The Electric Factor.

O WONDROUS Power!

Whose wrath has "hurled to Pluto's

gloomy reign

The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain!"

We tremble at thy glowing bolts and murky breath,

And at thy thunder's roll as herald of our death;

We've marked thy desert path by fiery

tempests trod,

And by its light have tracked the Vandal's lethal rod.

With noose in hand, for patient years did seek thy moods,

In earth and sky, in tempests wild and falling floods,

Have sought thy subtle ways in all thy devious haunts,

And learned thy ports to guard at all their salient points.

We saw thee charmed and chained, and by thy captors borne,

Thou heathen blade, from Jove and fiery tempests torn.

And then the wise men came to thee from every land,

To see and feel thy pulse, and read thy magic hand.

Morse taught thee new and golden ways of speech and thought,

Directed by a higher power, divinely fraught.

He trained thy muttering tongue to speak a master's will,

As page, or slave, to do his work with

greater skill;

And, near when first the bit and rein were given thee,

With loosened chain we bade thee go

(the bonds were free)

To earnest men in distant lands with our

behest,

The airy way is clear, thy truth and faith would test.

And, lo! while yet our thoughts had time to reach and burn,

Was whispered in our ear the hero's safe

return.

With vouchers in our hands, and heated brow in floods,

It seemed the earth had left our heads above the clouds.

From this our dizzy height we saw that

time and

space

had fled,

That we were standing in a glow of

light divinely shed,

With open, free and royal road to every

tribe and caste,

While life and time at once seemed in the distant past;

And we adrift on tides and seas unknown to fame,

And thou, a new-born star as that of Bethlehem,

Seemed leading us to new and distant

shores,

To goals beyond our sight, to realms of brighter flowers,

E'en now in thought we only trace thy magic tower,

Nor do we know the depth of thy pro

lific power.

In mind alone, we climb thy lonely, mys.

tic steep,

O'er desert ways, through forests dark and fountains deep,

Along the depth of seas, below the sound

ing lead,

And o'er the wild and fearful steeps of

every ocean bed.

Were at thy side when first thou merged from Neptune's gate

With scroll and lamp in hand; and then we hailed thee great;

We deified thy wondrous feet, and rent the very skies;

To thee we bowed and sang thy great Creator's praise;

Then we charged thee tarry with thy lamp in tents of our abode,

And onward light our groping feet in every path and road;

And now we bid thee span and spur the chariot wheel

O'er near and distant ways of burnished

steel.