Columbus hail’d them with a father’s smile,
Fruits of his cares and children of his toil;
While still his eyes through tears of joy descried
Their course adventurous on the distant tide.
Thus when o’er deluged earth her Numen stood,
The tost ark bounding on the shoreless flood,
The sacred treasure fixt his guardian view,
While climes unnoticed in the wave withdrew.
The hero saw them reach the rising strand,
Leap from their ships and share the joyous land;
Receding forests yield the laborers room,
And opening wilds with fields and gardens bloom.
Fill’d with the glance ecstatic, all his soul
Now seems unbounded with the scene to roll,
And now impatient, with retorted eye,
Perceives his station in another sky:
Waft me, indulgent Angel, waft me o’er
With those blest heroes to the happy shore;
There let me live and die. But all appears
A fleeting vision! these are future years.
Yet grant the illusion still may nearer spread
And my glad steps may seem their walks to tread;
While Europe wrapt in momentary night
Shall rise no more to intercept the sight.
Columbus thus; when Hesper’s potent hand
Moves brightening o’er the visionary land;
The height that bore them still sublimer grew
And earth’s whole circuit settled from their view.
A dusky deep serene as breathless even
Seem’d vaulting downward like another heaven;
The sun, rejoicing on his western way,
Stampt his fair image in the inverted day:
When now Hesperia’s coast arose more nigh
And life and action fill’d the dancing eye.
Between the gulfs, where Lawrence drains the world
And where Floridia’s farthest floods are curl’d,
Where midlands broad their swelling mountains heave
And slope their champaigns to the Atlantic wave,
The sandy streambank and the woodgreen plain
Raise into sight the new made seats of man.
The placid ports that break the seaborn gales
Rear their tall masts and stretch aloft their sails;
Full harvests wave, the groves with fruitage bend,
Gay villas smile, defensive towers ascend;
All the rich works of art their charms display
To court the planter and his cares repay:
Till war invades; when soon the dales disclose
Their meadows path’d with files of savage foes;
High tufted quills their painted foreheads press,
Dark spoils of beasts their shaggy shoulders dress,
The bow bent forward for the combat strung,
The ax, the quiver on the girdle hung;
The deep discordant yells convulse the air,
And earth resounds the war whoop’s hideous blare.
The patriarch lookt; and every darken’d height
Pours down the swarthy nations to the fight.
Where Kennebec’s high source forsakes the sky,
Where long Champlain’s yet unkeel’d waters lie,
Where Hudson crowds his hill-dissundering tide,
Where Kaatskill heights the starry vault divide,
Where the dim Alleganies range sublime
And give their streams to every neighboring clime,
The swarms descended like an evening shade,
And wolves and vultures follow’d where they spread.
Thus when a storm on eastern pinions driven
Meets the firm Andes in the midst of heaven,
The clouds convulse, the torrents pour amain
And the black waters sweep the subject plain.
Through harvest fields the bloody myriads tread,
Sack the lone village, strow the streets with dead;
The flames in spiry volumes round them rise,
And shrieks and shouts redoubling rend the skies.
Fair babes and matrons in their domes expire
Or bursting frantic through the folding fire
They scream, fly, fall; promiscuous rave along
The yelling victors and the driven throng;
The streams run purple; all the peopled shore
Is wrapt in flames and trod with steps of gore.
Till colons, gathering from the shorelands far,
Stretch their new standards and oppose the war,
With muskets match the many-shafted bow,
With loud artillery stun the astonisht foe.
When like a broken wave the barbarous train
Lead back the flight and scatter from the plain,
Slay their weak captives, drop their shafts in haste,
Forget their spoils and scour the trackless waste;
From wood to wood in wild confusion hurl’d
They hurry o’er the hills far through the savage world.
Now move secure the cheerful works of peace,
New temples rise and fruitful fields increase.
Where Delaware’s wide waves behold with pride
Penn’s beauteous town ascending on their side,
The crossing streets in just alignment run,
The walls and pavements sparkle to the sun.
Like that famed city rose the checker’d plan,
Whose spacious towers Semiramis began;
Long ages finisht what her hand design’d,
The pride of kings and wonder of mankind.
New York ascends o’er Hudson’s seaward isles
And flings the sunbeams from her glittering tiles;
Albania, opening through the distant wood,
Rolls her rich treasures on her parent flood;
Amid a thousand sails young Boston laves,
High looms majestic Newport o’er the waves,
Patapsco’s bay contracts his yielding side,
As spreading Baltimore invades his tide;
Aspiring Richmond tops the bank of James,
And Charleston sways her two contending streams.
Through each colonial realm, for wisdom great,
Elected sires assume the cares of state;
Nursed in equality, to freedom bred,
Firm is their step and straight the paths they tread;
Dispensing justice with paternal hand,
By laws of peace they rule the happy land;
While reason’s page their statute codes unfold,
And rights and charters flame in figured gold.
All rights that Britons know they here transfuse,
Their sense invigorate and expand their views,
Dare every height of human soul to scan,
Find, fathom, scope the moral breadth of man,
Learn how his social powers may still dilate
And tone their tension to a stronger state.
Gaul’s migrant sons explore the western day
Stretch over Canada their colon sway,
Plant sylvan Wabash with a watchful post,
O’er Mississippi spread a mantling host,
Bid Louisiana’s lovely clime prepare
New arts to prove and infant states to rear;
While the bright lakes, that wide behind them spread,
Unfold their channels to the paths of trade,
Ohio’s waves their destined honors claim
And smile, as conscious of approaching fame.
But Gallic planters still their trammels wear,
Their feudal genius still attends them here;
Dependent feelings for a distant throne
Gyve the crampt soul that fears to think alone,
Demand their rulers from the parent land,
Laws ready made and generals to command.
Judge, priest and pedagogue and all the slaves
Of foreign masters crowding o’er the waves
Spread thick the shades of vassalage and sloth,
Absorb their labors and prevent their growth,
Damp every thought that might their tyrants brave,
And keep the vast domain a desert and a grave.
Too soon the mother states with jealous fear
Transport their feuds and homebred quarrels here.
Now Gallia’s war-built barks ascend in sight,
White flags unfold and armies robed in white,
On all the frontier streams their forts prepare
And coop our cantons with surrounding war.
Quebec, as
