II.
THE COLONIES.
The fountain of our story spreads no clouds
Of mist above it rich in varied glows,
None paint us Gods and Goddesses in crowds
Where some Scamander flows.
The tale of Jamestown, which I need not gild,
With that of Plymouth, by the World is seen,
But none, in visions, fancifully build
Olympus in between.
At Jamestown stood the Saxon's home and graves,
There Britain's spray broke on the native rock,
There rose the English tide with crested waves
And overwhelming shock.
Virginia thence, stirred by a grand unrest,
Swept o'er the waters, scaled the mountain's crag,
Hewed out a more than Roman roadway West,
And planted there her flag.
Her fortune was forewritten even then—
That fortune in the coming years to be
"Mother of States and unpolluted men,"
And nurse of Liberty.
Then 'twas our coast all bore Virginia's name;
Next North Virginia took its separate place,
And grew by slow degrees in wealth and fame
And Freedom's special grace.
[Footnote 11: Hugh Blair Grigsby, L.L.D., Chancellor of William and Mary College, and President of the Virginia Historical Society, Scholar and Historian, died on the day on which he received a gift of flowers from his life-long friend, Mr. Winthrop, and these literally gladdened the dying eyes of the noble gentleman whose loss will long be deplored by all who knew him, whether they live in Virginia or Massachusetts.]
THE NEW ENGLAND GROUP.
At Plymouth Rock a handful of brave souls,
Full-armed in faith, erected home and shrine,
And flourished where the wild Atlantic rolls
Its pyramids of brine.
There rose a manly race austere and strong,
On whom no lessons of their day were lost,
Earnest as some conventicle's deep song,
And keen as their own frost.
But that shrewd frost became a friend to those
Who fronted there the Ice-King's bitter storm,
For see we not that underneath the snows
The growing wheat keeps warm?
Soft ease and silken opulence they spurned;
From sands of silver, and from emerald boughs
With golden ingots laden full, they turned
Like Pilgrims under vows.
For them no tropic seas, no slumbrous calms,
No rich abundance generously unrolled:
In place of Cromwell's proffered flow'rs and palms
They chose the long-drawn cold.
The more it blew, the more they faced the gale;
The more it snowed, the more they would not freeze;
And when crops failed on sterile hill and vale—
They went to reap the seas!
Far North, through wild and stormy brine they ran,
With hands a-cold plucked Winter by the locks!
Masterful mastered great Leviathan
And drove the foam as flocks!
Next in their order came the Middle Group,
Perchance less hardy, but as brave they grew,—
Grew straight and tall with not a bend, or stoop—
Heart-timber through and through!
Midway between the ardent heat and cold
They spread abroad, and by a homely spell,
The iron of their axes changed to gold
As fast the forests fell!
Doing the things they found to do, we see
That thus they drew a mighty empire's charts,
And, working for the present, took in fee
The future for their marts!
And there unchallenged may the boast be made,
Although they do not hold his sacred dust,
That Penn, the Founder, never once betrayed
The simple Indian's trust.
To them the genius which linked Silver Lakes
With the blue Ocean and the outer World,
And the fair banner, which their commerce shakes,
Wise Clinton's hand unfurled.
THE SOUTHERN COLONIES.
Then sweeping down below Virginia's Capes,
From Chesapeake to where Savannah flows,
We find the settlers laughing 'mid their grapes
And ignorant of snows.
The fragrant uppowock, and golden corn
Spread far a-field by river and lagoon,
And all the months poured out from Plenty's Horn
Were opulent as June.
Yet, they had tragedies all dark and fell!
Lone Roanoke Island rises on the view,
And this Peninsula its tale could tell
Of Opecancanough!
But, when the Ocean thunders on the shore
Its waves, though broken, overflow the beach;
So here our Fathers on and onward bore
With English laws and speech.
Kind skies above them, underfoot rich soils;
Silence and Savage at their presence fled;
This Giant's Causeway, sacred through their toils,
Resounded at their tread.
With ardent hearts, and ever-open hands,
Candid and honest, brave and proud they grew,
Their lives and habits colored by fair lands
As skies give waters hue.
The race in semi-Feudal State appears—
Their Knightly figures glow in tender mist,
With ghostly pennons flung from ghostly spears
And ghostly hawks on wrist.
By enterprise and high adventure stirred,
From rude lunette and sentry-guarded croft
They hawked at Empire, and, as on they spurred,
Fate's falcon soared aloft!
Fate's falcon soared aloft full strong and free,
With blood on talons, plumage, beak, and breast!
Her shadow like a storm-shade on the sea
Far-sailing down the West!
Swift hoofs clang out behind that Falcon's flights—
Hoofs shod with Golden Horse Shoes catch the eye!
And as they ring, we see the Forest-Knights—
The Cavaliers ride by!
THE OLD DOMINION.
Midway between the orange and the snows
As some fair planet rounds up from the sea,
Eldest of all, the Central Power arose
In vague immensity.
She stretched from Seas in sun to Lakes in Shade,
O'erstepped swift Rio Escondido's stream—
Her bounds expressed, as by the Tudor made,
An Alexander's dream.
And liberal Stuart granted broad and free
Bound'ries which still the annalist may boast—
Limits which ran "throughout from sea to sea,"
And far along the coast!
A mighty shaft through Raleigh's fingers slipped,
Smith shot it, and—a Continent awoke!
For that great arrow with an acorn tipped,
Planted an English Oak!