Page:Oregon Literature by Horner.djvu/82

60 The following is selected from his great Union speech, and is especially appropriate in this place:

"Here, then, long years ago, I took my stand by Freedom; and where the feet of my youth were planted, there my manhood and my age shall march. And, for one, I am not ashamed of Freedom. I know her power; I glory in her strength. I have seen her again and again struck down on a hundred chosen fields of battle. I have seen her foes gather around her, and bind her to the stake. I have seen them give her ashes to the winds, regathering them again, that they might scatter them yet more widely. But when they turned to exult, I have seen her again meet them, face to face, clad in complete steel, and brandishing in her strong right hand a flaming sword, red with insufferable light. And, therefore, I take courage. The people gather around her once more. The genius of America will at last lead her sons to Freedom."

May we briefly follow him as a poet while he reads a page from the volume of nature? He was probably along the shore near where Golden Gate swings out into the deep, or where Empire City looks out upon the sea, or at Seal Rock, where the Siletz, the Alsea, and the Yaquina Indians met in festivity; or he may have been where the mighty Columbia mingles with that eternity of waters, the Pacific ocean. It was evidently just after the evening twilight, when the dark gray of the night was