  ColumbusStill steer on, brave heart! Though witlings laugh at thy emprise, And though the helmsmen drop, weary and nerveless, their hands. Westward and westward still! There land must emerge from the ocean; There it lies in its light, clear to the eye of thy mind. Trust in the power that guides: press on o’er the convex of ocean: What thou seek’st, were it not, yet it should rise from the waves. Nature with Genius holds a pact that is fixt and eternal— All which is promised by this, that never fails to perform. OdysseusO’er all seas, in his search of home, lay the path of Odysseus, Scilla he past and her yell, skirted Charybdis’s whirl. Through the perils of land, through the perils of waves in their fury— Yea even Hades’ self scap’t not his devious course. Fortune lays him at last asleep on Ithaca’s margin, And he awakes, nor knows, grieving, the land that he sought. M.L. |
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