Page:Poems (Bryant, 1821).djvu/18



Oh no! a thousand cheerful omens give

Hope of yet happier days whose dawn is nigh;

He, who has tamed the elements, shall not live

The slave of his own passions; he whose eye

Unwinds the eternal dances of the sky,

And in the abyss of brightness dares to span

The sun’s broad circle, rising yet more high,

In God’s magnificent works his will shall scan—

And love and peace shall make their paradise with man.

Sit at the feet of history—through the night

Of years the steps of virtue she shall trace,

And show the earlier ages, where her sight

Can pierce the eternal shadows o’er their face;—

When, from the genial cradle of our race,

Went forth the tribes of men, their pleasant lot

To choose, where palm-groves cool’d their dwelling-place,

Or freshening rivers ran; and there forgot

The truth of heaven, and kneel’d to gods that heard them not.