Under Pine and Plam

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1887 Excerpt: ...death, for here Time no decay nor desolation knows, --His crown a fadeless rose. In that rich hour when day and night keep tryst, Lingering as lovers in the purple mist, When in a sudden ecstasy expand The thousand odors of this fragrant land, Who that has lived amid its rare delight, But feels his spirit quicken with the sight Prophetic, of the glories to be wrought When Art to Nature has her offering brought? O Summer Queen! Thy Rome that is to be, On her proud hills beside the sunset sea Watches the hour of fate, When Art, a pilgrim from her first estate, Shall enter triumphing the Golden Gate! When through thy farthest land, Where now the crumbling earthen walls alone Tell of the century flown, Strong palaces and towers of fame shall stand, With soaring shaft, and statue chastely wrought, Each like a speaking thought, A picture-language known World wide and all thine own. Let not the sculptor rear The dead gods of the elder nations here. Our own dawn-heroes wait The touch of inspiration. Lo! afar There burned for ages a mysterious star, A watch-fire on a mountain. Long and late A priestly line for untold centuries kept That fire unquenched; for one whom they adored, The sun-god of the Orient, who had poured His mercy and his splendor on the land, Had vanished, ages-wept, Yet promised to return. That fire no more Sparkles upon the New World's midnight shore. Gone is the priestly band--He comes not yet. Oh, let the sculptor take That form sublime! Let Quetzalcoatl wake In deathless marble, and the gods who long Inspired the Redman's song Find thus their second coming, risen anew In Art's divinest hue! The Hindu deems that in each human breast, At birth, a lotus-bud is closely pressed. If evil rules and blights the growing years, The leaflet, scentless, shr...