"We have funds in abundance to secure lands for all, build houses, furnish essentials for tilling the soil, and provisions, until crops can be raised; this money you can repay in easy installments to be used to equip future applicants. All wishing to secure these homes without money and without price can apply at the State House to-morrow."
A glad shout which reached the stars and gladdened the angelic hosts was the immediate response to these tidings, and poverty was banished forever from the Great Republic.
The scene changes—from stygian darkness, desolation and gloom of dingy, malodorous factories and streets, where ragged, hopeless beggars-for-work delve and curse, to the glorious sunlight and balmy air of the "Land of Flowers." Here we see pretty vine-clad cottages embowered in orange groves, and surrounded by luxuriant harvests of everything to make life worth the living. Here we see the murderous villains of the Boston Christmas-day mobs, no longer blood-thirsty, but smiling and happy as they listen to the songs of birds, the bleating of their own flocks, the laughter of their delighted children, while the prosperous fathers "tickle the bosom of their own mother earth with the hoe to make it laugh with abundant crops for man and beast." The grateful citizens have named their towns in honor of their generous benefactors, thus establishing for Carneiges, Morgans and Rockefellers monuments to their memories which will endure forever.
Thus was removed for all time the antagonism between labor and capital; thus were envy and class hatreds banished from society, and thus was our glorious Republic secured upon firm foundations, which will endure "until the final day breaks and all earthly shadows flee away."
Thus at last the prophetic vision of the poet seemed to be realized in "the land of the free and the home of the brave."
"One dream through all the ages
Has led the world along:
The wise words of the sages,
The poet in his song,
The prophet in his vision,—
All these have caught the gleam,
Have caught the light elysian,
Have told the haunting dream.
This dream is that the story
The ages have unrolled
Shall blossom in the glory
Of one long age of gold;
That every man and woman
Shall find life glad and free,
That in whate'er is human
Is hid Divinity.
The rod of old oppression
One day shall broken be;
Those held in night's possession
The light of hope shall see;
For tears there shall be laughing,
And peace shall be for strife,
And thirsty lips be quaffing
The wine of glorious life.
The rage and noise of battle
Shall sink, and fall to peace,
The lowing of the cattle,
The fruit and corn increase;
No more the wide sky under
The rattle of the drum,
No more the cannon's thunder,—
God's kingdom shall have come.
Some day, dearest, where skies are bright,
We'll dwell in the beauty of love and light;
And sorrow will seem
Like a far-off dream,
And life shall be morning, that knows no night!