Ohio History Journal

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A Prophecy

A Prophecy.                    351

 

Wait on the Queen of Arts in her own bowers,

Perfumed with all the fragrance of the earth

From blooming shrubbery and radiant flowers;

And hope with rapture wed life's calm and peaceful hours.

Oft as the spring wakes on the verdant year,

And nature glows in fervid beauty dress'd,

The loves and graces shall commingle here,

To charm the queenly City of the West;

Her stately youth with noble warmth impress'd

Her graceful daughters, smiling as in May-

Apollos these, and Hebes those confessed;

Bloom in her warm and fertilizing ray,

While round their happy sires the cherub infants play.

So sings the Muse as she with fancy's eye,

Scans, from imagination's lofty height,

Thy radiant beaming day-where it doth lie

In the deep future; glowing on the night

From whose dark womb, empires unveil to light;

Mantled and diademed and sceptered there

Thou waitest but the advent of thy flight,

When like a royal Queen, stately and fair,

The City of the West ascends the regal chair.

 

 

A PROPHECY.*

 

 

BY RETURN JONATHAN MEIGS.

Enough of tributary praise is paid

To virtue living or to merit, dead.

To happier themes the rural muse invites,

To calmest pleasures and serene delights.

To us, glad fancy brightest prospects shows;

Rejoicing nature all around us glows;

Here late the savage, hid in ambush, lay,

Or roamed the uncultured valleys for his prey;

Here frowned the forest with terrific shade;

No cultured fields exposed the opening glade;

How changed the scene! See nature clothed in smiles