THE JOURNEY.

O thou! who charmed the demons in the breast

Of Saul, and set the universal voice

Of all the earth to thy unflagging song;

Thou royal shepherd! bend for us across

The bridge of ages thy leant lips, and pour

The echo of thy music on our souls.

And Thou of Nazareth! whose very life

Was as the cadence of a well-strung harp,

Thyself the instrument, upon whose strings,

Ten thousand symphonies are left entranced;

Pour in the empty vial of our verse,

Some of thy soul of music, and let shine

Through every darkened crevice of the heart,

Rays of celestial sunshine. Not in vain

Our humble dalliance, if thou set the charm

Of thine approval. Let our song be praise

And devotate our hands, that there be left

No tissue, but is animate of Thee!

The seas reach out to clasp each other's hands,

The greater and the less, and leap the sands

That tear in two their waters; but not so

She of the Nile; her rights will not forego.

The hand that rocks the crib of empire holds

A charm, that locks the East and West in one

The track of nations is her beaten path,

And undisputed, till the earth be done.

Man may disturb it, but the hand of God

Has placed a thousand tokens on this sod.

The flocks are gathered, and the flight began,

Old Uri and attendants in the van;

The portents were of good as far as seen,

Each breast a shrine of hope; thus early man

Gave little time to sorrow — after years

Were left for its fruition; light of heart,

These early-planted germlets of the earth,

Took their reverses in the better part

Of hardihood; they had thus early learned,

That in the chafe of fortune there is gain;

That scars are coronets, though they be burned

Deep in the brow of care; each gem a pain.

Our philosophic age with heavy draught,

Drinks deep in phantasies, but fails to learn

The wiser lesson of this early craft,

To catch the wheel of fortune with each turn.

East over Syria they bent their steps,

Meeting Euphrates many leagues above

Where Babylon since molded into form

Her mystical proportions; and so strove

Persistently the mastery of earth.

Crossing the Tigris but a span below,

Where Taurus from his fountains feeds the stream,

They traverse Persia with its after-glow

Of conquest; where Ispahan gave touch,

To chords that deify the voice of song,

And mellow through the ages, if so much

As but an echo would inspire the tongue,

With that enchantment, that rolls down the course

Of her great history. We seek in vain

Another Cyrus, or another force

Of Scripture fulfillment, with lesser pain,

And Time's repleted garner has no riper grain.

Still East they cross the Amoo, and above

Where now, Bokhara's languor and repose

Invites the Sclavic hordes in summer quest

Of forage. And Belor, giant like, still throws

Its shadow o'er the landscape; and the Koosh

Shortens the noon of summer, from the South;

A thousand sparkling torrents downward rush,

And pour their waste of waters in the mouth

Of Indus. They cross where Belor melts its snow,

To placid Cashgar's arms, sending below

A current to the waste of farther Nor.

They stand on Cobis’ southern girt, and drink

The final retrospective of the West;

And keep the gloomy borders to the brink

Of far-off Koulon, where the Argoon lends

Its mite of wastage to the vast Amour;

And the impetuous Shilka, swiftly sends

Its tribute to the master of Mantchoor.

One winter they had spent upon the way,

Within the vale of Cashgar, where the flocks

Found generous herbage; but they could not stay

Longer than opening spring, when from the rocks

And passes of the Koosh, a savage tribe

Came fiercely on them; and again the fire

From Uri's sacred pebble, as a bribe

Saved them from ruin, and the warlike ire

Of Lama's devotees, for even then

On upper Ind, his worship had begun;

But superstition, ranks us all as men,

And mystery doth mold us into one.

The Argoon and the Shilka passed; they keep

Their steady march, down Armour's limpid tide.

Yet summer wastes to autumn. Seasons creep

So noiselessly, that our souls are open wide,

If we set watch upon them; unaware

They find us napping, in our wakeful age;

And how much more, in the unrisen sun

Of ancient man! We wonder that the page

Is not more blurred and blotted in the years

That are far gone, when knowledge only bubbled up through tears.

A Winter on the Amour near the sea;

The Frost King strokes his heavy beard in glee,

In surfeit of his triumph, o'er the foe

That dares invade his borders; and the snow

Scatters its fleecy fullness o'er the land,

Hiding the face of Nature with its hand

So cold and clasping. O‘ tis very hard!

To see familiar faces pass the ward

Of our immediate contact, and the earth

Draw back into its arms, with tightening girth

Our loved ones. But‘ tis a heavier lot

To see our mother Earth, whose faithful breast

Has never failed to aid; so chilled in death

That it cannot respond, though it be rest,

Recuperent and needful; still the same

When we are starving for its warm caress,

And cannot spare its nursing, when our claim

Is mortal, and we feel the strong hand press

Our vitals; and we labor for our breath;

And Famine lends its wizard hand, to fill the tooth of death.

