| |
| WHAT strength! what strife! what rude unrest! | |
| What shocks! what half-shaped armies met! | |
| A mighty nation moving west, | |
| With all its steely sinews set | |
| Against the living forests. Hear | 5 |
| The shouts, the shots of pioneer, | |
| The rended forests, rolling wheels, | |
| As if some half-checked army reels, | |
| Recoils, redoubles, comes again, | |
| Loud-sounding like a hurricane. | 10 |
| |
| O bearded, stalwart, westmost men, | |
| So tower-like, so Gothic built! | |
| A kingdom won without the guilt | |
| Of studied battle, that hath been | |
| Your blood’s inheritance.… Your heirs | 15 |
| Know not your tombs: the great plough shares | |
| Cleave softly through the mellow loam | |
| Where you have made eternal home, | |
| And set no sign. Your epitaphs | |
| Are writ in furrows. Beauty laughs | 20 |
| While through the green ways wandering | |
| Beside her love, slow gathering | |
| White, starry-hearted May-time blooms | |
| Above your lowly levelled tombs; | |
| And then below the spotted sky | 25 |
| She stops, she leans, she wonders why | |
| The ground is heaved and broken so, | |
| And why the grasses darker grow | |
| And droop and trail like wounded wing. | |
| |
| Yea, Time, the grand old harvester, | 30 |
| Has gathered you from wood and plain. | |
| We call to you again, again; | |
| The rush and rumble of the car | |
| Comes back in answer. Deep and wide | |
| The wheels of progress have passed on; | 35 |
| The silent pioneer is gone. | |
| His ghost is moving down the trees, | |
| And now we push the memories | |
| Of bluff, bold men who dared and died | |
| In foremost battle, quite aside. | 40 |
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