Page:Colonization and Christianity.djvu/431

 Ready alike its pleasance to impart,
 * Or scorch the hand which rudely wakes its ire:

Demon or child, as impulse may impel, Warm in its love, but in its vengeance fell.

And these Columbian warriors to their strand
 * Had welcomed Europe's sons, and rued it sore:—

Men with smooth tongues, but rudely armed hand;
 * Fabling of peace, when meditating gore;

Who their foul deeds to veil, ceased not to brand
 * The Indian name on every Christian shore.

What wonder, on such heads, their fury's flame Burst, till its terrors gloomed their fairer fame?

For they were not a brutish race, unknowing
 * Evil from good; their fervid souls embraced

With virtue's proudest homage, to o'erflowing,
 * The mind's inviolate majesty. The past

To them was not a darkness; but was glowing
 * With splendour which all time had not o'ercast;

Streaming unbroken from creation's birth, When God communed and walked with men on earth.

Stupid idolatry had never dimmed
 * The Almighty image in their lucid thought.

To Him alone their zealous praise was hymned;
 * And hoar Tradition from her treasury brought

Glimpses of far-off times, in which were limned,
 * His awful glory;—and their prophets taught

Precepts sublime,—a solemn ritual given, In clouds and thunder, to their sires from heaven.

And in the boundless solitude which fills,
 * Even as a mighty heart, their wild domains;

In caves and glens of the unpeopled hills;
 * And the deep shadow that for ever reigns

Spirit-like, in their woods; where, roaring, spills
 * The giant cataract to the astounded plains,—

Nature, in her sublimest moods, had given Not man's weak lore,—but a quick flash from heaven.