The College Echo. (Austin, Tex.), Vol. 4, No. 1, Ed. 1, July 1891 Page: 6 of 18
This newspaper is part of the collection entitled: St. Edward’s University Newspaper Collection and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the St. Edward’s University.
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6
THE COLLEGE ECHO.
landlords,—all eyes, all hearts are turned to America as the
centre of future hope and happiness.
Even in the misty past, the bright star of Hope shone in
the West. Here was the brazen-walled floating Isle of
Aeolus ; here the mysterious Ogygia, navel of the sea, and
on the earth’s extremest verge the Elysian Fields, the
home of heroes exempt from death, “where,” as Homer
tells us in his Odyssey, “life is easiest to man.” “No
snow is there,” he says, “nor yet great storms, nor any rain;
but always the ocean sendeth forth the breeze of the shrill
West, to blow cool on men.” Could Homer have pictured
better our sunny South, had he seen it,—and especially our
Lone Star State, Texas, teeming with golden flowers and
bountiful harvests, where rains are barely sufficient and the
delightful Gulf breeze is wafted over hill and dale ?
“Those who have had the courage to remain steadfast
thrice in this life and keep their souls altogether from
wrong,” sang Pindar, “pursue the road of Zeus to the cas-
tle of Cronos, where, o’er the Isles of Ihe Blest, ocean
breezes blow, and flowers gleam with gold ; some from the
land on glistening trees, while others the water feeds ; and
with bracelets of these twine their heads.” Here was
Ophir, the land of gold, whence Solomon and Hiram of
Tyre drew their precious metal for the Temple of Jerusa-
lem.
The story of Atlantis is given by Plato in his Critias and
Tinmens ; and Solon, who had heard the story in Egypt,
contemplated a grand epic poem on Atlantis, which, many
suppose, and with no little shadow of truth, was none other
than America. But with the death of those great men,
who received the history from tradition or from books long
since lost; with the severance of the connecting link between
the two great continents, Atlantis passed into fable, and
America was again a lost continent.
But as the pall of night is thrown over slumbering
nature, the canopy of heaven becomes studded with stars of
varying hue, brilliancy, and magnitude, and the beauteous
Queen of Night, rising in regal splendor, casts her refulgent
glow upon everything above and around us. Had Solon
written his epic, one grand figure, the central star of the
bright constellation, would have been wanting. That star
is Columbus. Now that the mists are dissipated, and the
star and its attendant stars shine in all their glory, what
more fitting than that the long contemplated epic should be
written ?
Milton immortalized himself in his “Paradise Lost”;
Homer in the “Iliad”; Virgil in the “^Eneid,” and now
we await the man who will engrave his name not only on
hearts of the people of America, but of the world, by put-
ting into heroic verse the history, the heroes, the hopes,
the trials of our own free and glorious country.
Among the many epics that have been written, no sub-
ject has been introduced that affords a broader field for the
play of fancy than the simple record of facts from the Incas
to Columbus, from Palenque to the great cities of our day,
—facts that would throw Troy and its heroes into the shade.
Poets have twined their laurels for the heroes of Greece
and Troy ; bards have sung the glories of Prince Arthur
and his Knights of the Round Table : what more appro-
priate for the coming quartcentenary than that some great
modern poet should crown with bays of immortal verse the
brow of the gallant discoverer of America, the great bene-
factor of his race, the founder of a refuge for oppressed
humanity—Columbus !
Milton had his Lucifer ; Virgil, his Achilles ; Dante, a
Beatrice to awake the slumbering fire of his genius ; but
the future poet ol America has a grander subject than any
of these ; he has grander themes for his lyre. With a civil-
ization and a national grandeur that were probably old
when Greece and Rome were in their swaddling clothes;,
with a history that mingles fable with the most wonderful
historical truths, as attested by^the ruins of Tiahuanaca,
Titicaca, Palenque, and the Temples of Tenochtitlan and
Uxmal, there is no dearth of material for poetic genius.
Of the Knights of the Round Table, Galahad alone, un-
matched in the field, was successful in the quest of the
Holy Grail ; and this, as the great laureate of England in-
forms us, “because his heart was pure.” Sir Galahad and
Sir Percival, saints in the flesh, were even in life crowned
with the aureola of sanctity. Matchless in arms, they
swept all before them. Columbus also was a saint and a
hero, and carried with him the blessings of Heaven.
“Like everything that is not alone of this earth, he stands
alone, grand, and mysterious. The dramatic and the poetic
enter into his existence, and everything thatrcomes in con-
tact with him acquires dignity or confers distinction.”
Strong in faith, untainted with the common vices of
humanity, with virtues as brilliant as they were numerous,
and guided by divine providence, Columbus feared not the
gigantic forms with which popular belief at that time peo-
pled the ocean ; he feared them not, because he knew that
God was everywhere, and that a true servant of God had
nothing to fear from men or demons.
‘ ‘This Christian hero was a model for all in his continuity
of purpose ; a saint in patience and in trials ; a man of
iron in his undertakings, and a philosopher in his reason-
ing.” What more fitting subject than such a hero and his
glorious achievements,—than such a country as America,
with its mysterious past, its prosperous present, and its
prospects for a glorious future ?
What a grand sight was that which greeted the eyes
of Columbus, when, after eighteen years of patience and
exhaustive research, he beheld this beautiful country 011
the morn of October the 14th, 1492! What a scene for the
painter as well as the poet!—a scene too grand to be at-
tempted by the brush of any other than an Angelo ; too
sublime for the imagination of any other than a Milton, a
Dante, or a Homer! Columbus found indeed a glorious land,
inhabited by only a few dusky savages, the remnant of a
decayed civilization. Who were these people ? whence
came they, and how came they upon this isolated and un-
known continent? The ancient authors of Greece and
Rome give us an inkling of their history, and the grand
ruins that they have left behind them show that they had
reached a high degree of civilization. The people them-
selves, like the descendants of the people of Tyre and
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The College Echo. (Austin, Tex.), Vol. 4, No. 1, Ed. 1, July 1891, newspaper, July 1891; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1004929/m1/6/?q=%22%22~1: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting St. Edward’s University.