The wonders of an age combin'd In one short moment memory supplies, They throng upon my waken'd mind, As time's dark curtains rise. The volume of a hundred buried years, Condens'd in one bright sheet, appears.
I hear the angry ocean rave, I see the lonely little barque Scudding along the crested wave, Freighted like old Noah's ark, As o'er the drowned earth it whirl'd, With the forefathers of another world.
I see a train of exiles stand, Amid the desert, desolate, The fathers of my native land, The daring pioneers of fate, Who brav'd the perils of the sea and earth, And gave a boundless empire birth.
I see the gloomy Indian range His woodland empire, free as air; I see the gloomy forest change, The shadowy earth laid bare; And, where the red man chas'd the bounding deer, The smiling labours of the white appear.
I see the haughty warrior gaze In wonder or in scorn, As the pale faces sweat to raise Their scanty fields of corn, While he, the monarch of the boundless wood, By sport, or hair-brain'd rapine, wins his food.
A moment, and the pageant's gone; The red men are no more; The pale fac'd strangers stand alone Upon the river's shore; And the proud wood king, who their arts disdain'd, Finds but a bloody grave where once he reign'd.
The forest reels beneath the stroke Of sturdy woodman's axe; The earth receives the white man's yoke, And pays her willing tax Of fruits, and flowers, and golden harvest fields, And all that nature to blithe labour yields.
Then growing hamlets rear their heads, And gathering crowds expand, Far as my fancy's vision spreads, O'er many a boundless land, Till what was once a world of savage strife, Teems with the richest gifts of social life.
Empire to empire swift succeeds, Each happy, great, and free; One empire still another breeds, A giant progeny, To war upon the pigmy gods of earth, The tyrants, to whom ignorance gave birth.
Then, as I turn, my thoughts to trace The fount whence these rich waters sprung, I glance towards this lonely place, And find it, these rude stones among. Here rest the sires of millions, sleeping sound, The Argonauts, the golden fleece that found.