SEEKER AND SEER—A RHYME FOR THE DEDICATION OF THE WORLD'S FAIR.
Edward J. Harding, in the Chicago Tribune, September 17, 1892.
I.
What came ye forth to see?
Why from the sunward regions of the palm,
And piney headlands by the northern main,
From Holland's watery ways, and parching Spain,
From pleasant France and storied Italy,
From India's patience, and from Egypt's calm,
To this far city of a soil new-famed
Come ye in festal guise to-day,
Charged with no fatal "gifts of Greece,"
Nor Punic treaties double-tongued,
But proffering hands of amity,
And speaking messages of peace,
With drum-beats ushered, and with shouts acclaimed,
While cannon-echoes lusty-lung'd
Reverberate far away?
IV.
Our errand here to-day
Hath warrant fair, ye say;
We come with you to consecrate
A hero's, ay a prophet's monument;
Yet needs he none, who was so great;
Vainly they build in Cuba's isle afar
His sepulcher beside the sapphire sea;
He hath for cenotaph a continent,
For funeral wreaths, the forests waving free,
And round his grave go ceaselessly
The morning and the evening star.
Yet is it fit that ye should praise him best,
For ye his true descendants are,
A spirit-begotten progeny;
Wherefore to thee, fair city of the West,
From elder lands we gladly came
To grace a prophet's fame.
V.
Beauteous upon the waters were the wings
That bore glad tidings o'er the leaping wave
Of sweet Hesperian isles, more bland and fair
Than lover's looks or bard's imaginings;
And blest was he, the hero brave,
Who first the tyrannous deeps defied,
And o'er the wilderness of waters wide
A sun-pursuing highway did prepare
For those true-hearted exiles few
The house of Liberty that reared anew.
Nor fails he here of honor due.
These goodly structures ye behold,
These towering piles in order brave,
From whose tall crests the pennons wave
Like tropic plumage, gules and gold;
These ample halls, wherein ye view
Whate'er is fairest wrought and best—
South with North vying, East with West,
And arts of yore with science new—
Bear witness for us how religiously
We cherish here his memory.
VI.
Yet sure, the adventurous Genoese
Did never in his most enlightened hours
Forecast the high, the immortal destinies
Of this dear land of ours.
Nay, could ye call him hither from his tomb,
Think ye that he would mark with soul elate
A kingless people, a schismatic State,
Nor on his work invoke perpetual doom?
Though the whole Sacred College o'er and o'er
Pronounce him sainted, prophet was he none
Who to Cathaia's legendary shore
Deemed that his bark a path had won.
In sooth, our Western pioneer
Was all as prescient as he
Who cried, "The desert shall exult,
The wild shall blossom as the rose,"
And to a passing rich result
Through summer heats and winter snows
Toiling to prove himself a seer,
Accomplished his own prophecy.
Lo, here a greater far than he,
A prophet nation hath its dwelling,
With multitudinous voice foretelling,
"Man shall be free!"
VII.
Hellas for Beauty, Rome for Order, stood,
And Israel for the Good;
Our message to the world is Liberty;
Not the rude freedom of anarchic hordes,
But reasoned kindness, whose benignant code
Upon the emblazoned walls of history
We carved with our good swords,
And crimsoned with our blood.
Last, from our eye we plucked the obscuring mote,
(Not without tears expelled, and sharpest pain,)
From swarthy limbs the galling chain
With shock on mighty shock we smote,
Whereby with clearer gaze we scan
The heaven-writ message that we bear for man.
Not ours to give, as erst the Genoese,
Of a new world the keys;
But of the prison-world ye knew before
Hewing in twain the door,
To thralls of custom and of circumstance
We preach deliverance.
O self-imprisoned ones, be free! be free!
These fetters frail, by doting ages wrought
Of basest metals—fantasy and fear,
And ignorance dull, and fond credulity—
Have moldered, lo! this many a year;
See, at a touch they part, and fall to naught!
Yours is the heirship of the universe,
Would ye but claim it, nor from eyes averse
Let fall the tears of needless misery;
Deign to be free!
VIII.
The prophets perish, but their word endures;
The word abides, the prophets pass away;
Far be the hour when Hellas' fate is yours,
O Nation of the newer day!
Unmeet it were that I,
Who sit beside your hospitable fire
A stranger born—though honoring as a sire
The land that binds me with a closer tie
Than hers that bore me—should from sullen throat
Send forth a raven's ominous note
Upon a day of jubilee.
Yet signs of coming ill I see,
Which Heaven avert! Nay, rather let me deem
That like a bright and broadening stream
Fed by a hundred affluents, each a river
Far-sprung and full, Columbia's life shall flow
By level meads majestically slow,
Blessing and blest forever!
THE JESUIT GEOGRAPHER.
Jean Hardouin, a French Jesuit. Born at Quimper, 1646; died, 1729.
The rotation of the earth is due to the efforts of the damned to escape from their central fire. Climbing up the walls of hell, they cause the earth to revolve as a squirrel its cage.
COLUMBUS DAY.
By the President of the United States of America. A proclamation: