Library of the best American literature / Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

by Unknown

I knew thee in my glorious youth,

I loved thy vast face, white as truth,

I stood where thunderbolts were wont

To smite thy Titan-fashioned front,

And heard rent mountains rock and roll.

I saw thy lightning’s gleaming rod

Reach forth and write on heaven’s scroll

The awful autograph of God!

[♦] ‘cons’ replaced with ‘eons’

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