n down forever be;
Then man shall spurn old Ocean's loftiest crest,
And tear the secret from his stormy breast!"

Again the vision fades. Night settles down
And shrouds the world in black Plutonian frown;
Earth staggers on, like mourners to a tomb,
Wrapt in one long millennium of gloom.
That past, the light breaks through the clouds of war,
And drives the mists of Bigotry afar;
Amalfi sees her burial tomes unfurl'd,
And dead Justinian rules again the world.
The torch of Science is illumed once more;
Adventure gazes from the surf-beat shore,
Lifts in his arms the wave-worn Genoese,
And hails Iberia, Mistress of the Seas!

What cry resounds along the Western main,
Mounts to the stars, is echoed back again,
And wakes the voices of the startled sea,
Dumb until now, from past eternity?

"Land! land!" is chanted from the Pinta's deck;
Smiling afar, a minute glory-speck,
But grandly rising from the convex sea,
To crown Colon with immortality,
The Western World emerges from the wave,
God's last asylum for the free and brave!

But where within this ocean-bounded clime,
This fairest offspring of the womb of time,--
Plato's Atlantis, risen from the sea,
Utopia's realm, beyond old Rome's Thule,--
Where shall we find, within this giant land,
By blood redeemed, with Freedom's rainbow spann'd,
The spot first trod by mortals on the earth,
Where Adam's race was cradled into birth?

'Twas sought by Cortez with his warrior band,
In realms once ruled by Montezuma's hand;
Where the old Aztec, 'neath his hills of snow,
Built the bright domes of silver Mexico.
Pizarro sought it where the Inca's rod
Proclaimed the prince half-mortal, demi-god,
When the mild children of unblest Peru
Before the bloodhounds of the conqueror flew,
And saw their country and their race undone,
And perish 'neath the Temple of the Sun!
De Soto sought it, with his tawny bride,
Near where the Mississippi's waters glide,
Beneath the ripples of whose yellow wave
He found at last both monument and grave.
Old Ponce de Leon, in the land of flowers,
Searched long for Eden 'midst her groves and bowers,
Whilst brave La Salle, where Texan prairies smile,
Roamed westward still, to reach the happy isle.
The Pilgrim Fathers on the Mayflower's deck,
Fleeing b