To truth's eternal quest.—How poor and vain,
To such high bounty, seems a meaner kind;—
But this in after times;—for forests then
Mantled the height and swarmed with savage men.
XXXVI.
Thence, in the vale below, our Founder sees
Where dark Mooshausick rolls, and seaward casts,
Its waters,—rolling under lofty trees
With crossing branches, thick as e'er the masts
That shall, thereafter, on the wanton breeze
Display their banners, when, in sounding blasts,
The cannon utters its triumphant voice,
And bids the land through all its States rejoice.
XXXVII.
And thence, with prescient eye, he gazes far
O'er the rude sites of palaces and shrines,
Where Grecian beauty to the buxom air
Shall rise resplendent in its shapely lines;
Ay, almost hears the future pavements jar
Beneath a people's wealth, and half divines
From thee, Soul-Liberty! what glories wait
Thy earliest altars—thy predestined State.
XXXVIII.
Then down the steep, by paths scored in its side,
Where frequent deer had sought the floods below,
He past, still following his dusky guide
And stooping often under drooping bough,
To a broad cultured field, expanding wide
Betwixt dense thickets and Mooshausick's flow.
Its deep green rows of waving maize foretold
Abundant harvest from a fertile mould.
