MISSION AND REWARD.
J. N. Matthews, in Chicago Tribune, 1892.
Sailing before the silver shafts of morn,
He bore the White Christ over alien seas—
The swart Columbus—into "lands forlorn,"
That lay beyond the dim Hesperides.
Humbly he gathered up the broken chain
Of human knowledge, and, with sails unfurled,
He drew it westward from the coast of Spain,
And linked it firmly to another world.
Tho' blinding tempests drove his ships astray,
And on the decks conspiring Spaniards grew
More mutinous and dangerous, day by day,
Than did the deadly winds that round him blew,
Yet the bluff captain, with his bearded lip,
His lordly purpose, and his high disdain,
Stood like a master with uplifted whip,
And urged his mad sea-horses o'er the main.
Onward and onward thro' the blue profound,
Into the west a thousand leagues or more,
His caravels cut the billows till they ground
Upon the shallows of San Salvador.
Then, robed in scarlet like a rising morn,
He climbed ashore and on the shining sod
He gave to man a continent new-born;
Then, kneeling, gave his gratitude to God.
And his reward? In all the books of fate
There is no page so pitiful as this—
A cruel dungeon, and a monarch's hate,
And penury and calumny were his;
Robbed of his honors in his feeble age,
Despoiled of glory, the old Genoese
Withdrew at length from life's ungrateful stage,
To try the waves of other unknown seas.