Not as the conqueror comes,
They, the true hearted came;
Not with the roll of the stirring drams,
Or the trumpet that sings of fame.
Not as the flying come,
In silence and in fear,
They shook the depths of the desert gloom
With their hymns of lofty cheer.
Amidst the storm they sang,
And the stars heard and the sea;
And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang
To the anthem of the free.
—Felicia Henaans.
CHAPTER XII
LAKE CHAMPLAIN
How richly glows the water's breast,
Before us tinged with evening's hues,
When facing thus the crimson west,
The boat her silent course pursues,
And see how dark the backward stream,
A little moment past so smiling!
And still perhaps some faithless gleam,
Some other loiterer beguiling.
Such views the youthful bard allure,
But heedless of the following gloom,
He dreams their colors shall endure
Till peace go with him to the tomb.
And let him nurse his fond deceit;
And what if he must die in sorrow
Who would not cherish dreams so sweet;
Though grief and pain may come tomorrow.
—Wordsworth.
The ancients believed that the alchemists could create rose blooms out of their ashes. We are prone to believe it for, at the close of a fair New England day we have seen the Master Alchemist, the sun, beneath his spacious workshop of July skies, transmuting the gray mists and vapors into sunset's glow; and lo! we had the blooming roses there. He melted his many ingredients with the falling dew and distilled from them the gold with which he burnished the western sky, making it glow like a glassy sea. Seizing upon some more potent fluid, he threw it among the fleecy clouds, kindling them all along the horizon until they shone like a vast lake of flame; then taking his magic wand, he waved it over the glowing mass and crimson changed to rosy pink, pink to glowing purple; forming those royal gates through which the magician passed behind the distant foothills of the Adirondacks.