174 A SAGA OF THE SEAS 
Evelyn Denison, who thanked Field for his services to Eng- 
land. Curiously enough, the progressive State of Wisconsin, 
in what was then the wilds of the Northwest, also voted Field 
a gold medal, although it profited less by the cable than the 
Eastern States. He sailed for America in the familiar Great 
Eastern and arrived in New York in April of 1867. Something 
of his hopes for the cable as a preventive of war was expressed 
at this time in a poem called “Cable Hymn,” written by the 
New England Quaker, John Greenleaf Whittier. It contains 
some vivid phrases: 
O lonely bay of Trinity, 
O dreary shores, give ear! 
Lean down unto the white-lipped sea, 
The voice of God to hear. 
From world to world His couriers fly, 
Thought-winged and shod with fire; 
The angel of His stormy sky 
Rides down the sunken wire. 
What saith the herald of the Lord? 
‘The world’s long strife is done; 
Close wedded by that mystic chord, 
Its continents are one. 
And one in heart, as one in blood, 
Shall all her peoples be; 
The hands of human brotherhood 
Are clasped beneath the sea. 
Through Orient seas, o’er Afric’s plain, 
And Asian mountains borne, 
The vigor of the Northern brain 
Shall nerve the world outworn. 
From clime to clime, from shore to shore, 
Shall thrill the magic thread; 
The new Prometheus steals once more 
The fire that wakes the dead! 
