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THE CRISIS.

[WRITTEN ON LEARNING THE TERMS OF THE TREATY WITH MEXICO.]

ACROSS the Stony Mountains, o'er the desert's drouth and sand,
The circles of our empire touch the Western Ocean's strand;
From slumberous Timpanogos, to Gila, wild and free,
Flowing down from Neuva Leon to California's sea;
And from the mountains of the East, to Santa Rosa's shore,
The eagles of Mexitli shall beat the air no more.

O Vale of Rio Bravo! Let thy simple children weep;
Close watch about their holy fire let maids of Pecos keep;
Let Taos send her cry across Sierra Madre's pines,
And Algodones toll her bells amidst her corn and vines;
For lo! the pale land-seekers come, with eager eyes of gain,
Wide scattering, like the bison herds on broad Salada's plain.

Let Sacramento's herdsmen heed what sound, the winds bring down,

Of footsteps on the crisping snow, from cold Neveda's crown!
Full hot and fast the Saxon rides, with rein of travel slack,
And, bending o'er his saddle, leaves the sunrise at his back;
By many a lonely river, and gorge of fire and pine,
On many a wintry hill-top, his nightly camp-fires shine.

O countrymen and brothers! that land of lake and plain,
Of salt wastes alternating with valleys fat with grain;
Of mountains white with winter, looking downward, cold, serene,
On their feet with spring-vines tangled and lapped in softest

green;

Swift through whose black volcanic gates, o'er many a sunny vale, Wind-like the Arapahoe sweeps the bison's dusty trail!

Great spaces yet untravelled, great lakes whose mystic shores The Saxon rifle never heard, nor dip of Saxon oars;

Great herds that wander all unwatched, wild steeds that none have tamed,

Strange fish in unknown streams, and birds the Saxon never named ;

Deep mines, dark mountain crucibles, where Nature's chemic

powers

Work out the Great Designer's will:-all these ye say are ours!

Forever ours! for good or ill, on us the burden lies;
God's balance, watched by angels, is hung across the skies.
Shall Justice, Truth, and Freedom, turn the poised and trembling

scale?

Or shall the Evil triumph, and robber Wrong prevail?
Shall the broad land o'er which our flag in starry splendor waves,
Forego through us its freedom, and bear the tread of slaves?

The day is breaking in the East, of which the prophets told,
And brightens up the sky of Time the Christian Age of Gold:
Old Might to Right is yielding, battle blade to clerkly pen,
Earth's monarchs are her peoples, and her serfs stand up as men;
The isles rejoice together, in a day are nations born,
And the slave walks free in Tunis, and by Stamboul's Golden
Horn!

Is this, O countrymen of mine! a day for us to sow
The soil of new-gained empire with slavery's seeds of woe?
To feed with our fresh life-blood the old world's cast-off crime,
Dropped, like some monstrous early birth, from the tired lap of
Time?

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To run anew the evil race the old lost nations ran,

And die like them of unbelief of God, and wrong of man?

Great Heaven! Is this our mission? End in this the

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tears,

The toil, the strife, the watchings of our younger, better years?

Still, as the old world rolls in light, shall ours in shadow turn,
A beamless Chaos, cursed of God, through outer darkness borne?
Where the far nations looked for light, a blackness in the air?
Where for words of hope they listened, the long wail of despair?

The Crisis presses on us; face to face with us it stands,
With solemn lips of question, like the Sphinx in Egypt's sands!
This day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we spin;
This day for all hereafter choose we holiness or sin;
Even now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal's cloudy crown,
We call the dews of blessing or the bolts of cursing down!

By all for which the martyrs bore their agony and shame;
By all the warning words of truth with which the prophets came;
By the Future which awaits us; by all the hopes which cast
Their faint and trembling beams across the blackness of the Past;
And by the blessed thought of Him who for Earth's freedom died,
O, my people! O, my brothers! let us choose the righteous side.

So shall the Northern pioneer go joyful on his way,
To wed Penobscot's waters to San Francisco's bay;

To make the rugged places smooth, and sow the vales with grain ;
And bear, with Liberty and Law, the Bible in his train :
The mighty West shall bless the East, and sea shall answer sea,
And mountain unto mountain call: PRAISE GOD, FOR WE ARE

FREE!

THE KNIGHT OF ST. JOHN.

ERE down yon blue Carpathian hills

The sun shall sink again! Farewell to life and all its ills,

Farewell to cell and chain.

These prison shades are dark and cold,But, darker far than they,

The shadow of a sorrow old

Is on my heart alway.

For since the day when Warkworth wood Closed o'er my steed and I,

An alien from my name and blood,

A weed cast out to die,

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When, looking back in sunset light,

I saw her turret gleam,

And from its casement, far and white,
Her sign of farewell stream,

Like one who from some desert shore
Doth home's green isles descry,

And, vainly longing, gazes o'er
The waste of wave and sky;

So from the desert of my fate
I gaze across the past;
Forever on life's dial-plate

The shade is backward cast!

I've wandered wide from shore to shore,

I've knelt at many a shrine;

And bowed me to the rocky floor
Where Bethlehem's tapers shine;

And by the Holy Sepulchre

I've pledged my knightly sword
To Christ, his blessed Church, and her,
The Mother of our Lord.

Oh, vain the vow, and vain the strife!
How vain do all things seem!
My soul is in the past, and life
To day is but a dream!

In vain the penance strange and long,
And hard for flesh to bear;

The prayer, the fasting, and the thong,
And sackcloth shirt of hair.

The eyes of memory will not sleep,

Its ears are open still;

And vigils with the past they keep
Against my feeble will.

And still the loves and joys of old

Do evermore uprise;

I see the flow of locks of gold,
The shine of loving eyes!

Ah me! upon another's breast
Those golden locks recline;

I see upon another rest

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The glance that once was mine!

"O faithless Priest!-O perjured knight!"

I hear the Master cry;

"Shut out the vision from thy sight,

Let Earth and Nature die!

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