DEPARTURE OF WABUN.

“Most governed is most wayward.” Very true;

Repeating history doth verify

That law from malefaction always grew,

And with its ceasing, rulership must die,

Except the common sway of Deity,

When love and service shall together blend,

And man, from every earthly master free,

Shall recognize his Father and his Friend.

These ancient prairie dwellers, had no need

Of stringent government; a few to lead

In seeding and in harvest; some to guide

In matters of religion, and of form;

The rustic swain, and his compliant bride,

To join in wedlock; and in time of storm,

To smooth the little intricates of life

With counsel, sage, and thus avoiding strife,

To guide their budding nation into bloom.

All claiming unction from the prophet's shade,

Still gave their worship to the god of day,

And their oblations on the altar laid.

Yet, the responsive accident of fire

Could never be recalled — they little knew

The secret of its coming; and they shaped

No other pebbles like the one so true

To Uri's pleadings; still they kept their faith

And reared their shapely mounds to meet the sun

With his first glance, and from the morning's breath

Retain their fervency, till day was done.

From out their number, some were set apart

For game and chase. The buffalo and deer

And wild fowl, all, paid tribute to their skill,

And vale and forest echoed with their cheer.

But one of these, young Wabun, shunned the group,

And wandered by the forest streams alone.

Some called him “dreamer”; others tried to win

His mooding back to mirth; but there was none

That seemed to reach the center of his soul;

He joined not in the worship of his race,

And seemed to be so distant in his thought,

That one might search the Pleiad's in his face.

There shone a star upon the eastern rim —

So suddenly it shot upon their view,

So brilliant and so placid, never dim

Through storm and starlight, always lit anew.

They marveled much, and some were sore dismayed

To seek the portents of this stranger star;

But not so, Wabun; he, all unafraid,

Hailed it as answer from the dim afar,

And showed unwonted pleasure at its sight;

His distance seemed to shorten, and his mind

Seemed mellowed by a new-born love to man —

A quickened tenderness to help his kind.

“I wander in the forest; by the stream”;

( They gave earnest audience as he spake )

“And underneath the stars — and they all tell

The story of a great, forgotten God.

I listen to the murmuring of the rain,

And to the mighty thunder of the clouds;

And see the forked lightning, in its gleam,

Strike the great oak to shivers, in its path;

I see the maize upon a thousand fields;

I see the goodly carpet on the earth —

And every grassy thread a miracle —

I see the sun upon his track of light,

The moon upon her pathway in the sky —

And all do tell of this forgotten God.

For God is of the living, not the dead:

The tree, the sun, the moon, the stars, and all,

All fill their places; but are not alive

“As we, with thought, and purpose, and design;

But each doth turn upon a steady crank

Held by a mighty and imperious hand.

The bison, and the deer, and all the birds,

Have life, and voice, and action, such as we;

And yet they have no thought, except to live.

They build no houses, lay no harvests up —

We are their masters, with the right to kill.

“All things pay tribute to our prowent hands;

All things we see are provident of us:

The sun to ripen, and the moon to watch,

The birds and flocks for us to gather flesh,

The forests and the prairies for our use,

The mines for metal, and the streams for fish —

All, all, pay tribute to our wasting hands.

Yet we are not a law unto ourselves:

Though masters, yet not gods, for we all die

And fall back into dust; yet are we great,

And greatest of earth's creatures; but for death,

We might claim highest unction; but our power

Is limited; wherefore, if we are highest type

Of creature earth, then must it surely be

That God is man, but of a higher mold;

Not subject unto death, but Lord of life.

And, if all earthly forces must conserve

Our being ( highest born of all the earth ),

Then back of us the great Creator stands

“Unseen, as is Eternity unseen,

But felt, as is each ripple of her waves,

Upon the shores of our unstable life.

The greater is not seen. We do not see

The very thought that holds us in control.

“Thus have I doled, and pondered on it well,

Until, upon my vision dawned that star;

And as upon some errand quickly sent

( I know not how I went, I felt so light ),

I sped upon its rays, o'er vale, and hill,

And o'er a vaster water than the lakes —

A grand expanse of green and surging waves.

And, on, still on, till just before my face

A mother, and an infant at her breast,

And many seeming wise and stately men

Bending in homage and with offerings choice,

Of sweetly-scented vintage; then I sought

To find the wherefore of this sweet emprize;

And I was told this was the Son of God —

The One that was to come, the mighty One,

Redeemer of the world; that man had sinned

And he was come to set at one the race

With the All-Father; that we had been made

In God's own image; that the sun and moon

Were but his handiwork. To Him alone

( Invisible, yet always looking on )

“Should homage be ascribed. All this was short

Yet was it printed on my pliant breast,

And cannot be erased. I seek no name

And claim no higher homage for the gleam

Vouchsafed my vision of the mighty past

And prescience of the future; tis enough

To know my steps directed, and to feel

That in my darkness I have found out God.

No more the unknown God, but evermore

The ripened type of the diviner man;

And as we reap the tokens of his love,

Remember him as Father Man of men —

The Infinite Perfection of our race.”

Much more he said which made a deep impress

Upon the hardy hunters, and the less

Were those who gave no sanction to his word;

The greater portion followed him in thought,

And soon in deed. The votaries of the sun

Made most malignant onslaught, and they sought

To drive the thoughtful Wabun from his “dream.”

The strife was vain. They in their fervent hope

Turn to the East, into the wilderness —

The grand Druidic of the Eastern slope,

And, hid to all but God, they penetrate

The deep recesses of their broad estate.

The gentle Wabun held for many years

His hand upon the pulses of their thought;

Sometimes upon their love, sometimes their fears,

His fervent purity, its impress wrought.

He led them to the thousand untold charms

That sparkle on the rugged Eastern slope.

He bared to them the great Creator's arms,

And, in God's grandest alphabet, he read their highest hope.

Niagara was but a giant scroll,

Whereon God writ a token of his strength;

The muttering voice of its unceasing roll

Was but a cadence of the mighty length

That measures the eternities of life.

Its grandeur but one glitter of the gold

That played upon his vesture; that the strife

Of waters was the stream so cold,

Down which humanity as rudely rushed;

Without a thought for their eternal good,

With all the semblance of the Father crushed,

They pass down in the surge of death's unceasing flood.

The broad Atlantic lashing at the shore,

Was human passion — with the balance gone;

Endeafening the graces with its roar,

And blindly lashing the Eternal throne.

Into these miniatures, God thrust himself,

That every wave might glitter with his name,

That every rock might hold upon its shelf

Some semblance that their reverence might claim.

The kindlier tokens of paternal care,

On Nature's face, were beaming everywhere.

And yet, how few of us, can truly blend

The creature with Creator, in our sight;

And from the Father, grasp the hand of friend,

Whose stars of providence outshine the night!

Our eyes are fettered with an earthly bound,

Our narrow horizon will not enlarge;

Our gaze, star fixed, will drop back to the ground,

And will not with the infinite surcharge.

Only God's hand can push the barriers back,

And give our vision unimpeded range;

And with each respite, on the weary track,

Fix the unchangeable, where all is change.