Page:Zinzendorff and Other Poems.pdf/246

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246
MRS. SIGOURNEY'S POEMS.

    How would his zeal rebuke our ingrate pride,
If ye should sue to us and coldly be denied.

    Explores your eagle-glance that weaker band
    Who bear the burdens of domestic care?
    Who guide the distaff with a patient hand,
    And trim the evening hearth with cheerful air?
    Point ye the Attic maid, the matron fair,
    The blooming child devoid of letter'd skill?
    What would ye ask? Wild winds the answer bear,
    In blended echoes from the Aonian hill,
"Give them the book of God?" Immortal shades!—we will.



THE WESTERN EMIGRANT.


An ax rang sharply 'mid those forest shades
Which from creation toward the skies had tower'd
In unshorn beauty.—There, with vigorous arm
Wrought a bold Emigrant, and by his side
His little son, with question and response,
Beguil'd the toil.
                           "Boy, thou hast never seen
Such glorious trees. Hark, when their giant trunks
Fall, how the firm earth groans. Rememberest thou
The mighty river, on whose breast we sail'd
So many days, on toward the setting sun?
Our own Connecticut, compar'd to that,
Was but a creeping stream."
                                              "Father, the brook
That by our door went singing, where I launch'd