?
Set thee in light till time shall be no more?
Is it I who have deceived thee or the world?
Endure! Thou hast done so well for men, that men
Cry out against thee; was it otherwise
With mine own son?"
And more than once in days
Of doubt and cloud and storm, when drowning hope
Sank all but out of sight, I heard his voice,
"Be not cast down. I lead thee by the hand,
Fear not." And I shall hear his voice again--
I know that he has led me all my life,
I am not yet too old to work His will--
His voice again.

Sir, in that flight of ages which are God's
Own voice to justify the dead--perchance
Spain, once the most chivalric race on earth,
Spain, then the mightiest, wealthiest realm on earth,
So made by me, may seek to unbury me,
To lay me in some shrine of this old Spain,
Or in that vaster Spain I leave to Spain.
Then some one standing by my grave will say,
"Behold the bones of Christopher Colon,
"Ay, but the chains, what do _they_ mean--the chains?"
I sorrow for that kindly child of Spain
Who then will have to answer, "These same chains
Bound these same bones back thro' the Atlantic sea,
Which he unchain'd for all the world to come."

The golden guess is morning star to the full round of truth.--_Ibid._

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 30: Copyright 1892 and by permission of the author.]

[Footnote 31: Lope de Vega has been variously termed the "Center of
Fame," the "Darling of Fortune," and the "Phoenix of the Ages," by his
admiring compatriots. His was a most fertile brain; his a most fecund
pen. A single day sufficed to compose a versified drama.]

[Footnote 32: By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers.]

[Footnote 33: For the above particulars and inscription the compiler
desires to acknowledge his obligation to the Hon. Thomas Adamson, U. S.
Consul General at Panama, and Mr. George W. Clamman, the able clerk of
the U. S. Consulate in the city of Colon.]

[Footnote 34: Copernicus has also been so styled.]

[Footnote 35: Senor Emilio Castelar, the celebrated Spanish author and
statesman, in his most able series of articles on Columbus in the
_Century Magazine_, derides the fact of an actual mutiny as a convenient
fable which authors and dramatists have clothed with much choice
diction.]

[Footnote 36: Galileo, the great Italian natural philosopher, is here
referred to by the author.]

[Footnote 37: By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publi