The Emigrant Part 4

Of blood, of agony, of human tears, The daily sacrifice of countless years-- Are falling: may they fall on every sh.o.r.e, As fell the fiend from Heav'n, no more to rise--no more.

Lx.x.x.

Greece gathers up again her glorious band!

With FREEDOM'S loud hurra the Andes quake!

It swells, like ocean's wave, from land to land-- Bless them, our Father! for thy children's sake.

They strike the n.o.blest who shall strike the first-- Wailing and prostrate, Tyranny accurst, Convulses earth with his fierce agonies; But, if ye strike like men, the fell dictator dies!

Lx.x.xI.

A tear for Poland! many tears for her Who rose so n.o.bly, and so n.o.bly fell!

E'en at her broken shrine, a worshipper, In dust and ashes, let me say farewell!

Farewell! brave spirits!--Earth! and can it be, Thy sons beheld them struggling to be free-- Unaided, saw them in their blood downtrod-- Nations, ye are accurst! be merciful, Oh G.o.d!

Lx.x.xII.

My HOME! it needs no prophet voice to tell Thy coming glories; they are thronging fast, Like the enchantments of the Sybil's cell, Expanding brighter to the very last: Fulfilling all the patriot's burning vow, Be free forever my own land as now!

While the uprising nations hail thy star, And strike, for freedom, that G.o.d-sanctioned war.

Lx.x.xIII.

And they may fall--but who shall date thy end?

Lo! all the past has giv'n its light to thee: Expiring Rome, like a departing friend, Gave solemn warning to thy liberty: And e'en the empires, fabulously old In fruitful fable, have a moral told; What say their fallen kings and shrineless G.o.d?

There is no "right divine" in the fell tyrant's rod!

Lx.x.xIV.

Thou learn'dst the lesson, long ago, my HOME, And taught'st it to a willing, wondering world, When thy bright stars rose o'er the ocean's foam, And lit thy banner as it stood unfurl'd; When, from thy farthest mountain to the sea, All rose to bless that banner and be free, Where perch'd thy eagle, in victorious might, While the proud, lordly lion fled in craven flight.

Lx.x.xV.

Thou hast my heart--and freely do I bow, To bless thee, Freedom, on thy holiest shrine, And give to thee devotion's warmest vow; Oh! let thy spirit mingle into mine: Thy temple is my country, whose far dome Circles as high as the Almighty's home-- Here, 'mid the glories of Creation's birth, Thy altars spread around--this is my mother earth.

Lx.x.xVI.

Glorious! most glorious! proudly let me stand, With the rapt fervor of a Poet's eye, And pour my blessings on my native land; Oh! for the gift to tell thy destiny, And mould it to the telling--thou should'st rise, Eternal, as the stars that bless thy skies, And sparkle in thy banner--thou should'st be All that thy brave hearts wish'd, who will'd thee to be free.

Lx.x.xVII.

And no portentous, fearful meteor, there, Should blaze, and blacken, and create dismay, Shaking fierce furies from its snaky hair; No!--thou should'st light the Nations on their way, And be to them a watchword to fight well; And should they fall, as Poland's patriots fell.

Oh! cheer them with their exile-flag unfurl'd, And give them freedom here, in her own Western world.

Lx.x.xVIII.

Auspicious Time! unroll the scroll of years-- Behold our pious pilgrim fathers, when They launch'd their little bark and braved all fears, Those peril-seeking, freedom-loving men!

Bless thee, thou Stream! abiding blessings bless Thy farthest wave--Nile of the wilderness!

And be thy broad lands peopled, far and wide, With hearts as free as his who now doth bless thy tide.

Lx.x.xIX.

And may new States arise, and stretch afar, In glory, to the great Pacific sh.o.r.e-- A galaxy, without a falling star-- Freedom's own Mecca, where the world adore.

There may Art build--to Knowledge there be giv'n The book of Nature and the light of Heav'n; There be the Statesman's and the patriot's shrine, And Oh! be happy there, the hearts that woo the Nine.

XC.

There is a welcome in this Western Land Like the old welcomes, which were said to give The friendly heart where'er they gave the hand; Within this soil the social virtues live, Like its own forest trees, unprun'd and free-- At least there is one welcome here for me: A breast that pillowed all my sorrows past, And waits my coming now, and lov'd me first and last.

XCI.

It binds my Eastern to my Western home; Then let me banish thoughts that sad would be: Not like a leaf-borne insect on the foam, But like a bark upon a glorious sea-- A little bark, perchance, yet firm withal, 'Midst bursting breakers that shall not appal-- I'll bide the coming of a brighter day, Or, to the far off West, pa.s.s, like the past, away.

FINIS.

NOTES.

NOTE I.

