The laurel is vow’d to them,

Leave the bay on its sacred stem!

But hope, the rose, the unfading rose,

Alike for slave and freeman grows!

On the summit, worn and hoary,

Of Lybia’s solemn hills,

The tramp of the brave is still!

And still is the poisoned dart,

In the pulse of the mighty hearts,

Whose very blood was glory!

Who will assume the bays

That the hero wore?

Wreaths on the Tomb of Days

Gone evermore!”24

Upon Reuel a strange force seemed working. If what he heard were true, how great a destiny was his! He had carefully hidden his Ethiopian extraction from the knowledge of the world. It was a tradition among those who had known him in childhood that he was descended from a race of African kings. He remembered his mother well. From her he had inherited his mysticism and his occult powers. The nature of the mystic within him was, then, but a dreamlike devotion to the spirit that had swayed his ancestors; it was the shadow of Ethiopia’s power. The lotus upon his breast he knew to be a birthmark. Many a night he had been aroused from childhood’s slumbers, to find his mother bending above him, candle in hand, muttering broken sentences of prayer to Almighty God as she examined his bosom by the candle’s rays. He had wondered much; now he guessed the rest. Once more the clanging strings of the instruments chained his attention. The recitative was resumed.

“The Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will. He delivereth and rescueth, and He worketh signs and wonders in heaven and in earth. Pre-eminent in peace, invincible in war—once the masters of mankind, how have we fallen from our high estate!

“Stiff-necked, haughty, no conscience but that of intellect, awed not by God’s laws, worshipping Mammon, sensual, unbelieving, God has punished us as he promised in the beginning. Gone are our ancient glories, our humbled pride cries aloud to God in the travail of our soul. Our sphinx, with passionless features, portrays the dumb suffering of our souls.

“Their look, with the reach of past ages, was wise,

And the soul of eternity thought in their eyes.”

“By divine revelation David beheld the present time, when, after Christ’s travail for the sins of humanity, the time of Ethiopia’s atonement being past, purged of idolatry, accepting the One Only God through His Son Jesus, suddenly should come a new birth to the descendants of Ham, and Ethiopia should return to her ancient glory! Ergamenes, all hail!

“You come from afar

From the land of the stranger,

The dreadful in war,

The daring in danger;

Before him our plain

Like Eden is lying;

Behind him remain

But the wasted and dying.

The weak finds not ruth,

Nor the patriot glory;

No hope for the youth,

And no rest for the hoary;

O’er Ethiop’s lost plains