Page:What cheer, or, Roger Williams in banishment (1896).pdf/43

 XI.

"Brother, that time is distant—far away, When Heaven or Earth or living thing was not, Save our great God, Cawtantowit, who lay  Extended through immensity, where naught But shoreless waters were—and dead were they;  No living thing did on their bosom float, And silentness the boundless space did fill; For the Great Spirit slept—and all was still.

XII.

"But though he slept, yet, as the human soul To this small frame, his being did pervade The universal space, and ruled the whole;  E'en as the soul, when in deep slumber laid, Doth her wild dreams and fantasies control,  And give them action, color, shape and shade Just as she wills. But the Great Spirit broke His sleep at last, and all the boundless shook.

XIII.

"In a vast eagle's form embodied, He Did o'er the deep on outstretched pinions spring; Fire in his eye lit all immensity,  Whilst his majestically gliding wing Trembled hoarse thunders to the shuddering sea;  And, through their utmost limit quivering, The conscious waters felt their Manittoo, And life, at once, their deepest regions knew.

XIV.

"The moutain whale came spouting from below, The porpoise plunged along the foaming main, The smaller fry in sporting myriads go,  With glancing backs above the liquid plain;