Poems of American History

by Unknown

CHAPTER VI

THE NEW CENTURY

No country in the world entered upon the twentieth century with brighter prospects of peace, happiness, and prosperity than did the United States.

A TOAST TO OUR NATIVE LAND

Huge and alert, irascible yet strong,
We make our fitful way 'mid right and wrong.
One time we pour out millions to be free,
Then rashly sweep an empire from the sea!
One time we strike the shackles from the slaves,
And then, quiescent, we are ruled by knaves.
Often we rudely break restraining bars,
And confidently reach out toward the stars.

Yet under all there flows a hidden stream
Sprung from the Rock of Freedom, the great dream
Of Washington and Franklin, men of old
Who knew that freedom is not bought with gold.
This is the Land we love, our heritage,
Strange mixture of the gross and fine, yet sage
And full of promise,—destined to be great.
Drink to Our Native Land! God Bless the State!

Robert Bridges.

But the very first year, a bolt from the blue fell upon her. In May, 1901, a great industrial exposition, known as the "Pan-American," was opened at Buffalo, New York. It was especially notable for its electrical display and came to be known as "The Dream City," or "The City of Light."

BUFFALO

[1901]

A transient city, marvellously fair,
Humane, harmonious, yet nobly free,
She built for pure delight and memory.
At her command, by lake and garden rare,
Pylon and tower majestic rose in air,
And sculptured forms of grace and symmetry.
Then came a thought of God, and, reverently,—
"Let there be Light!" she said; and Light was there.
O miracle of splendor! Who could know
That Crime, insensate, egoist and blind,
Destructive, causeless, caring but to smite,
Would in its dull Cimmerian gropings find
A sudden way to fill those courts with woe,
And swallow up that radiance in night?

Florence Earle Coates.

September 5 was set aside as President's Day. The attendance was very large, and President William McKinley spoke to an audience of thirty thousand people. The next afternoon a reception was held, at which all were invited to pass in line and shake hands with the President. In the line was a man whose right hand was bandaged with a handkerchief. The handkerchief concealed a revolver. As the President stretched out his hand, the assassin fired twice, one bullet penetrating the President's abdomen.

McKINLEY

[September 6, 1901]

'Tis not the President alone
Who, stricken by that bullet, fell;
[The assassin's shot] that laid him prone
Pierced a great nation's heart as well;
And when the baleful tidings sped
From lip to lip throughout the crowd,
Then, as they deemed their ruler dead,
'Twas Liberty that cried aloud.

Ay, Liberty! for where the foam
Of oceans twain marks out the coast
'Tis there, in Freedom's very home,
That anarchy has maimed its host;
There 'tis that it has turned to bite
The hand that fed it; there repaid
A country's welcome with black spite;
There, Judas-like, that land betrayed.

For 'tis no despot that's laid low,
But a free nation's chosen chief;
A free man, stricken by a blow
Base, dastardly, past all belief.
And Tyranny exulting hears
The tidings flashed across the sea;
While stern Repression hugs her fears,
And mouths them in a harsh decree.

Meanwhile the cloud, though black as death,
Is lined with hopes, hopes light as life,
And Liberty that, scant of breath,
Had watched the issue of the strife,
Fills the glad air with grateful cries
To find the sun no more obscured,
And with new yearnings in her eyes
Climbs to her watch-tower—reassured.

London Truth.

Surgical aid was at hand. It was found that the bullet had passed through the stomach; both wounds were sewed up, and five days later the President was pronounced out of danger. The next day, he showed signs of a relapse, and sank steadily until death came early on the morning of Saturday, September 14.

FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH

[September 14, 1901]

His work is done, his toil is o'er;
A martyr for our land he fell—
The land he loved, that loved him well;
Honor his name for evermore!

Let all the world its tribute pay,
For glorious shall be his renown;
Though duty's was his only crown,
Yet duty's path is glory's way.

For he was great without pretence;
A man of whom none whispered shame,
A man who knew nor guile nor blame;
Good in his every influence.

On battle-field, in council-hall,
Long years with sterling service rife
He gave us, and at last his life—
Still unafraid at duty's call.

Let the last solemn pageant move,
The nation's grief to consecrate
To him struck down by maniac hate
Amid a mighty nation's love;

And though the thought it solace gives,
Beside the martyr's grave to-day
We feel 'tis almost hard to say:
"God reigns and the Republic lives!"

Richard Handfield Titherington.

