Page:Poems (Bryant, 1821).djvu/27



Thus error’s monstrous shapes from earth are driven;

They fade, they fly—but truth survives their flight;

Earth has no shades to quench that beam of heaven;

Each ray, that shone, in early time, to light

The faltering footsteps in the path of right,

The broader glow of brightness, shed to aid

In man’s maturer day his bolder sight,

All blended, like the rainbow’s radiant braid,

Pour yet, and still shall pour, the blaze that cannot fade.

Late, from this western shore, that morning chas’d

The deep and ancient night, that threw its shroud

O’er the green land of groves, the beautiful waste,

Nurse of full streams, and lifter up of proud

Sky-mingling mountains that o’erlook the cloud.

Erewhile, where yon gay spires their brightness rear,

Trees wav’d, and the brown hunter’s shouts were loud

Amid the forest; and the bounding deer

Fled at the glancing plume, and the gaunt wolf yell’d near.