Montezuma Part 6

To that sole arbiter, whose name is Just, Our common parent, Time, whose busy hands Rear 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 name Of 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 pa.s.sion, but an hour.

G.o.d keep us always so! It is the chosen link That 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 G.o.d doth set the seal Of condemnation for the false witnessing How will he smite the lips of those who steal His covering from the dead, and fill the sacred spring Of memory, with the debris of their lives; Mixing, what G.o.d has kindly torn apart, And making null, the severence he strives, Between the naked soul, and sin enc.u.mbered heart!

The gem was melted, and his life went out In un.o.btrusive secrecy, and all That he brought with him, pa.s.sed the silent way Into eternity, beyond recall.

He chose no sponsor to renew his place But 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 grown A nation strong in numbers, and had thrown The 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 soil Were tested by those hardy argonauts of old; And though they sought no fleece of s.h.i.+ning gold, They penetrated all the wilderness That lay unclaimed before them to possess.

G.o.d drops no n.o.bler anchorage on earth, Than those who mold a nation, and a name; Whose travail in the wilderness gives birth To 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 s.p.a.ce.

With lethargy they wage a ceaseless strife, And with the whirling earth, they keep their pace.

All honor to the soul who sets his stake Where human kind have never trenched before; Where only G.o.d 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 Nors.e.m.e.n, on the North Atlantic wave; Columbus, pa.s.sing 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 l.u.s.tre 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 left The 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 death They lift their silent fingers to our years, Melt our memorials with a single breath In mute companions.h.i.+p 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 bed Of copper ore upon Superior's rim; And hither many of the hardy ones were led By Orchas, quick in architrave, and fleet of limb; And many the fantastic implements he shaped For husbandry; no want of theirs escaped His eager scrutiny--the axe and blade, The rough-made pick, and the enc.u.mbered spade, The vessels for the housewife, and the spear, And other weaponry for bison and for deer.

All these were fas.h.i.+oned 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 s.h.i.+ne Of a meridian sunlight; they little thought Of what a Hercules remained unsought, So near Missouri's border; yet, not strange Is their indicted ignorance--their range Was circ.u.mscribed; and iron was left to rest, Till man had long been cradled on the breast Of patient Mother Earth--not all at once Did she give up her treasures; and the dunce Must grow into philosopher with years.

Experience with its battlehood of tears, Is Nature's great interpreter; we learn But slowly, till the lessons fervid burn Their impress into action; then awakes The slow-taught pupil into higher life-- Invention is the furnace-spark of strife; Necessity, the hand that wields the sledge Upon the patient anvil of our needs, And Providence makes good its wakeful pledge With plenteous harvest; from the dormant seeds That lie unconed beneath our very feet We stumble on to marvels, and awake To 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 track The 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 on To unaccustomed progress, on the banks Of the confluent streams that scar the face Of the great Western basin; and their ranks Are filled with happy husbandry; the land Gives back its tillage, with a lavish hand.

The forests and the streams were over-full With fish, and flesh to feed them, and they pa.s.s One conquest, to another, in the lull Of untamed nature. Garnered as a ma.s.s To fill their open hands, the native corn Soon covered the rich valleys, and the plant, So dalliant to the race, was early born, Tobacco. They were not adamant Against the weaknesses so close allied To human nature; and there was excess, And envy, emulence, and pride, And all the ills that left their first impress; And yet G.o.d gave them peace. No brother's hand Was raised against a brother, and the years Spread fruit and plenty over a fair land Destined to futurehood of bitter, bitter tears.

DEPARTURE OF WABUN.

"Most governed is most wayward." Very true; Repeating history doth verify That law from malefaction always grew, And with its ceasing, rulers.h.i.+p must die, Except the common sway of Deity, When love and service shall together blend, And man, from every earthly master free, Shall recognize his Father and his Friend.

These ancient prairie dwellers, had no need Of stringent government; a few to lead In seeding and in harvest; some to guide In matters of religion, and of form; The rustic swain, and his compliant bride, To join in wedlock; and in time of storm, To smooth the little intricates of life With counsel, sage, and thus avoiding strife, To guide their budding nation into bloom.

All claiming unction from the prophet's shade, Still gave their wors.h.i.+p to the G.o.d of day, And their oblations on the altar laid.

Yet, the responsive accident of fire Could never be recalled--they little knew The secret of its coming; and they shaped No other pebbles like the one so true To Uri's pleadings; still they kept their faith And reared their shapely mounds to meet the sun With his first glance, and from the morning's breath Retain their fervency, till day was done.

From out their number, some were set apart For game and chase. The buffalo and deer And wild fowl, all, paid tribute to their skill, And vale and forest echoed with their cheer.

But one of these, young Wabun, shunned the group, And wandered by the forest streams alone.

Some called him "dreamer"; others tried to win His mooding back to mirth; but there was none That seemed to reach the center of his soul; He joined not in the wors.h.i.+p of his race, And seemed to be so distant in his thought, That one might search the Pleiad's in his face.

There shone a star upon the eastern rim-- So suddenly it shot upon their view, So brilliant and so placid, never dim Through storm and starlight, always lit anew.

They marveled much, and some were sore dismayed To seek the portents of this stranger star; But not so, Wabun; he, all unafraid, Hailed it as answer from the dim afar, And showed unwonted pleasure at its sight; His distance seemed to shorten, and his mind Seemed mellowed by a new-born love to man-- A quickened tenderness to help his kind.

