Was Rome the Eden of our ancient state, Just in her laws, in her dominion great, Wise in her counsels, matchless in her worth, Acknowledged great proconsul of the earth? An eye prophetic that has read the leaves The sibyls scattered from their loosened sheaves, A bard that sang at Rome in all her pride, Shall give response;--let Seneca decide! "Beyond the rocks where Shetland's breakers roar, And clothe in foam the wailing, ice-bound shore, Within the bosom of a tranquil sea, Where Earth has reared her _Ultima Thule_, The gorgeous West conceals a golden clime, The petted child, the paragon of Time! In distant years, when Ocean's mountain wave Shall rock a cradle, not upheave a grave, When men shall walk the pathway of the brine, With feet as safe as Terra watches mine, Then shall the barriers of the Western Sea Despised and broken 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?