me ye in festal guise to-day,
Charged with no fatal "gifts of Greece,"
Nor Punic treaties double-tongued,
But proffering hands of amity,
And speaking messages of peace,
With drum-beats ushered, and with shouts acclaimed,
While cannon-echoes lusty-lung'd
Reverberate far away?

* * * * *

IV.

Our errand here to-day
Hath warrant fair, ye say;
We come with you to consecrate
A hero's, ay a prophet's monument;
Yet needs he none, who was so great;
Vainly they build in Cuba's isle afar
His sepulcher beside the sapphire sea;
He hath for cenotaph a continent,
For funeral wreaths, the forests waving free,
And round his grave go ceaselessly
The morning and the evening star.
Yet is it fit that ye should praise him best,
For ye his true descendants are,
A spirit-begotten progeny;
Wherefore to thee, fair city of the West,
From elder lands we gladly came
To grace a prophet's fame.

V.

Beauteous upon the waters were the wings
That bore glad tidings o'er the leaping wave
Of sweet Hesperian isles, more bland and fair
Than lover's looks or bard's imaginings;
And blest was he, the hero brave,
Who first the tyrannous deeps defied,
And o'er the wilderness of waters wide
A sun-pursuing highway did prepare
For those true-hearted exiles few
The house of Liberty that reared anew.
Nor fails he here of honor due.
These goodly structures ye behold,
These towering piles in order brave,
From whose tall crests the pennons wave
Like tropic plumage, gules and gold;
These ample halls, wherein ye view
Whate'er is fairest wrought and best--
South with North vying, East with West,
And arts of yore with science new--
Bear witness for us how religiously
We cherish here his memory.

VI.

Yet sure, the adventurous Genoese
Did never in his most enlightened hours
Forecast the high, the immortal destinies
Of this dear land of ours.
Nay, could ye call him hither from his tomb,
Think ye that he would mark with soul elate
A kingless people, a schismatic State,
Nor on his work invoke perpetual doom?
Though the whole Sacred College o'er and o'er
Pronounce him sainted, prophet was he none
Who to Cathaia's legendary shore
Deemed that his bark a path had won.