"I wander in the forest; by the stream"; (They gave earnest audience as he spake) "And underneath the stars--and they all tell The story of a great, forgotten G.o.d.

I listen to the murmuring of the rain, And to the mighty thunder of the clouds; And see the forked lightning, in its gleam, Strike the great oak to s.h.i.+vers, in its path; I see the maize upon a thousand fields; I see the goodly carpet on the earth-- And every gra.s.sy thread a miracle-- I see the sun upon his track of light, The moon upon her pathway in the sky-- And all do tell of this forgotten G.o.d.

For G.o.d is of the living, not the dead: The tree, the sun, the moon, the stars, and all, All fill their places; but are not alive

"As we, with thought, and purpose, and design; But each doth turn upon a steady crank Held by a mighty and imperious hand.

The bison, and the deer, and all the birds, Have life, and voice, and action, such as we; And yet they have no thought, except to live.

They build no houses, lay no harvests up-- We are their masters, with the right to kill.

"All things pay tribute to our prowent hands; All things we see are provident of us: The sun to ripen, and the moon to watch, The birds and flocks for us to gather flesh, The forests and the prairies for our use, The mines for metal, and the streams for fish-- All, all, pay tribute to our wasting hands.

Yet we are not a law unto ourselves: Though masters, yet not G.o.ds, for we all die And fall back into dust; yet are we great, And greatest of earth's creatures; but for death, We might claim highest unction; but our power Is limited; wherefore, if we are highest type Of creature earth, then must it surely be That G.o.d is man, but of a higher mold; Not subject unto death, but Lord of life.

And, if all earthly forces must conserve Our being (highest born of all the earth), Then back of us the great Creator stands

"Unseen, as is Eternity unseen, But felt, as is each ripple of her waves, Upon the sh.o.r.es of our unstable life.

The greater is not seen. We do not see The very thought that holds us in control.

"Thus have I doled, and pondered on it well, Until, upon my vision dawned that star; And as upon some errand quickly sent (I know not how I went, I felt so light), I sped upon its rays, o'er vale, and hill, And o'er a vaster water than the lakes-- A grand expanse of green and surging waves.

And, on, still on, till just before my face A mother, and an infant at her breast, And many seeming wise and stately men Bending in homage and with offerings choice, Of sweetly-scented vintage; then I sought To find the wherefore of this sweet emprize; And I was told this was the Son of G.o.d-- The One that was to come, the mighty One, Redeemer of the world; that man had sinned And he was come to set at one the race With the All-Father; that we had been made In G.o.d's own image; that the sun and moon Were but his handiwork. To Him alone (Invisible, yet always looking on)

"Should homage be ascribed. All this was short Yet was it printed on my pliant breast, And cannot be erased. I seek no name And claim no higher homage for the gleam Vouchsafed my vision of the mighty past And prescience of the future; tis enough To know my steps directed, and to feel That in my darkness I have found out G.o.d.

No more the unknown G.o.d, but evermore The ripened type of the diviner man; And as we reap the tokens of his love, Remember him as Father Man of men-- The Infinite Perfection of our race."

Much more he said which made a deep impress Upon the hardy hunters, and the less Were those who gave no sanction to his word; The greater portion followed him in thought, And soon in deed. The votaries of the sun Made most malignant onslaught, and they sought To drive the thoughtful Wabun from his "dream."

The strife was vain. They in their fervent hope Turn to the East, into the wilderness-- The grand Druidic of the Eastern slope, And, hid to all but G.o.d, they penetrate The deep recesses of their broad estate.

The gentle Wabun held for many years His hand upon the pulses of their thought; Sometimes upon their love, sometimes their fears, His fervent purity, its impress wrought.

He led them to the thousand untold charms That sparkle on the rugged Eastern slope.

He bared to them the great Creator's arms, And, in G.o.d's grandest alphabet, he read their highest hope.

Niagara was but a giant scroll, Whereon G.o.d writ a token of his strength; The muttering voice of its unceasing roll Was but a cadence of the mighty length That measures the eternities of life.

Its grandeur but one glitter of the gold That played upon his vesture; that the strife Of waters was the stream so cold, Down which humanity as rudely rushed; Without a thought for their eternal good, With all the semblance of the Father crushed, They pa.s.s down in the surge of death's unceasing flood.

The broad Atlantic las.h.i.+ng at the sh.o.r.e, Was human pa.s.sion--with the balance gone; Endeafening the graces with its roar, And blindly las.h.i.+ng the Eternal throne.

Into these miniatures, G.o.d thrust himself, That every wave might glitter with his name, That every rock might hold upon its shelf Some semblance that their reverence might claim.

The kindlier tokens of paternal care, On Nature's face, were beaming everywhere.

And yet, how few of us, can truly blend The creature with Creator, in our sight; And from the Father, grasp the hand of friend, Whose stars of providence outs.h.i.+ne the night!

Our eyes are fettered with an earthly bound, Our narrow horizon will not enlarge; Our gaze, star fixed, will drop back to the ground, And will not with the infinite surcharge.

Only G.o.d's hand can push the barriers back, And give our vision unimpeded range; And with each respite, on the weary track, Fix the unchangeable, where all is change.

RETURN AND STRIFE.