hemes and plans of thought and action,
Would unfold their pages to us,
Would reveal their secrets to us.
Could the history unwritten,
Of each hearth and home be given,
Then I trow, the world of fiction,
With its brilliant, stirring pages,
With its "marvelous traditions,"
With its plots and strange denouements,
With its tragedies unnumbered,
And its comedies prolific----
Well I trow this world of fiction,
Would be "light and airy nothings,"
In the scale of real pictures,
By the light of life so earnest,
Of the suffering and doing,
Of the daring and enduring,
We should find imparted to us.
Could we lift the mystic curtain,
From the holiest of holies,
From the sacred, inner temple
Of each soul's unseen communion,
We should gather, we should garner,
Many lessons full of profit,
Lessons long and full of wisdom.
We should see the struggling victim
In the toils of the ensnarer;
See the troubled spirit writhing
'Neath the lashings of detraction;
See the burdened nature groaning
'Mid the polished shafts of envy;
See the sinner's cunning malice,
In the act of human torture;
See the Christian's anxious fightings,
Foes without, and fears within him.
All these lessons we should garner
From each spirit's veiled communion.
Change is written on the landscape,
Change is speaking from the hearthstone,
All the work of sure mutation,
Lays its impress on the city.
Could the earliest explorer
Of this Eden habitation,
Tread once more the waving blue grass,
'Mid her rivers, rills, and streamlets,
Not the aged Rip Van Winkle,
Oped his eyes in greater wonder,
Not the sleeper and the dreamer,
E'er beheld in more amazement.
Then the shaded, quiet woodland,
Was the home of untamed creatures;
Now the solitudes are teeming
With mankind and man's inventions;
Then the wolf, and bear, and panther,
Held their orgies in the caverns;
Now the silent grottoes foster
Only Nature's radiant jewels;
Then the rattle-snake's quick poison
Nerved its fangs to fierce encounter;
Now the bruised head lies harmless
'Neath the heel of the seed of woman;
Then the canebrake and the thicket
Harbored noxious weeds and vipers;
Now the undergrowth has vanished,
'Mid the golden sheaves of harvest;
Now the trees have laid their foliage,
In the dust of human footsteps,
Now the forest trees have fallen,
At the biddin