COLUMBUS DYING
[May 20, 1506]
Hark! do I hear again the roar
Of the tides by the Indies sweeping down?
Or is it the surge from the viewless shore
That swells to bear me to my crown?
Life is hollow and cold and drear
With smiles that darken and hopes that flee;
And, far from its winds that faint and veer,
I am ready to sail the vaster sea!
Lord, Thou knowest I love Thee best;
And that scorning peril and toil and pain,
I held my way to the mystic West,
Glory for Thee and Thy Church to gain.
And Thou didst lead me, only Thou,
Cheering my heart in cloud and calm,
Till the dawn my glad, victorious prow
Greeted Thine isles of bloom and balm.
And then, O gracious, glorious Lord,
I saw Thy face, and all heaven came nigh
And my soul was lost in that rich reward,
And ravished with hope of the bliss on high,
So, I can meet the sovereign's frown—
My dear Queen gone—with a large disdain;
For the time will come when his chief renown
Will be that I sailed from his realm of Spain.
I have found new Lands—a World, maybe,
Whose splendor will yet the Old outshine;
And life and death are alike to me,
For earth will honor, and heaven is mine
Is mine!—What songs of sweet accord!
What billows that nearer, gentler roll!
Is mine!—Into Thy hands, O Lord,
Into Thy hands I give my soul!
Edna Dean Proctor.
COLUMBUS
Give me white paper!
This which you use is black and rough with smears
Of sweat and grime and fraud and blood and tears,
Crossed with the story of men's sins and fears,
Of battle and of famine all these years,
When all God's children had forgot their birth,
And drudged and fought and died like beasts of earth.
"Give me white paper!"
One storm-trained seaman listened to the word;
What no man saw he saw; he heard what no man heard.
In answer he compelled the sea
To eager man to tell
The secret she had kept so well!
Left blood and guilt and tyranny behind,—
Sailing still West the hidden shore to find;
For all mankind that unstained scroll unfurled,
Where God might write anew the story of the World.