| Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829. | | | | Ode Sung at the Anniversary of the Faustus Association | | By Robert Treat Paine (1773–1811) |
| | | ON the tent-plains of Shinah, truth’s mystical clime, | |
| When the impious turret of Babel was shatter’d, | |
| Lest the tracks of our race, in the sand-rift of time, | |
| Should be buried, when Shem, Ham and Japheth were scattered, | |
| Rose the genius of art, | 5 |
| Man to man to impart, | |
| By a language, that speaks, through the eye, to the heart. | |
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CHORUS. Yet rude was invention, when art she reveal’d, | |
| For a block stamp’d the page, and a tree plough’d the field. | |
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| As time swept his pennons, art sigh’d, as she view’d | 10 |
| How dim was the image, her emblem reflected; | |
| When, inspired, father Faust broke her table of wood, | |
| Wrought its parts into shape, and the whole reconnected, | |
| Art with mind now could rove, | |
| For her symbols could move, | 15 |
| Ever casting new shades, like the leaves of a grove. | |
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CHORUS. And the colors of thought in their elements run, | |
| As the prismatic glass shows the hues of the sun. | |
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| In the morn of the west, as the light roll’d away | |
| From the grey eve of regions, by bigotry clouded, | 20 |
| With the dawn woke our Franklin, and, glancing the day, | |
| Turn’d its beams through the mist, with which art was enshrouded; | |
| To kindle her shrine, | |
| His Promethean line | |
| Drew a spark from the clouds, and made printing divine! | 25 |
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CHORUS. When the fire by his rod was attracted from heaven, | |
| Its flash by the type, his conductor, was given. | |
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| Ancient wisdom may boast of the spice and the weed, | |
| Which embalm’d the cold form of its heroes and sages; | |
| But their fame lives alone on the leaf of the reed, | 30 |
| Which has grown through the clefts in the ruins of ages; | |
| Could they rise, they would shed, | |
| Like Cicero’s head, | |
| Tears of blood on the spot, where the world they had led. | |
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CHORUS. Of Pompey and Cæsar unknown is the tomb, | 35 |
| But the type is their forum, the page is their Rome. | |
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| Blest genius of type! down the vista of time | |
| As thy flight leaves behind thee this vex’d generation, | |
| Oh! transmit on thy scroll, this bequest from our clime, | |
| The press can cement, or dismember a nation. | 40 |
| Be thy temple the mind! | |
| There, like Vesta, enshrined, | |
| Watch and foster the flame, which inspires human kind! | |
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CHORUS. Preserving all arts, may all arts cherish thee; | |
| And thy science and virtue teach man to be free! | 45 | | | |
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