Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/356

324  And the shrill call, across the general din, “Roll up your curtain! Let the show begin!”


 * At length a murmur like the winds that break

Into green waves the prairie’s grassy lake, Deepened and swelled to music clear and loud, And, as the west-wind lifts a summer cloud, The curtain rose, disclosing wide and far A green land stretching to the evening star, Fair rivers, skirted by primeval trees And flowers hummed over by the desert bees, Marked by tall bluffs whose slopes of greenness show Fantastic outcrops of the rock below; The slow result of patient Nature’s pains, And plastic fingering of her sun and rains; Arch, tower, and gate, grotesquely windowed hall, And long, escarpment of half-crumbled wall, Huger than those which, from steep hills of vine, Stare through their loopholes on the travelled Rhine; Suggesting vaguely to the gazer’s mind A fancy, idle as the prairie wind, Of the land’s dwellers in an age unguessed; The unsung Jotuns of the mystic West.


 * Beyond, the prairie’s sea-like swells surpass

The Tartar’s marvels of his Land of Grass, Vast as the sky against whose sunset shores Wave after wave the billowy greenness pours; And, onward still, like islands in that main Loom the rough peaks of many a mountain chain, Whence east and west a thousand waters run From winter lingering under summer’s sun. And, still beyond, long lines of foam and sand Tell where Pacific rolls his waves a-land, From many a wide-lapped port and land-locked bay, Opening with thunderous pomp the world’s highway To Indian isles of spice, and marts of far Cathay.


 * “Such,” said the showman, as the curtain fell,

“Is the new Canaan of our Israel; The land of promise to the swarming North Which, hive-like, sends its annual surplus forth, To the poor Southron on his worn-out soil, Scathed by the curses of unnatural toil; To Europe’s exiles seeking home and rest, And the lank nomads of the wandering West, Who, asking neither, in their love of change And the free bison’s amplitude of range, Rear the log-hut, for present shelter meant, Not future comfort, like an Arab’s tent.”


 * Then spake a shrewd on-looker, “Sir,” said he,

“I like your picture, but I fain would see A sketch of what your promised land will be When, with electric nerve and fiery-brained, With Nature’s forces to its chariot chained, The future grasping, by the past obeyed, The twentieth century rounds a new decade.”


 * Then said the Showman, sadly: “He who grieves

Over the scattering of the sibyl’s leaves Unwisely mourns. Suffice it, that we know What needs must ripen from the seeds we sow; That present time is but the mould wherein We cast the shapes of holiness and sin. A painful watcher of the passing hour, Its lust of gold, its strife for place and power; Its lack of manhood, honor, reverence, truth, Wise-thoughted age, and generous-hearted youth; Nor yet unmindful of each better sign, The low, far lights, which on th’ horizon shine, Like those which sometimes tremble on the rim Of clouded skies when day is closing dim, Flashing athwart the purple spears of rain The hope of sunshine on the hills again: I need no prophet’s word, nor shapes that pass Like clouding shadows o’er a magic glass; For now, as ever, passionless and cold, Doth the dread angel of the future hold