Ode to Jamestown

Old cradle of an infant world,
In which a nestling empire lay,
Struggling a while, ere she unfurl'd
Her gallant wing and soar'd away;
All hail! thou birth-place of the glowing west,
Thou seem'st the towering eagle's ruin'd nest!
What solemn recollections throng,
What touching visions rise,
As, wandering these old stones among,
I backward turn mine eyes,
And see the shadows of the dead flit round,
Like spirits, when the last dread trump shall sound!
The wonders of an age combined,
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,
Condensed 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 'twas hurl'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 braved the perils of the sea and earth,
And gave a boundless empire birth.
I see the sovereign Indian range
His woodland empire, free as air;
I see the gloomy forest change,
The shadowy earth laid bare;
And, where the red man chased 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-faced 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 empires still another breeds,
A giant progeny,
Destined their daring race to run,
Each to the regions of yon setting sun.
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 round,
The Argonauts, the golden fleece that found.
Their names have been forgotten long;
The stone, but not a word, remains;
They cannot live in deathless song,
Nor breathe in pious strains.
Yet this sublime obscurity, to me
More touching is, than poet's rhapsody.
They live in millions that now breathe;
They live in millions yet unborn,
And pious gratitude shall wreathe
As bright a crown as e'er was worn,
And hang it on the green-leaved bough,
That whispers to the nameless dead below.
No one that inspiration drinks;
No one that loves his native land;
No one that reasons, feels, or thinks,
Can mid these lonely ruins stand,
Without a moisten'd eye, a grateful tear
Of reverent gratitude to those that moulder here.
The mighty shade now hovers round —
Of him whose strange, yet bright career,
Is written on this sacred ground
In letters that no time shall sere;
Who in the old world smote the turban'd crew,
And founded Christian empires in the new.
And she! the glorious Indian maid,
The tutelary of this land,
The angel of the woodland shade,
The miracle of God's own hand,
Who join'd man's heart to woman's softest grace,
And thrice redeem'd the scourges of her race.
Sister of charity and love,
Whose life-blood was soft Pity's tide,
Dear goddess of the sylvan grove,
Flower of the forest, nature's pride,
He is no man who does not bend the knee,
And she no woman who is not like thee!
Jamestown, and Plymouth's hallow'd rock
To me shall ever sacred be —
I care not who my themes may mock,
Or sneer at them and me.
I envy not the brute who here can stand,
Without a thrill for his own native land.
And if the recreant crawl her earth,
Or breathe Virginia's air,
Or, in New England claim his birth,
From the old pilgrims there,
He is a bastard, if he dare to mock
Old Jamestown's shrine, or Plymouth's famous rock.