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

OVER THE MOUNTAINS 65
of piiper blowing about the yard, which he went and picked
up. As he came back reading it he said, "Brother Watkins,
here's something fine!" The vagrant scrap of paper contained
a poem entitled "Babylon." Those two who loved the
sublime in any form reveled in what had been borne to them,
and I wish we might have heard them reading it. Walter
Scott had a most melodious voice that rolled out with a musi-
cal Scottish brogue; he was a great man and a learned scholar
of the University of Glasgow. Many a time the poem found
that day must have rung out in the little log cabin where
William and I were born, for we learned it — indeed I think
we all must have been able to repeat "Babylon" entire at
some time in our lives; and because it was a poem recited in
the house where we "log cabin children" were born, and still
seems grand to me, and because our father's voice glides along
its measure in full-toned eloquence for me still, I want to write
it here.
' When
I climbed the cliff—I crossed the rock—
I trod the deserts old
I passed the wild Arabian's tents,
The Syrian shepherd's fold,
Behind me far all haunts of men
Stretched into distance gray,
spread before me, lone and wide,
The plain of Shinar lay;
The boundless plain of far Shinar,
Where long, long ages back
Abdallah read the silent stars,
And watched their mystic track.
Where art thou, gem of the rich earth,
City of fair renown.
The glory of the proud Chaldee,
The green earth's ancient crown?
Where lies the lake that gleaming wide
Gave back thy hundred towers;
Where are thy gardens of delight.
Thy cedar shaded bowers;
Where, where, O where, rolls rapidly
Thine ever flashing river,
Past marble gates and column'd towers,
Guarding thy walls forever?