Page:The complete poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar.pdf/85

 Though midnight find the swain, love,
 * Still halting o'er his numbers.

I watch the rosy dawn, love,
 * Come stealing up the east,

While all things round rejoice, love,
 * That Night her reign has ceased,

The lark will soon be heard, love,
 * And on his way be winging;

When Nature's poets wake, love,
 * Why should a man be singing?

hundred years ago a tangled waste
 * Lay sleeping on the west Atlantic's side;

Their devious ways the Old World's millions traced
 * Content, and loved, and labored, dared and died,

While students still believed the charts they conned,
 * And revelled in their thriftless ignorance,

Nor dreamed of other lands that lay beyond
 * Old Ocean's dense, indefinite expanse.

But deep within her heart old Nature knew
 * That she had once arrayed, at Earth's behest,

Another offspring, fine and fair to view,—
 * The chosen suckling of the mother's breast.

The child was wrapped in vestments soft and fine,
 * Each fold a work of Nature's matchless art;

The mother looked on it with love divine,
 * And strained the loved one closely to her heart.

And there it lay, and with the warmth grew strong
 * And hearty, by the salt sea breezes fanned,

Till Time with mellowing touches passed along,
 * And changed the infant to a mighty land.

But men knew naught of this, till there arose
 * That mighty mariner, the Genoese,

Who dared to try, in spite of fears and foes,
 * The unknown fortunes of unsounded seas,

O noblest of Italia's sons, thy bark