rivers roll;
And swelling westward, how their champaigns run!
How slope their uplands to the morning sun!
So spoke the blest Immortal; when more near
His northern wilds in all their breadth appear;
Lands yet unknown and streams without a name
Rise into vision and demand their fame.
As when a saint first gains his bright abode,
Vaults o’er the spheres and views the works of God,
Sees earth, his kindred orb, beneath him roll,
Here glow the centre, and there point the pole;
O’er land and sea his eyes delighted rove,
And human thoughts his heavenly joys improve;
With equal scope the raptured Hero’s sight
Ranged the low vale, or climb’d the cloudy height,
As, fixt in ardent look, his opening mind
Explored the realms that here invite mankind.
From sultry Mobile’s gulf-indented shore
To where Ontario hears his Lawrence roar,
Stretcht o’er the broadbackt hills in long array,
The tenfold Alleganies meet the day,
And show, far sloping from the plains and streams,
The forest azure streakt with orient beams.
High moved the scene, Columbus gazed sublime,
And thus in prospect hail’d the happy clime:
Blest be the race my guardian guide shall lead
To these wide vales with every bounty spread.
What treasured stores the hills must here combine!
Sleep still ye diamonds, and ye ores refine;
Exalt your heads ye oaks, ye pines ascend,
Till future navies bid your branches bend;
Then spread the canvass o’er the watery way,
Explore new worlds and teach the old your sway.
He said, and northward cast his curious eyes
On other cliffs of more exalted size.
Where Maine’s bleak breakers line the dangerous coast,
And isles and shoals their latent horrors boast,
High lantern’d in his heaven the cloudless White
Gives the glad sailor an eternal light;4
Who far through troubled ocean greets the guide,
And stems with steadier helm the stormful tide.
Nor could those heights unnoticed raise their head,
That swell sublime o’er Hudson’s shadowy bed;
Though fiction ne’er has hung them in the skies,
Though White and Andes far superior rise,
Yet hoary Kaatskill, where the storms divide,
Would lift the heavens from Atlas’ laboring pride.
Land after land his passing notice claim,
And hills and mountains rise without a name,
All yet unsung, their mystic powers untold;
Celestials there no sacred senates hold;
No chain’d Prometheus feasts the vulture there,
No Cyclop forges through their summits glare,
To Phrygian Jove no victim smoke is curl’d,
Nor ark high landing quits a deluged world.
But were these masses piled on Asia’s shore,
Taurus would shrink, Hemodia boast no more,
Indus and Ganges scorn their humble sires,
And rising suns salute superior fires;
Whose watchful priest would meet, with matin blaze
His earlier god, and sooner chaunt his praise.
For here great nature with a bolder hand
Roll’d the broad stream and heaved the lifted land;
And here, from finisht earth, triumphant trod
The last ascending steps of her creating God.
He saw these mountains ope their watery stores,
Floods quit their caves and seek the distant shores;
Wild through disparting plains their waves expand
And lave the banks where future towns must stand.
Whirl’d from the monstrous Andes’ bursting sides,
Maragnon5 leads his congregating tides;
A thousand Alps for him dissolve their snow,
A thousand Rhones obedient bend below;
From different zones their ways converging wind,
Sweep beds of ore and leave their gold behind,
In headlong cataracts indignant rave,
Rush to his banks and swell the swallowing wave.
Ucayla, first of all his mighty sons,
From Cusco’s walls a wearied journey runs;
Pastaza mines proud Pambamarca’s base,
And holds through sundering hills his lawless race;
Aloft, where Cotopaxi flames on high,
The roaring Napo quits his misty sky,
Down the long steeps in whitening torrents driven,
Like Nile descending from his fabled
