| Augustin S. Macdonald, comp. A Collection of Verse by California Poets. 1914. | | | | Invocation to California | | By Charles Keeler |
| | | GUERDON of gold of the sun is thy treasure | |
| From glist’ning Sierra to foam of the ocean, | |
| With fair flower-children in hosts beyond measure | |
| To yield thee their beauty with boundless devotion! | |
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| Royal the reaches of wheat in the valley! | 5 |
| Abundance has blessed the wide wastes of the plain, | |
| And hosts of the strong-handed harvesters rally | |
| At dawn-flush to garner the glittering grain. | |
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| Full hang thy orchards with fruitage of summer, | |
| Thy citrons ’mid blossoms bless winter and spring, | 10 |
| But autumn, the radiant year-cycle’s last comer, | |
| Bears, clustered in purple, the grape which is king. | |
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| Gold, in thy rock-girded fastnesses hidden, | |
| The magic of science shall wrest from its store; | |
| Insatiate progress, advancing, has bidden | 15 |
| That bounty of earth be for man evermore: | |
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| For man as a trust and a torch, not to squander | |
| In riotous revel through profitless years, | |
| But a power that bids him to pause and to ponder | |
| On being and beauty, on triumph and tears! | 20 |
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| Here, here where the breezes of freedom are blowing, | |
| Shall beauty burst into full flow’rage to-day, | |
| And the will to do right shall, in proud hearts, be growing, | |
| With might to command and with strength to obey. | | | | |
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