Two hundred years!-two hundred years! <br />How much of human power and pride, <br />What glorious hopes, what gloomy fears, <br />Have sunk beneath their noiseless tide! <br /> <br /> <br />The red man, at his horrid rite, <br />Seen by the stars at night's cold noon, <br />His bark canoe, its track of light <br />Left on the wave beneath the moon,- <br /> <br /> <br />His dance, his yell, his council-fire, <br />The altar where his victim lay, <br />His death-song, and his funeral pyre, <br />That still, strong tide hath borne away. <br /> <br /> <br />And that pale Pilgrim band is gone, <br />That, on this shore, with trembling trod, <br />Ready to faint, yet bearing on <br />The ark of freedom and of God. <br /> <br /> <br />And war,-that, since, o'er ocean came, <br />And thundered loud from yonder hill, <br />And wrapped its foot in sheets of flame, <br />To blast that ark,-its storm is still. <br /> <br /> <br />Chief, sachem, sage, bards, heroes, seers, <br />That live in story and in song, <br />Time, for the last two hundred years, <br />Has raised, and shown, and swept along. <br /> <br /> <br />'T is like a dream when one awakes,- <br />This vision of the scenes of old; <br />'T is like the moon when morning breaks, <br />'T is like a tale round watch-fires told. <br /> <br /> <br />Then what are we?-then what are we? <br />Yes, when two hundred years have rolled <br />O'er our green graves, our names shall be <br />A morning dream, a tale that's told. <br /> <br /> <br />God of our fathers,-in whose sight <br />The thousand years, that sweep away <br />Man, and the traces of his might, <br />Are but the break and close of day,- <br /> <br /> <br />Grant us that love of truth sublime, <br />That love of goodness and of thee, <br />That makes thy children, in all time, <br />To share thine own eternity.<br /><br />John Pierpont<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/hymns-and-odes-vii/
