They gained the height where now the Muses reign-- Where now Brown’s bounty[21] to the human mind Links earth and heaven; the fruit of honest gain Moulding the youthful soul, by taste refined, To truth’s eternal quest.--How poor and vain, To such high bounty, seems a meaner kind;-- But this in after times;--for forests then Mantled the height and swarmed with savage men. [21] Brown University. XXXVI. Thence, in the vale below, our Founder sees Where dark Mooshausick rolls, and seaward casts, Its waters,--rolling under lofty trees With crossing branches, thick as e’er the masts That shall, thereafter, on the wanton breeze Display their banners, when, in sounding blasts, The cannon utters its triumphant voice, And bids the land through all its States rejoice. XXXVII. And thence, with prescient eye, he gazes far O’er the rude sites of palaces and shrines, Where Grecian beauty to the buxom air Shall rise resplendent in its shapely lines; Ay, almost hears the future pavements jar Beneath a people’s wealth, and half divines From thee, Soul-Liberty! what glories wait Thy earliest altars--thy predestined State. XXXVIII. Then down the steep, by paths scored in its side, Where frequent deer had sought the floods below, He past, still following his dusky guide And stooping often under drooping bough, To a broad cultured field, expanding wide Betwixt dense thickets and Mooshausick’s flow. Its deep green rows of waving maize foretold Abundant harvest from a fertile mould. XXXIX. The Priest’s forsaken lodge rose thereamid, Beside a fountain on a verdant lawn, Spacious as some great Sachem’s, and half-hid In mantling vines wherewith it was o’ergrown; And Williams thought of what his warrior did On that dark bloody night, so direly known,-- Mourning the fate that caused the Sorcerer’s doom; Yet sees its fruit, a temporary home. XL. But some last scruples still his mind assail; For, ah! what rites had made the place profane! When thus the chief:--“No more my son bewail Thy comforts lost; let the Great Spirit reign Where Chepian reigned; ay, let thy God prevail; Be thou His Priest, and this thine own domain; From wild Pawtucket to Pawtuxet’s bounds To thee and thine be all the teeming grounds.” XLI. High thanks Sire Williams paid;--but as he spake, Came over him a feeling passing strange; A prophet’s rapture in his breast did wake; For, at that moment, down the boundless range Of heavenly spheres did some bright being take Wing to his soul, and wrought to suited change The visual nerve, and straight in outward space Stood manifest in its celestial grace.[22] [22] See note. XLII.