Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/664

GEORGE W. CEOWELL. Geokge W. Crowell was born in the village of Bloomfield, Trumbull county, Ohio, in the year 1833. He assisted his father to till the soil until he was eighteen years of age. He then went to Cleveland and engaged in mercantile business, which he has since prosecuted with activity, giving only occasional attention to literature. Did he cultivate his poetical abilities as assiduously as he has pursued his business, he would occupy high rank among the poets of the West. OUR SIRES. Where are our sires, our noble sires. Those men of toil and earnest thought. Who lit our sacred vestal fires, A heritage so dearly bought ? Who spumed the tyrants' deeds of wrong, And swept o'er wide expanse of sea, 'Mid nature's wilds to battle long. And swell the armies of the free. Their ax-strokes rang 'mid forests deep. Their cabins rose in every glade ; With freedom wild, their pulses beat — Those fearless souls, the truly brave. Our domains then, a wildering wild. Of savage haunt and tangled wood, Where roamed unfettered nature's child. And forests grand, in beauty stood. They crossed our many flowing streams. They toiled o'er rugged mountains high. Where proud the Mississippi gleams, And where the Allejrhanies lie. They came, the aged and the youth, Still firmly bearing in their van The sacred ark of living truth. To worship God, at peace with man. They left to us a country free, Untrammeled by despotic hand, Of rivers vast and spreading sea. Of swelling hills and mountains grand. And bright upon historic page. Enrolled their names shall ever shine With peerless luster, age on age, Through bright'ning realm of coming time. VENUS. I LEAN upon my window-sill. And gaze up to the evening star, Which glows serenely calm and still. In purple distance there afar ; Which hanojs a golden urn of lifiht Within the silent deepening West, And brighter gleams as shades of night Brood o'er a world's deep, pulseless rest. And earnest thoughts rise in my soul. As still I mark its onward way. ( 648 )