Vol. IX.
THE
iWIMAI ITOBIM,
JANUARY, 1880.
itcrnrit.
VISION.
BY II. W. OLMSTEAD, '82.
How strange and mysterious the power of thought!
What wonderful visions by fancy urc wrought!
How soon is nil excellence left far behind,
When compared with the beauties shut up in the mind!
In fancy I stood by the broad water's strand,
Where stretching afar was the beacli made of sand;
Ami, as by Old Ocean's sea breezes fanned,
I heard its dull roar so sublime and so grand,
I saw its long billows in marshall array
Roll up to the bead), and break forth into spray.
I saw the bright rays of the sun's mellow glow,
Glance down on the billows playing below.
Beside the sea bench, upon Old Ocean's strand
I beheld all these eights so surpassingly grand,
And wondered If any one ever could find
A power to compare with the power of the mind.
In the quickness of lightning in fancy I stood
In the shadow of forest and gigantic wood;
And the wind in the trees shrieked out hideous alarms,
As it bended their branches like long spectral arms,
And their tops like the plooms of a fierce savage foe,
Were fitfully waiving backward and fro.
I heard the loud noise of the wind's awful roar,
And it seemed as if cacli tree were then topling e'er.
But although bending far, they still kept their ground;
And I wondered if ever a power could be found,
In all litis broad earth, by sea or by land,
Which, all'ected by sights so Burpnssingly grand,
Would be able to know them and them understand.
No. 1.
