Far in the East like low-hung clouds
  The waving woodlands lie;
Far in the West the glowing plain
  Melts warmly in the sky. 
No accent wounds the reverent air,
  No footprint dints the sod,—­
Lone in the light the prairie lies,
  Rapt in a dream of God

ILLINOIS, 1858.

Centennial

A hundred times the bells of Brown
  Have rung to sleep the idle summers,
And still to-day clangs clamoring down
  A greeting to the welcome comers.

And far, like waves of morning, pours
  Her call, in airy ripples breaking,
And wanders to the farthest shores,
  Her children’s drowsy hearts awaking.

The wild vibration floats along,
  O’er heart-strings tense its magic plying,
And wakes in every breast its song
  Of love and gratitude undying.

My heart to meet the summons leaps
  At limit of its straining tether,
Where the fresh western sunlight steeps
  In golden flame the prairie heather.

And others, happier, rise and fare
  To pass within the hallowed portal,
And see the glory shining there
  Shrined in her steadfast eyes immortal.

What though their eyes be dim and dull,
  Their heads be white in reverend blossom;
Our mother’s smile is beautiful
  As when she bore them on her bosom!

Her heavenly forehead bears no line
  Of Time’s iconoclastic fingers,
But o’er her form the grace divine
  Of deathless youth and wisdom lingers.

We fade and pass, grow faint and old,
  Till youth and joy and hope are banished,
And still her beauty seems to fold
  The sum of all the glory vanished.

As while Tithonus faltered on
  The threshold of the Olympian dawnings,
Aurora’s front eternal shone
  With lustre of the myriad mornings.

So joys that slip like dead leaves down,
  And hopes burnt out that die in ashes,
Rise restless from their graves to crown
  Our mother’s brow with fadeless flashes.

And lives wrapped in tradition’s mist
  These honored halls to-day are haunting,
And lips by lips long withered kissed
  The sagas of the past are chanting.

Scornful of absence’ envious bar
  BROWN smiles upon the mystic meeting
Of those her sons, who, sundered far,
  In brotherhood of heart are greeting;

Her wayward children wandering on
  Where setting stars are lowly burning,
But still in worship toward the dawn
  That gilds their souls’ dear Mecca turning;

Or those who, armed for God’s own fight,
  Stand by his word through fire and slaughter. 
Or bear our banner’s starry light
  Far-flashing through the Gulf’s blue water.

For where one strikes for light and truth
  The right to aid, the wrong redressing,
The mother of his spirit’s youth
  Sheds o’er his soul her silent blessing.