Ohio History Journal

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10 OHIO HISTORY

10                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

TO CINCINNATI*

by EDWARD A. M'LAUGHLIN

 

 

 

Fair is thy seat, in soft recumbent rest

Beneath the grove-clad hills; whence morning wings

The gentle breezes of the fragrant west,

That kiss the surface of a thousand springs:

Nature, her many-colored mantle flings

Around thee, and adorns thee as a bride;

While polished Art his gorgeous tribute brings,

And dome and spire ascending far and wide

Their pointed shadows dip in thy Ohio's tide.

 

 

 

So fair in infancy -- O what shall be

Thy blooming prime, expanding like the rose

In fragrant beauty; when a century

Hath passed upon thy birth, and time bestows

The largess of a world that freely throws

Her various tribute from remotest shores,

To enrich the Western Rome: Here shall repose

Science and art; and from time's subtile ores --

Nature's unfolded page -- knowledge enrich her stores.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

* An excerpt from a poem found in a collection of poems by Edward A. M'Laughlin

entitled Lovers of the Deep, which was originally printed at Cincinnati in October 1841.

The 312-page volume was dedicated to Nicholas Longworth. William T. Coggeshall, The

Poets and Poetry of the West (Columbus, 1860), 247-249.