Old Uri vainly calls the shining god;

Though it may light his altar, still the flame

Is but a weakling; and the weary host

Were wrangling at his impotence, and tame

His efforts to assuage them. He had taught

His followers of a near approach; the sun

Seemed coy of his endeavors, for the thought

Of zone or solstice, had not then begun,

And Winter was their time of penance, when

Their god rode low, and frowned him out of sight.

They offered for his anger many gifts,

And set their watchmen to outwake the night.

In question of his rising. Why should he

Keep so much closer the horizon's rim

When they were in his quest, and sought the verge

Of farthest empire, in their reach of him?

O empty arms! and ever reaching out,

Fold in the blessings that your hands enclose.

There is nor reason, nor excuse for doubt,

The river of God's love so near you flows.

Your very feet are on the water's brink,

His very arms are all around you thrown,

You touch him in your timidness, and shrink

To his embraces; no human soul was ever yet alone.

They settle down to Winter, and their flocks

Must furnish sustenance, until the sun

Shall break their penance, and embrown the locks

Of the o'ergristled seasons; and this won,

They counsel further movement. Uri speaks:

“Sons of the Summer God, I little thought

When we set out from Egypt, that our feet

Would be thus bruised and bled; but it is well.

We learn the lesson of our latent sin;

This trial of our faith will make us whole,

If we but draw the diamond out of it.

We have not vainly trod the heavy press

Of our affliction, if we firmly breast

The waters. I have kept faithful watch —

We are but self-styled lords, and forfeit much

Of our asserted masterhood; the birds

Make many less mistakes — we used to note

The flight of waterfowl in Egypt. Why

Should we not learn their wisdom in this clime?

Before the sun sank low, and Winter came

( Led by a providence that makes all things

To minister our wants ), I watched the birds,

And many, turned to East, across the sea.

We lose our way sometimes, they never do;

They are much closer children to the sun

Than we, by their dependence — we need help

As much as any feathered wingster does —

And yet we push it back, when we might reach

And find a steady hand. Let us go to

And make us ships; that when the Spring

Shall beckon back to life the dormant earth,

And all the birds turn back in countermarch,

We fly against their flight, and reach the clime

From whence the sun has warned them to return

To this cold country of the nether earth.

“Behold! these rugged trees stand stout for us,

And ready for our architrave; and we

Were better wont to labor than to dole

Our time in murmurs at our fate. Up! up!

And do! and though we suffer overmuch,

Our labor shall not vainly mock at us.

Even old Kohen saw a journey South,

When he did burn our eyes, as he went up,

And he saw fat and plenty in the land

Where his prophetic eye did cast our lot;

And we will not mistrust what leads to light,

Though it be lifted in a demon's hand.”

The forests gave to them their virgin palms,

And they did rudely shape them into crafts;

Made ready for the flood, when the warm sun

Should waken nature with enlivening draughts;

But Spring wore into Summer, ere the birds

Gave the unspoken pledge of their return.

The sun, still coy, refused to climb as high

As it had done in Egypt; still they burn

With new-born hope, as they float down to sea,

And, moving counter to their winged friends,

Cross to Lopatka, where they only wait

Replenishment, which nature always sends,

Where faith is instinct as in lower life,

( The birds teach providence, without a chance,)

And so they wander on, to the Aleutes;

Passing and calling, as they still advance,

They reach to where Alaska strikes the sea,

In severance to meet them. They kept on,

Feeding on eggs of seabirds, and the meats

That everywhere supplied them. They have gone

So far on Nature's very track, and now

A narrow river beckons their research,

And they pass upward, till a mountain range

Confronts their passage, like a royal perch

From which the gods might frown their hardihood,

For this intrusion of another world.

But they have battled with the plague and flood;

And though Olympus all his thunders hurled,

They had not turned; they saw the earnest need

Of pushing forward ere the sun turned back,

And so they crossed to where the eastern slope,

Feeds the McKenzie. Here an easy track

Leads down and cuts the stronger range in two,

A little while among its shadows grope,

When the broad prospect opened to their view.

They follow the receding sun in hope,

Still bearing to the east their steady trend,

Hoping to win their God to close embrace;

And morn and eve around their altars bend

In thankfulness, that they still see his face.

Through many valleys, virgin to their sight,

And many lakes, whose bosoms never stirred

To man, the weak pretender of God's might;

But nature spreads her happy hearth with beast and flower and bird.