Then I thought with sorrow and yearning
Of my own distracted land,
And the sword let down from heaven
To flame in her ruler's hand,--
The sword of Freedom, resplendent
As a beam of the morning star,
Received, reviled, and dishonored
By another than Bolivar!
And my prayers flew home to my country:
O ye tried and fearless crew!
O ye pilots of the nation!
Now her safety is with you.
Beware the traitorous captain,
And the wreckers on the shore;
Guard well the noble vessel;
And steadily evermore,
As ye steer through the perilous midnight,
Let your faithful glances go
To the steadfast stars above her,
From their fickle gleams below.
* * * * *
THROUGH BROADWAY.
The incessant demolition of which Broadway is the scene denotes to the
most careless eye that devotion to the immediate which De Tocqueville
maintains to be a democratic characteristic. The huge piles of old
bricks which block the way--with their array of placards heralding every
grade of popular amusement, from a tragedy of Shakespeare to a negro
melody, and from a menagerie to a clairvoyant exhibition, and vaunting
every kind of experimental charlatanism, from quack medicine to flash
literature--are mounds of less mystery, but more human meaning, than
those which puzzle archaeologists on the Mississippi and the Ohio; for
they are the _debris_ of mansions only half a century ago the
aristocratic homes of families whose descendants are long since
scattered, and whose social prominence and local identity are forgotten,
while trade has obliterated every vestige of their roof-tree and
association of their hearth-stone.
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