Where lurked the wigwam, cultured households throng;
Where rung the panther's yell
Is heard the low of kine, a blithesome song,
Or chime of village bell.
And when, to subjugate the peopled land,
Invaders crossed the sea,
Rushed from thy meadow-slopes a stalwart band,
To battle for the free.
Nor failed the pristine valor of the race
To guard the nation's life;
Thy hardy sons met treason face to face,
The foremost in the strife.
When locusts bloom and wild-rose scents the air,
When moonbeams fleck the stream,
And June's long twilights crimson shadows wear,
Here linger, gaze, and dream!
FOOTNOTES:
[F] One of the aboriginal names of Lake Champlain signifies the open door of the country.
YESTERDAY.
There is a gleam of ultramarine,—which, most of all tints, say the painters, possesses the quality of light in itself,—banished to the farthest horizon of the ocean, where it lies all day, a line of infinite richness, not to be drawn by Apelles, and in its compression of expanse—leagues of sloping sea and summer calm being written in that single line—suggestive of more depth than plummet or diver can ever reach. Such an enchantment of color deepens the farther and interior horizon with most men,—whether it is the atmosphere of one's own identity still warming and enriching it, or whether the orbed course of time has dropped the earthy part away, and left only the sunbeams falling there. But Leonardo da Vinci supposed that the sky owed its blue to the darkness of vast space behind the white lens of sunlit air; and perhaps where the sea presents through the extent of its depth, as it slips over into other hemispheres, tangents with the illumined atmosphere beyond, it affords a finer filter for these blue rays, and thenceforth hoards in its heart the wealth and beauty of tint found in that line of ultramarine. Thus too, perhaps, in the eyes of these fortunate men, every year of their deepening past presents only a purer strain for such sunshine as is theirs, until it becomes indeed