Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/287

 1840-50.] CORNELIUS A. LOGAN, 271 THE MISSISSIPPI.* Here meet, but mingle not, the miglity waters. The glorious Queen of Rivers, in her sole And unparticipated majesty Flows on : — Her slimy bed she scorns to share With this, her wooing tributary. Eternal Flood! thou owest thy birth to regions Where the worn sun rises fatigued from o'er The western's! hill the race of Europe till, Or claim. How many nations in thy course Has thy broad flow divided ! The fragile bark On thy sustaining breast in silence glides, Or, ambush on thy banks, its warrior freight. Hast thou ne'er paused upon thy onward way, As o'er thy moonlit ripples softly swept The plaintive wail of love-lorn Indian maid? Didst thou ne'er in thy weary pilgrimage, Forget the changeless law of thy progres- sion. And hold thy breath to catch the far And faintest echoes of the forest fight ? And on hush*d midnight surface vibrate The tale drank in by her who watched and prayed ; — Watched for her husband, through the thickening gloom — Prayed that the clinging infant at her breast Might not that night be fatherless? How oft Upon thy sedgy margin has the yell Of savage warfare broke! In dark em- brace The war deck'd combatants in equal fight Upon the cliff, have lost their giddy hold. And dashing downward with a sullen plash, Found mutual death in thy affrighted depths ! When forth the fiat went that bade the Earth Rejoice in form and light, thou didst begin Thy everlasting course. Scarce yet the soil Had hardened since Jehovah's breath passed o'er Its quivering chaos — ^yet e'en then thou sprangest Upon thy mighty race ; Young Time and Thou, Twin born, and forever co-existent. Myriads of generations hath thy face In placid majesty reflected. Thou, Men perchance hast seen, whose forms were not like Those which men now bear — of stature huge And of construction monstrous ; fitting foe To the Behemoth and the Mastodon, To survey whose bones appalls our puny nerves. Sweep on I sweep on ! thou Empress of the World ! Upon thy rolling tide thou bear'st the wealth Of youthful nations — richer far than all The gorgeous gems which sparkle in Potosi. Thou hast a gem — a peerless gem, Whose ever-radiant corruscations flash A thousand leagues along thy sunny banks. 'Tis brightest in the heavenly diadem. Blood-stained, but dimless: Men call it Freedom !
 * Writtea at the mouth of the Ohio River.