Hear a roaring and a rushing, "No, my child!" said old Nokomis, ""Tis the smoke that waves and beckons !" "Ah!" she said, "the eyes of Pauguk Glare upon me in the darkness, I can feel his icy fingers Clasping mine amid the darkness! And the desolate Hiawatha, Miles away among the mountains, Over snow-fields waste and pathless, Would that I had perish'd for you, And he rush'd into the wigwam, Utter'd such a cry of anguish, That the forest moan'd and shudder'd, That the very stars in heaven Shook and trembled with his anguish. Then he sat down still and speechless, At the feet of Laughing Water, Then they buried Minnehaha ; "Farewell!" said he, "Minnehaha! Farewell, O my Laughing Water! All my heart is buried with you, LIBERTY AND UNION. (WEBSTER.) I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our federal union. It is to that union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That union we reached, only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and, although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all, a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness. I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed my self to hang over the precipice of disunion. to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the union should be preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people, when it shall be broken up and destroyed. While the union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that, I seek not to penetrate the vail. God grant, that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise. God grant, that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious union; on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their origi nal lustre; not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth? nor those other words of delusion and folly: Liberty first, and union afterwards; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea, and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable! OH, WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL BE PROUD? The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade, Be scattered around and together be laid; And the young and the old, and the low and the high, Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie. The infant a mother attended and loved; The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye, The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne; The peasant whose lot to sow and to reap; The herdsman, who climbed with his goats up the steep; The beggar, who wandered in search of his bread, Have faded away like the grass that we tread. The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven, So the multitude goes, like the flowers or the weed For we are the same our fathers have been; |