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