The poetical writings of Elizabeth Oakes Smith :: :: University of Virginia Library

Thou mighty ocean! meetly art thou made,
A type of human ages—thy great voice
The tumult of a people roused to act—
Thy waves incessant beating to the shore,
Weak in their first assay, yet gathering strength
And volume as they rise, till one vast wave
Surging with mountain-height o'er-leaps the strand,
A semblance fitting man's progressive thought.
Ages on ages doth he onward toil,
The dim lights shielding that his pathway cheer—
Crushing with his gyved hands the clanking chain
That might reveal the progress of his feet,
Until his hour is come, and then like thee
He leapeth to the rock, amid the roar
Of breakers, on the vantage ground he stands
With planted foot, assured of his own strength.

203

And ye stern men, whose names are here affixed,
God-like although ye were, Freedom's last hope,
Her “forlorn-hope,” prayer-armed, and marshalled forth
Her banner to uphold, and firmly plant
Upon the citadel of human rights,
I honor ye far less than man's great thought.
Ye did become his utterance—ye his voice.
Emerging from his gloom, with giant force;
He spurned the barriers in his pathway hid,
And tore the shackle from the free-born limb—
His proud brow bearing free to the free heaven,
And as he moved a sound tumultuous rose—
For his great spirit cried, yet words had not—
It shouted to the mountain and the wave—
That fetterless were left—the wild old woods,
And the free dweller there—to winds that go
And wait no bidding. 'Twas the uncurbed voice
Of nature calling fiercely for her own,
It was the beating of the human mind,
Against the battlements of power.
Then were ye marshalled forth, and man's great cry
A language found. Ye stood upon the vantage field,
His arm had won, and like a trumpet tone
Your voice became the utterance of his thought.
Man fixed his footing there, and he grew calm
In his own might—the strong limb stronger grew—

204

The nerve was firmly braced—the wild pulse beat,
A calm and measured flow, that told of health.
And thus upon the citadel of thought
Ye proudly stood the voice of human-kind,
And ye are made immortal—thus should be—
Ye have become the watch-word of the free—
And long, O! long, shall man's great soul move on,
Concentring thought, like wave succeeding wave,
To seize on higher truths and holier rights
Ere such as ye shall speak—and then afar
In the long lapse of ages shall arise,
From some high battlement which he hath won,
A trumpet cry, which ye shall answer back
With hearty cheers, that stronger heights are gained.

[_]

The above poem is one of those things, which a writer at all capable of separating the conceptions of his own mind from the suggestiveness of another, is puzzled to know how to dispose of. It was written immediately after an animated discussion with a nobly-endowed friend, to whom the writer is willing to acknowledge many a mental obligation, and the thought therein contained belongs less to herself, than to her companion.