Annals of our ancestors; one hundred and fifty years of history in the ...

VOICES FROM THE PAST 347
4. Who safely can a strife with Him prolong —
Him, wisest, strongest of the wise and strong?
Rocks from their bases leap before His frown;
5.
He, ere they feel it, hurls the mountains clown!
6. Earth staggers from her seat, her pillar'd frame
Trembles through terror of His dreadful name!
Aw'd by His thund'ring voice, the prince of day
7.
Shuts his broad eye and veils his golden ray;
And night's pale queen, with her attendant fires,
Beneath His signet in eclipse retires.
8. King of the flood, along the heav'ns He bends,
And in His cloudy car upon the deep descends;
The roaring billows threaten earth and sky;
His wheels along the watery mountains fly!
9. He formed Arcturus and his sons to roll
In bright succession 'round the northern pole.
The vernal Pleiades His will perform.
And stern Orion wakes the wintry storm;
While, far below, the southern heaven proclaims
His glory sparkling in ten thousand flames!
10. Wonders by Him and mighty deeds are wrought,
Beyond all number and above all thought!
Before I submit these annals for publication, I am impressed
with the fact that the coming years will enhance what value
there is to our family in this simple story which has been mine
to relate. I am our only survivor whose memory reaches so
far back into the past — by tradition it touches the year 1800.
The life of our prime progenitor alone, the life of Benjamin
Utter Watkins, so full of victorious strife, seems to me a fitting
apology for the appearance of this history of his times.
In a letter written to my husband and myself in 1889 he
leaves a testimony to what the toilsome study of his youth had
meant to him in his age. This is what he says:
My health is so delicate that I am unable to do much at study of
any kind, especially writing. However, I have soothed many a
tedious hour in reading the Greek Testament. I take it by course,
reading a chapter or so a day, when unable to do anything else.
But over and above the soothing influence of this exercise, it serves
to refresh a memory that otherwise would go rapidly to decay.
When thus snatching sweets from hours otherwise tedious and
tasteless, I persuade myself that this satisfaction amply repays all
the labor I expended in the acquisition of sacred Greek.