Page:Zinzendorff and Other Poems.pdf/48

48  That welcome was a blast and ban
 * Upon thy race unborn.

Was there no seer, thou fated Man!
 * Thy lavish zeal to warn?

Thou in thy fearless faith didst hail
 * A weak, invading band,

But who shall heed thy children's wail,
 * Swept from their native land?

Thou gav'st the riches of thy streams,
 * The lordship o'er thy waves,

The region of thine infant dreams,
 * And of thy fathers graves,

But who to yon proud mansions pil'd
 * With wealth of earth and sea,

Poor outcast from thy forest wild,
 * Say, who shall welcome thee?

 

walketh in the forest. The tall pines Do woo the lightning-flash, and through their veins The fire-cup, darting, leaves their blackened trunks A tablet, for ambition's sons to read Their destiny. The oak, that centuries spared, Grows grey at last, and like some time-worn man Stretching out palsied arms, doth feebly cope With the destroyer, while its gnarled roots Betray their trust. The towering elm turns pale, 