WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

BY THE AUTHOR OF "NILE NOTES OF A HOWADJI."

Christopher Columbus was born at Genoa in 1437. In 1851 the Genoese are finishing his monument.

I am Columbus: will ye let me in?

Or Doria in his palace by the sea.

Proud Andrea Doria named il Principe,

In your Republic named il Principe,

By Charles the Fifth, the Emperor of Spain,

Monopolizes he your meed of fame

Before the awful Judgment seat of Time.

Well, and Pisani, the Venetian, he,

Venice as Doria was Genoa,—

Why, wide-mouthed Europe clanged their stunning praise,

And history with their names adorns herself,

Dazzing the eyes of pious pilgrims, who

Press flowers from Doria's garden, dreaming float

Upon Pisani's silent waters, and

Proceed, much meditating human fate.

And they had pleasures, palaces. They stood,

And sat, and went, all men admiring,

Men of a day, in its brief life they lived,

In its swift dying died. Men of a day,

Brave, generous, and noble—not enough.

Voluptuous Venice, Genoa superb,

Far fascinating meteors that flashed,

Then fell forgotten. Do I carp? Not I.

Ye love your own, I mine, mine me, amen!

O pious pilgrims and ye Genoese,

Proceed, much meditating human fate,

And meditate this well.

A wanderer driven

By every adverse gust of evil times.

Wrecked upon barren reefs of blandest smiles,

Wan victim of a solitary thought

Too masculine to die unrealized.

Tortured with tortuous diplomacy,

Beseeching monarchs still in vain besought,

Not to give kingdoms but to take a world,

Unloved of Fortune, best beloved of Hope,—

When Doria was a lisping boy at school,—

This wanderer puts forth one summer morn,

Among the other fishers of the sea,

And with a world returns.

Nay! nay! no words.

Your hemisphere was only half enough,

And Christopher Columbus globed his fame.

And now ye build my statue, Genoese,

After three silent centuries have died,

When the old fourth is failing, ye do well

With lagging stones to pile the pedestal,

And shape my sculptured seeming. Not with wrath,

Nor scorn. Good God and less with gratitude,

Be those worn features wreathed. I love ye not,

Ye are no friends of mine. I did not ask

A block of marble for my memory,

But gold to carve my hope. It was not much—

Nay, had it been your all, was it not well

To wreck your fortune on a hope sublime?

And, Merchants! The brave chance; a small outlay,

And income inconceivable! You chose.

My stately Spain was wiser. So much gold,

A little fleet,—some sailors—leaders known—

If not investment, speculation safe,

The honor of the enterprise, and chance—

Always the siren chance—Spain risked and won,

And Genoa lost a world.

Sir Advocate!

I understand your meaning; it were hard

Fame drafts upon the Future should be paid

Ere present recognition! 'Twere unjust

That hope unhazarded in act, were crowned

With the same coronal that crowns success.

The starving mariner upon your shore—

The riddle of the West unsolved—stood not

In the same light to set his worthiness,

As when an unimagined Future streamed

All over him in glory. Yet he stood

In that light lonely, as in the old dark,

Lonely, but looking to that light for life.

Spring-pinioned Hope impetuously flew,

And saw, through the deep Future shedding balm,

His fame a tree in flower.

If that were all?

If in his vision of America

He saw but Christopher made famous? Look!

Not for himself; but for that martyr, Thought,

Which struggles fainting in a foolish world,

To ope a gate to wisdom, his heart swelled

When his fixed eye beheld his soul's belief

Fulfilled in Western twilight. Thou my land!

Shalt thunder to the ages evermore

That dreams and hopes are holy. Thou shalt still

The croaking voice of souls that shake at dawn,

Loving the dimness of their own decay,—

The lone desire, entreaty and despair,

The wasting weariness that breeds disgust,

All woes but Doubt that, wasp-like, stings Hope back,

There are ye justified. And never Time

Goldening this page can slip its moral too:

And never Thought, loving this sweet success,

But still shall love its own wild dreams the more.

And still shall brighter gild all skiey peaks

Of noble daring, with this perfect day.

Regard your leisure with my monument,

My Genoese, for centuries to be

Will yet retain Its reason as to day.

There, where my hope was builded, stands my Fame,

The youngest children of the youngest race.

The wide worlds heritors, arch-heirs of Time,

Pronounce my name with reverence, and call

Your sometime outcast, Father. Be it so.

Andrea's palace claims repairs perhaps,

The sculptured letters must be cut anew,

That on the crumbling girdle of his house

Proclaim him Principe. That be your task,

And pare your miserable marble, me.