ught
Of what a Hercules remained unsought,
So near Missouri's border; yet, not strange
Is their indicted ignorance--their range
Was circumscribed; and iron was left to rest,
Till man had long been cradled on the breast
Of patient Mother Earth--not all at once
Did she give up her treasures; and the dunce
Must grow into philosopher with years.
Experience with its battlehood of tears,
Is Nature's great interpreter; we learn
But slowly, till the lessons fervid burn
Their impress into action; then awakes
The slow-taught pupil into higher life--
Invention is the furnace-spark of strife;
Necessity, the hand that wields the sledge
Upon the patient anvil of our needs,
And Providence makes good its wakeful pledge
With plenteous harvest; from the dormant seeds
That lie unconed beneath our very feet
We stumble on to marvels, and awake
To find some giant force, in what we meet;
And in the insects of our path, leviathans, we greet.

Time's wheels, though shaken, never fail to track
The rut of empire, without turning back;
They, ceaseless whirl, with lubricate of blood,
Drawn from a thousand channels on the way,
Unrusting, through the oxydizing flood,
To measure centuries, or mark a day.
And thus, the primal pioneers move on
To unaccustomed progress, on the banks
Of the confluent streams that scar the face
Of the great Western basin; and their ranks
Are filled with happy husbandry; the land
Gives back its tillage, with a lavish hand.

The forests and the streams were over-full
With fish, and flesh to feed them, and they pass
One conquest, to another, in the lull
Of untamed nature. Garnered as a mass
To fill their open hands, the native corn
Soon covered the rich valleys, and the plant,
So dalliant to the race, was early born,
Tobacco. They were not adamant
Against the weaknesses so close allied
To human nature; and there was excess,
And envy, emulence, and pride,
And all the ills that left their first impress;
And yet God gave them peace. No brother's hand