May 13, 1870: “To Lake Michigan.”, by P.W., published in the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel.
The incognito PW opines that despite the enormous potency of Lake Michigan it pales beside the strength of a higher power.
O thou vast basin of the northwest land,
Set like an opalescent gem upon
The breast of western empire! as I stand
Upon thy beach before the rising sun,
And gaze upon thy tranquil waters wide,
The spirit of repose seems to brood o’er
Thy misty waste, and thence to gently glide
Into the musing soul. What strange thoughts pour
Into my mind, awakened by thy plash and roar?
Long, long ere thy extended bounds were set,
Or line by the Almighty hand was laid
Around thy winding shores; when ocean yet
Was universal, ere the hand was made,
The fiat had gone forth to seal thy fate.
Thy mother ocean reigned supreme where now
The busy life of empires teems, where state
Arises after state, and cities grow,
As if by magic, where its ancient tides did flow.
Back in the immemorial age of time
There was a travail of the pregnant deep;
Amidst its throes, Titanic and sublime,
Thy shores arose—here frowning high and steep,
There gently sloping like an esplanade.
In time thy briny floods were borne away,
By northward currents to the gulf conveyed,
Thy life marine fell into slow decay,
And thus thou didst become a great fresh water
sea.
And now the fleets of commerce plow thy breast;
Around thee cities rise as proud as Tyre,
And deem the firm foundations where they rest
Eternal as the world; but men aspire
To hold thee ever as their slave in vain;
Incited by the lawless winds to rise,
O’erwhelm thy banks and join the seas again,
Still faithful to thy ancient sympathies,
Thy waters seek to reunite their early ties.
But thou must bide by thy God-appointed time,
For ages still to burdens yield thy breast;
But know another destiny sublime
Awaits thee in the future; pause and rest
Thy waves upon thy deep and pebbly bed,
And listen to the dark, mysterious voice
Of everlasting fate. Of old ’twas said
Of thee, by that decree of which no choice
Is thine but to obey and in obedience rejoice;
“Thus far, no farther shall thy waters go!”
And though the tempest and the storm may urge
The restless waves to break their bounds, still
know
A mightier hand than theirs controls thy surge.
Out from the cloud-veiled portals of the East
The soft gray light of early morning streams;
But from thy shores poetic nature’s priest
Prophetic reads thy fate, in mystic dreams,
By higher light than that which o’er thy bosom
gleams.
A few more cycles of all-changing time,
And thou, great inland sea, shalt be no more;
The lands shall rise, as when the stellar chime
Announced the third creative day, and pour
Thy contents like a deluge over o’er the land;
Vast cataclysms then shall change the face
Of earth;—where prairies smile and cities stand
Shall be the ocean’s bed, and they thy place
Shall take, nor leave of thee a solitary trace.
Milwaukee, Wis., May 12th, 1870