_"The Emigrant, or Reflections," &c._

Mr. Hammond, in the notice which he was so kind as to take of this POEM, suggested the alteration of the t.i.tle from "Reflections" to "Reveries." In retaining the first t.i.tle, I do not do so because I think it best, but merely because it was the first t.i.tle, and the one under which the extracts were given.

It seems to the author, if he may dare to hazard the remark, that the stanza in which he has attempted to write, has advantages over even the Spenserean stanzas. He understands the latter to be that in which the Fairy Queen, from whose author it takes its name--Beattie's Minstrel, Thompson's Castle of Indolence, Byron's Childe Harold, &c.

&c., are written. The following is a stanza of it, from Childe Harold:

The starry fable of the Milky Way Has not thy story's purity; it is A constellation of a sweeter ray, And sacred nature triumphs more in this Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss Where sparkle distant worlds. Oh! holiest nurse!

No drop of that clear spring its way shall miss To thy sire's heart, replenishing its source With life, as our free souls rejoin the Universe.

Here, the reader will perceive that, in a stanza of nine lines, there is a necessity for the second, the fourth, the fifth, and the seventh lines to rhyme together; and that the sixth, eighth and ninth lines must, also, rhyme together. To make the stanza correct, with these complicated embarra.s.sments of rhyme, must not only cause great trouble, sometimes, to the easiest versifier, but to succeed in doing so, critically, he must often sacrifice a happy expression, a striking phrase, or a beautiful line. "Words are things," says Mirabeau; and, to the poet, they are things of potency. They are at once tools and materials in his headwork.

Any one who has read Childe Harold, must have observed that even the Lord of Poets, with all his powers of language, was often thus hampered, and that, for the sake of preserving the force of an expression, or a striking word, he used what are no rhymes at all, if Monk Lewis' remark to Scott, "that a bad rhyme is no rhyme," be true.

Whereas, by making the stanza of but eight lines and having the first four lines to rhyme alternately, and the last four immediately, and by having the concluding line an Alexandrine, as in the Spenserean stanzas, the difficulty, arising from the necessity of having so many similar rhymes, would be obviated, and the poet would have much greater facilities in expressing himself well, without impairing the dignity or strength of what might still be called, from its many resemblances, the Spenserean stanzas; at the same time, the monotony would be avoided, of which criticism has complained so much in the works of Pope and Goldsmith.

Very few readers of poetry, in the first poems which they open, are fond of those, no matter how great their merits, which are written in the Spenserean stanzas. They have to acquire a taste for it. They delight in simpler styles: this is one reason of Scott's great popularity with many persons who seldom read any other poet, except perhaps, Burns. And even to those who have a natural taste for poetry, but who have not much cultivated it, the Spenserean stanza seems complicated, and, I will even venture to say, at first untunable; and it is not at the first perusal that they perceive the beauties of those poems which are written in this style.

These remarks are hazarded very hastily. It would be much more difficult for the author to build the complicated verse of the Spenserean stanza, than this which he has attempted; and, therefore, perhaps, very rashly, he concludes that it would be more difficult for others; and, moreover, we easily persuade ourselves that what is most easily done it is best to do.

NOTE II.

_"But thou art given by the good all-giver, Blessing a land to be in turn most blest."_

_Thou exulting and abounding river, Making thy waves a blessing as they flow._

BYRON.

NOTE III.

_"Here once Boone trod--the hardy Pioneer-- The only white man in the wilderness."_

In a late work ent.i.tled "Sketches of Western Adventure," a most interesting account is given of Boone, whose pa.s.sion for a sylvan life was intense. Like Leather-stocking, it would seem that he always got lost in the clearing, and that only in the forest he knew his way and felt free and uninc.u.mbered. Then, like McGregor, "standing on his native heath," he feared no difficulties or dangers. Byron, in his Don Juan, calls him "The man of Ross run wild," and says, that he "killed nothing but a bear or buck," but not so; he had many deadly encounters with the Indians, and was repeatedly taken prisoner by them; but he effected his escapes with great tact. The author of "Sketches of Western Adventure," speaking of him, alone in the wilderness, says,

"The wild and solitary grandeur of the country around him, where not a tree had been cut, nor a house erected, was to him an inexhaustible source of admiration and delight; and he says himself, that some of the most rapturous moments of his life were spent in those lonely rambles. The utmost caution was necessary to avoid the savages, and scarcely less to escape the ravenous hunger of the wolves that prowled nightly around him in immense numbers. He was compelled frequently to shift his lodging, and by undoubted signs, saw that the Indians had repeatedly visited his hut during his absence. He sometimes lay in canebrakes, without fire, and heard the yells of the Indians around him. Fortunately, however, he never encountered them."

Mr. John A. McClung is the author of the above mentioned work. This gentleman is also the author of a novel, ent.i.tled "Camden," which has not received half the notice it deserved.