The wonders of an age combined In one short moment memory supplies; They throng upon my wakened mind, As time's dark curtains rise. The volume of a hundred buried years, Condensed in one bright sheet, appears. I hear the angry ocean rave, I see the lonely little bark Scudding along the crested wave, Freighted like old Noah's ark, As o'er the drownèd earth 'twas hurled, With the forefathers of another world. I see the train of exiles stand, Amid the desert, desolate, The fathers of my native land, The daring pioneers of fate, Who braved the perils of the sea and earth, And gave a boundless empire birth. I see the sovereign Indian range His woodland empire, free as air; I see the gloomy forest change, The shadowy earth laid bare; And where the red man chased the bounding deer, The smiling labors of the white appear. I see the haughty warrior gaze In wonder or in scorn, As the pale faces sweat to raise Their scanty fields of corn, While he, the monarch of the boundless wood, By sport, or hair-brained rapine, wins his food. A moment, and the pageant's gone; The red men are no more; The pale-faced strangers stand alone Upon the river's shore; And the proud wood-king, who their arts disdained, Finds but a bloody grave where once he reigned. The forest reels beneath the stroke Of sturdy woodman's axe; The earth receives the white man's yoke, And pays her willing tax Of fruits, and flowers, and golden harvest fields, And all that nature to blithe labor yields. Then growing hamlets rear their heads, And gathering crowds expand, Far as my fancy's vision spreads, O'er many a boundless land, Till what was once a world of savage strife Teems with the richest gifts of social life. Empire to empire swift succeeds, Each happy, great, and free; One empire still another breeds, A giant progeny, Destined their daring race to run, Each to the regions of yon setting sun. Then, as I turn my thoughts to trace The fount whence these rich waters sprung, I glance towards this lonely place, And find it these rude stones among. Here rest the sires of millions, sleeping round, The Argonauts, the golden fleece that found. Their names have been forgotten long; The stone, but not a word, remains; They cannot live in deathless song, Nor breathe in pious strains. Yet this sublime obscurity to me More touching is than poet's rhapsody. They live in millions that now breathe; They live in millions yet unborn, And pious gratitude shall wreathe As bright a crown as e'er was worn, And hang it on the green-leaved bough, That whispers to the nameless dead below.