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1869
WE know him well: no need of praise | |
| Or bonfire from the windy hill | |
| To light to softer paths and ways | |
| The world-worn man we honor still; | |
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| No need to quote those truths he spoke | 5 |
| That burned through years of war and shame, | |
| While History carves with surer stroke | |
| Across our map his noonday fame; | |
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| No need to bid him show the scars | |
| Of blows dealt by the Scæan gate, | 10 |
| Who lived to pass its shattered bars, | |
| And see the foe capitulate; | |
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| Who lived to turn his slower feet | |
| Toward the western setting sun, | |
| To see his harvest all complete, | 15 |
| His dream fulfilled, his duty done,— | |
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| The one flag streaming from the pole, | |
| The one faith borne from sea to sea,— | |
| For such a triumph, and such goal, | |
| Poor must our human greeting be. | 20 |
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| Ah! rather that the conscious land | |
| In simpler ways salute the Man,— | |
| The tall pines bowing where they stand, | |
| The bared head of El Capitan, | |
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| The tumult of the waterfalls, | 25 |
| Pohono’s kerchief in the breeze, | |
| The waving from the rocky walls, | |
| The stir and rustle of the trees; | |
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| Till lapped in sunset skies of hope, | |
| In sunset lands by sunset seas, | 30 |
| The Young World’s Premier treads the slope | |
| Of sunset years in calm and peace. | |
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