THE MISSOURI
WHEN the hollow void of Chaos
By the sun's first flame was lit,
And morning kissed the new earth's leaden sky,
When the hand of God reached downward
To the ocean's utmost pit
And reared the ragged continents on high,
From the naked, dripping ranges
Of the Rocky's granite sweep,
In a pathway through the quaking mud-plains torn,
Surged a waste of briny waters,
Roaring backward to the deep,
And the great Missouri, king of floods, was born.
It was there when, dank and noisome,
On the primal beds of shale
The fern and cycad forests fringed its shore,
And its depths have heaved in whirlpools
To the thresh of fin and tail
As the monster sea-snakes closed in deadly war.
Foot by foot through crumbling valleys
It has fought the Glacial Drift
As from out the North the rock-fanged moraines spread,
Hurling seas of thunderous waters
Through the slowly strangling rift
Where the ice-floes ground and gritted in its bed.
Huge of limb and tusked like tree-trunks,
When the evening sun hung low
Slugged the mammoths down to gambol in its tide,
And 'twas there that, ringed and goaded
By the cave-men's spears and bows,
They fell in blinded agony and died.
So, for dim, uncounted aeons
Did the torrent sweep along,
Rolling centuries like pebbles in its sands,
And the prairies sprung and blossomed
And the bison herds grew strong,
And the red men camped and hunted through its lands.
Till there came at last a season
When a gaunt-limbed figure burst
Through the woods that lipped the current's whirling foam,
And the flint-lock that he shifted
As he stooped to quench his thirst
Told the wilderness the first white man was come!
He, the white man, the magician,
Searcher, soldier, settler, lord,
Heir to all the crusted cycles of the past!
What were endless, lagging eras
While earth's wealth was being stored
To the pageant of his power at the last?
Came new visions to the river;
Came the voyageur's swift canoe,
Gliding ghost-like to the silent, dipping oar;
And the blunt-bowed keel-boat harnessed
To its brawny, sweating crew,
As they trailed the long cordelle-rope up the shore.
Came the block-house of the fur-trade,
Where the trappers brought their spoil
From bison-range and log-laced beaver fall;
French and half-breed, Sioux and Yankee,
Flinging out a season's toil
For a week of drunken revelry and brawl.
Up the swinging, bluff-bound reaches
Where the lonely bittern boomed
Throbbed a dull, insistent whisper, growing strong,
As the steamboat, flame-winged herald
To an age forespent and doomed,
Waked the woodlands with its piston's pulsing song.
Reeling down the rain-washed gullies
To its fertile, grassy vales
The Missouri saw the weary ox-teams plod;
Saw the red scouts on the ridges,
Heard the shots and dying wails,
Knew the unmarked graves beneath the prairie sod.
It has watched the thin, gray dust-cloud
With the summer heat-haze blent,
And the glint below of swords and bridle-chains,
As some squad of blue-clad troopers,
Like a wolf-pack on the scent,
Trailed the fleeing travois' track across the plains.
It has seen the long-horned cattle
Take the bisons' pasture lands,
Seen the cornfields spread where once the wild grass stood,
Marked the railroad bind the prairies,
League by league, with iron bands,
Felt the dizzy bridge-span leap its own dark flood.
Till the cow-town's rutted roadways
Into asphalt pavements grew.
By wires webbed and busy markets walled,
And the steel-trussed office building
Reared its cornice to the blue
Where the shanties of the mining camp had sprawled.
Now the hissing, rock-jammed rapids
Where of yore the fish-hawks bred,
Hear the thirsty turbines mumble in the gorge,
Tearing twice ten thousand horse-power
From the prisoned waters' head
To drive the distant smelter, mill and forge.
Now lakes of water ripple
Where before the sands lay dry,
And beyond the concrete walls which hold them caged—
Run shimmering, silver channels
Through fields of wheat and rye
Where yesterday the searing sand-storm raged.
But splendid though the epic
Of the river's wondrous past
As Homer e'er could sing or Milton pen,
It will know its grandest numbers
In the ages yet uncast
When its worth shall yield full measure unto men.
In this storehouse of the Nations,
Where but thousands prosper now,
The homes of teeming millions soon shall be;
On this noble waste of waters,
Untouched by steamer's prow,
Shall roll a people's commerce toward, the sea.
Unto us and to our children
Will be dealt the untold gains
If, shaping Nature's promise into deeds,
We accept the willing service
Of this Titan of the plains
And compel its mighty muscles to our needs,
Till its flood runs deep and constant
To the Mississippi's tide,
And the wedded torrents down the South are hurled,
Pouring forth their fleets of plenty
O'er oceans far and wide
To bear our country's riches to the world.
