On wild Monongahela stream
They launched the Mayflower of the West,
A perfect State their civic dream,
A new New World their pilgrim quest.
When April robed the Buckeye trees
Muskingum’s bosky shore they trod;
They pitched their tents and to the breeze
Flung freedom’s star-flag, thanking God.
As glides the Oyo’s solemn flood
So fleeted their eventful years;
Resurgent in their children’s blood,
They still live on—the Pioneers.
Their fame shrinks not to names and dates
On votive stone, the prey of time;—
Behold where monumental States
Immortalize their lives sublime!
FOREST SONG.
Read at the first meeting of the American Forestry Congress, in Music Hall, Cincinnati, April 19, 1882.
A SONG for the beautiful trees!
A song for the forest grand,
The Garden of God’s own hand,
The pride of His centuries.
Hurrah! for the kingly oak,
For the maple, the sylvan queen,
For the lords of the emerald cloak,
For the ladies in golden green.
For the beautiful trees a song!
The peers of a glorious realm,
The linden, the ash, and the elm,
The poplar stately and strong,—
For the birch and the hemlock trim,
For the hickory staunch at core,
For the locust thorny and grim,
For the silvery sycamore.
A song for the palm,—the pine,
And for every tree that grows,
From the desolate zone of snows
To the zone of the burning line;
Hurrah! for the warders proud
Of the mountainside and the vale,
That challenge the thunder-cloud,
And buffet the stormy gale.
A song for the forest, aisled,
With its Gothic roof sublime,
The solemn temple of Time,
Where man becometh a child,
As he listens the anthem-roll
Of the voiceful winds that call,
In the solitude of his soul,
On the name of the All-in-All.