There is a star, whose constant rays Beam brightest in the darkest hour, And cheer the weary pilgrim's heart, Though storms around his pathway lower.
That tree, the Tree of Life is called, That flower blooms on Virtue's stem, That star, whose rays are never veiled, Is the bright Star of Bethlehem.
Old cradle of an infant world, In which a nestling empire lay, Struggling awhile, 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 wand'ring 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 combin'd 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, Condens'd 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 it whirl'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 brav'd the perils of the sea and earth, And gave a boundless empire birth.
I see the gloomy Indian range His woodland empire, free as air; I see the gloomy forest change, The shadowy earth laid bare; And, where the red man chas'd 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 fac'd 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.