Thus Rocha heard; and to the trembling crowd Turn'd the bright image of his beaming God. The afflicted chief, with fear and grief opprest, Beheld the sign, and thus the prince addrest: From what far land, O royal stranger, say, Ascend thy wandering steps this nightly way? From plains like ours, by holy demons fired? Have thy brave people in the flames expired? And hast thou now, to stay the whelming flood, No son to offer to the furious God? From happier lands I came, the prince returns, Where no red flaming flood the concave burns, No furious God bestorms our soil and skies, Nor yield our hands the bloody sacrifice; But life and joy the Power delights to give, And bids his children but rejoice and live. Thou seest thro heaven the day-dispensing Sun In living radiance wheel his golden throne, O'er earth's gay surface send his genial beams, Force from yon cliffs of ice the vernal streams; While fruits and flowers adorn the cultured field, And seas and lakes their copious treasures yield; He reigns our only God. In him we trace The friend, the father of our happy race. Late the lone tribes, on those unlabor'd shores, Ran wild and served imaginary Powers; Till he, in pity, taught their feuds to cease, Devised their laws, and fashion'd all for peace. My sacred parents first the reign began, Sent from his courts to guide the paths of man, To plant his fruits, to manifest his sway, And give their blessings where he gives the day. The sachem proud replied: Thy garb and face Proclaim thy lineage of superior race; And our progenitors, no less than thine, Sprang from a God, and own a birth divine. From that sky-scorching mount, on floods of flame, In elder times my great forefathers came; There dwells the Sire, and from his dark abode Oft claims, as now, the tribute of a God. This victim due when willing mortals pay, His terrors lessen and his fires decay; While purer sleet regales the mountain air, And our glad hosts are fired for fiercer war. Yet know, dread chief, the pious youth rejoin'd, Some one prime Power produced all human kind: Some Sire supreme, whose ever-ruling soul Creates, preserves, and regulates the whole. That Sire supreme must roll his radiant eye Round the wide earth and thro the boundless sky; That all their habitants, their gods and men, May rise unveil'd beneath his careful ken. Could thy dark fiend, that hides his blind abode, And cauldrons in his cave that fiery flood, Yield the rich fruits that distant nations find? Or praise or punish or behold mankind? But when my God, resurging from the night, Shall gild his chambers with the morning light, By mystic rites he'll vindicate his throne, And own thy servant for his duteous son.