Last of the prophets, he returned in chains
And glory.
In the New World are the traces, as in the Old, of a restless
humanity, wandering from coast to coast, growing, building cities,
and utterly vanishing. There are graves and ruins everywhere; and the
poet's thought returns from these scenes of unstoried desolation, to
follow again the course of man in the Old World annals. But here,
also, he is lost in the confusion of man's advance and retirement, and
he muses:
How many were the peoples? Where the trace
Of their lost steps? Where the funereal fields
In which they sleep? Go, ask the clouds of heaven
How many bolts are hidden in their breasts,
And when they shall be launched; and ask the path
That they shall keep in the unfurrowed air.
The peoples passed. Obscure as destiny,
Forever stirred by secret hope, forever
Waiting upon the promised mysteries,
Unknowing God, that urged them, turning still
To some kind star,--they swept o'er the sea-weed
In unknown waters, fearless swam the course
Of nameless rivers, wrote with flying feet
The mountain pass on pathless snows; impatient
Of rest, for aye, from Babylon to Memphis,
From the Acropolis to Rome, they hurried.
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