THE CENTENNIAL, JULY 4, 1876.

ERE stands the Nation's mighty Thought,

HER

With look and attitude sublime;

Both her colossal arms stretched out,

Seeking two equal bounds of time.

One hand rests on the very day

When Freedom struggled from the womb; The other, groping on its way,

Finds all this multitude a tomb!

The eyes of Thought, first backward cast,
Send fiery pæans from their deep;
But, searching all her country's past,
Some great, immortal tears they weep.

The eyes of Thought now onward tend,
Peopling the far, white mystery
With life that shall from ours descend,
And treasure all our history.

Here stands the Nation's mighty Thought!
A hundred years behind, before,

Her arm and eye have reached, and brought What make us one forevermore.

This centre of the Keystone State
Locks many nations in its hold,
And all the clashing notes of fate
To harmony has Peace controlled.

Great City of Fraternal Love,

How well the worlds have met in thee;
So, whither all the nations move,

God's Peace-built City let it be!

Charlotte Fiske Bates.

Pittsburg, Pa.

PITTSBURG.

ERE lay dark Pittsburg, from whose site there

HERE

broke

The manufacturer's black and sparkling smoke,

Where Industry and useful Science reigned,
And man, by labor, all his wants sustained;
There, mid the howling forest dark and drear,
Roved the wild Indian, wilder than the deer,
King of the woods, who other blessings prized,
And arts and industry alike despised:

Hunting the trade, and war the sport he loved,
Free as the winds, the dauntless chieftain roved,
Taunting, with bitter ire, the pale-faced slave,
Who toils for gold from cradle to the grave.
Extremes of habits, manners, time and space,
Brought close together, here stood face to face,
And gave at once a contrast to the view
That other lands and ages never knew.

James Kibble Paulding.

Pocantico, the River, N. Y.

WILD

THE POCANTICO.

waters of Pocantico!

Stray rivulet of wood and glen !

Thy murmuring laughters, soft and low,
Elude the alien ears of men.

O'er broader bosoms than thy own

The fleeting wings of commerce glide;

Hid in thy sylvan haunts alone

The nymphs of fairy-land abide.

The azure blue of summer's sky
Scarce mirrors in thy crystal sheen;
The lover draws his tenderest sigh

Far in thy shadowy dells unseen.

Along thy gently coursing stream

The huntsman, heedless, loves to roam;
The poet dreams his fondest dream
Within thy solitary home.

Thou art well guarded by a host,
For on thy sloping 'bankments stand
Such gnarléd sentinels as boast
A lineage aged as the land.

No hardy woodman dare intrude

To rob thee of thy ancient shade,

"Wild rivulet of wood and glen." See page 205.