Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/27

Rh And when the pomp and pageantry of earth, Shall fleet and shrivel in the day of ire, The meek devotion that in thee had birth, Shall soar unchanging, never to expire.

The voyager upon the noble and beautiful James River, perceives, about fifty miles from its mouth, the ruins of an ancient edifice. It stands upon a slight elevation, and were it mantled and festooned with luxuriant ivy, like the decaying structures of the Mother Land, would present a picturesque appearance. Still, as the first Christian temple ever reared in this new-found world, its associations are vivid and sacred. While we gaze upon it, the mists of more than two centuries fleet away, and the past stands before us.

Lofty forests ascend, and tangled thickets usurp the place of the velvet meads. The snowy sails of a stranger bark glitter in the morning sun. The first Christian vessel that ever explored these waters, approaches the shore, and, in the words of an old historian, is "moored to the trees, in six fathom water, in the great river of Pouhatan, on the 13th day of May, 1607." Then the Saxon race, whose birth-right is to rule, laid the foundation of their first permanent dominion, in the clime which Columbus, one hundred and fifteen years before, had discovered. Smith, who has been justly called the "soul of the infant colony," changed the name of the broad river to "James," in