The weekly pioneer and Democrat. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1855-1865, 1865-05-05
Written for the ST. Paul Pioneer.
MINNESOTA:
THE LAND OF PROMISE.
A DESCRIPTIVE POEM,
BY GORDON REVERE.


BY GORDON REVERE.
o, Minnesota, in the far northwest,
l christen thee the Promise-land of health!
BY nature and by heaven, doubly blest
Thou bringst to those who seek thee life and
wealth.
Well may the wan and pallid invalid seek
In thee respite from the yawning tomb, =
For to the wasted form and hollow cheek,
Thy pure and vital air restores the bloom.
The victim of consumption, worn and pale,
A tottering skeleton upon the brink
OF death. untimely called, grows strong and
hale,
As if of living waters he did drink
When at thy rock-bound springs he quenched
his thirst,
And takes on life new and longer lease; q.
The sad dyspeptic, whose poor life is curst
With brain-born phantoms raised to mar his
peace,
Finds in the tonic of thy purer cline
Some potent Hecate's charm to exercise
The demons from his soul, and learns in time
To hunt and fish beneath thy azure skies,
And thus fOrgets his body's aches and pains,
While good digestion spurs his appetite.
Here worn out men of business rest their
brains,
And many heavy heart grows blithe and
light.
For to the weak, emaciated Frame
Broke down by dissipation or by care.
Or slow sease-thOu dost revive the flame
Of life, and pluck the victim from despair.
There is magic in thy bracing breeze
More powerful than all the potioned pills,
To check the ravages of fierce disease
And IL rnstOrpa where nhvsic Onlu kilIs
Desirest thou to know from whence derived
The healing virtues of this wondrous cline?
And by what charm life's flowers are revived -
Its dial set back ten degrees of time p
As twas of old, as told in sacred tale,
In answer to good Hezekiah's prayer,s
The shadow running back upon the scale
Lifes transient fight and errors to repair.
If so, attend, and thou shalt hear
The simple reason why do relate
The course OF nature through single year,
And draw portrait of our lovely state.
The limpid air Is natures purest breath,
Unmixed alike with poisonous gases foul,
Or those cold, humid elements of death,
Which like an incubus oppress the soul.
'Tis dry and crisp, the very breath of life,
A bracing tonic to both mind and bone,
Rich laden with electric power, and rife
With that great occult element-osone,f
So dry's the air that vessels drop apart,
The paper breaks and crumbles from the wall,
The timbers shrink and from their places start,
And wheels of wagons by the roadside fall
So pure the eye can reach for miles around,
And beef hung up for days receives no taint;
And fairy echo trills each lisped sound,
Still heard though coming from afar and faint.
Go where the West Atlantic darkly laves
New England's shore, and breathes along the
strand
Its damp and brackish death there mark the
graves,
Untimely filled, which sadden all the land.
The East Wind, bearing in its chilly blast
The stings of death, thick as the darts which
flew
When Agamemnon's war cloud did invest
The walls of Troy, doth slay its thousands too.
Consumption, gaunt and grinning, strides the
gale,
And scatters pain and death about his way;
And from the cold PenObscot comes a wall,
Re-echoed back from Massachusetts, Bay.
Meaud'ring wild between the rugged shores,
Or Kennebec in wan;On beauty plays,
Inviting kisses from the dipping oars
Death seeks his prey; he spares. he pities
And numerous are his victims as the shoals,
Brought in by nets when shad begin to run,,.
Where wide Potomac's wave to ocean rolls.
Or Westward 60 "where empire takes her
way"
And where Ohio rolls her murky flood;
Malaria there exists In deadly sway,
And rank miasma poisOns all the flood.
Thence, bilious and debilitated seek
The faded glories Of the Sunny South;
There pestilential breezes fan the cheek.
And fever drinks the blood as rain the
drouth.
There Death high carnival doth hold, disguised
At will among the fragrant line-Walks roVes,
And sparing oft the humble and despised,t
Assumes thousand shapes and haunts the
And there, concealed among the orage fow'rs,
Where warm brunnettes and creole beauties
His breath floats on theaagance of the flow'rs,
Resolving forms of beauty back to clay.
He creeps into the rardeu; close beside
Where lovers sigh, hs stands and aims his
Remorseless at the breast of naughty PRIDE
Than Cupid surer he to find the heart!
All! here the Towering almonds bloom In
vain,
And rose,geraniums scent the scorching air.
They cannot charm away the sense OF pain,
Nor gorgeous flora Danish dark despair
Laburnums sweet, and purple lilacs tall,
The crown imperial and the myrtles shade,
Camelias rare, maguolias fair, nor all
The Towering tribe can stop deaths trench
ant blade. ~
Then bi,her. invalid wanderer be beguiled,
And az the Christian children fed the plain
Where da.k the City of Destruction smiled,
80 ieo the realms from Florida to Maine.