THE COMFORT OF THE TREES

Gentle and generous, brave-hearted, kind,
And full of love and trust was he, our chief;
He never harmed a soul! Oh, dull and blind
And cruel, the hand that smote, beyond belief!
Strike him? It could not be! Soon should we find
'Twas but a torturing dream—our sudden grief!
Then sobs and wailings down the northern wind
Like the wild voice of shipwreck from a reef!
By false hope lulled (his courage gave us hope!)
By day, by night we watched,—until unfurled
At last the word of fate!—Our memories
Cherish one tender thought in their sad scope:
He, looking from the window on this world,
Found comfort in the moving green of trees.

Richard Watson Gilder.

OUTWARD BOUND

Farewell! for now a stormy morn and dark
The hour of greeting and of parting brings;
Already on the rising wind yon bark
Spreads her impatient wings.

Too hasty keel, a little while delay!
A moment tarry, O thou hurrying dawn!
For long and sad will be the mourners' day
When their beloved is gone.

But vain the hands that beckon from the shore:
Alike our passion and our grief are vain.
Behind him lies our little world: before
The illimitable main.

Yet, none the less, about his moving bed
Immortal eyes a tireless vigil keep—
An angel at the feet and at the head
Guard his untroubled sleep.

Two nations bowed above a common bier,
Made one forever by a martyred son—
One in their agony of hope and fear,
And in their sorrow one.

And thou, lone traveller, of a waste so wide,
The uncharted seas that all must pass in turn,
May the same star that was so long thy guide
O'er thy last voyage burn.

No eye can reach where through yon sombre veil
That bark to its eternal haven fares;
No earthly breezes swell its shadowy sail:
Only our love and prayers.

Edward Sydney Tylee.

Theodore Roosevelt, Vice-President, succeeded to the Presidency. The greatest project which the new administration undertook was the construction of a ship canal across the Isthmus of Panama. This enterprise had been agitated as early as 1826, and in 1879 a French company under Ferdinand de Lesseps had secured a concession from Colombia and started to work. At the end of ten years, the company had exhausted its resources and work ceased.

PANAMA

Here the oceans twain have waited
All the ages to be mated,—
Waited long and waited vainly,
Though the script was written plainly:
"This, the portal of the sea,
Opes for him who holds the key;
Here the empire of the earth
Waits in patience for its birth."

But the Spanish monarch, dimly
Seeing little, answered grimly:
"North and South the land is Spain's;
As God gave it, it remains.
He who seeks to break the tie,
By mine honor, he shall die!"

So the centuries rollèd on,
And the gift of great Colon,
Like a spendthrift's heritage,
Dwindled slowly, age by age,
Till the flag of red and gold
Fell from hands unnerved and old,
And the granite-pillared gate
Waited still the key of fate.

Who shall hold that magic key
But the child of destiny,
In whose veins has mingled long
All the best blood of the strong?
He who takes his place by grace
Of no single tribe or race,
But by many a rich bequest
From the bravest and the best.
Sentinel of duty, here
Must he guard a hemisphere.

Let the old world keep its ways;
Naught to him its blame or praise;
Naught its greed, or hate, or fear;
For all swords be sheathèd here.

Yea, the gateway shall be free
Unto all, from sea to sea;
And no fratricidal slaughter
Shall defile its sacred water;
But—the hand that ope'd the gate shall forever hold the key!

James Jeffrey Roche.

The United States was naturally looked to to carry on the project. The matter was brought before Congress, and in 1902 the French company was bought out for the sum of forty million dollars. The Republic of Panama was organized, when Colombia hesitated over the concession, and control of the canal route was thus secured.

DARIEN

A.D. 1513-A.D. 1901

[The American Senate has ratified the isthmus treaty.—Washington Telegram.]

"[Silent upon a peak in Darien],"
The Spanish steel red in his conquering hand,
While golden, green and gracious the vast land
Of that new world comes sudden into ken—
Stands Nuñez da Balboa. North and south
He sees at last the full Pacific roll
In blue and silver on each shelf and shoal,
And the white bar of the broad river's mouth,
And the long, ranked palm-trees. "Queen of Heaven," he cried,
"To-day thou giv'st me this for all my pain,
And I the glorious guerdon give to Spain,
A new earth and new sea to be her pride,
War ground and treasure-house." And while he spoke
The world's heart knew a mightier dawn was broke.

"Silent, upon a peak in Darien"—
Four hundred years being fled, a Greater stood
On that same height; and did behold the flood
Of blue waves leaping; Mother of all men!
Wise Nature! And she spake, "The gift I gave
To Nuñez da Balboa could not keep
Spain from her sins; now must the ages sweep
To larger legend, tho' her own was brave.
Here on this ridge I do foresee fresh birth.
That which departed shall bring side by side,
The sea shall sever what hills did divide;
Shall link in love." And there was joy on earth;
Whilst England and Columbia, quitting fear,
Kissed—and let in the eager waters there.

Edwin Arnold.

PANAMA

HOME OF THE DOVE-PLANT OR HOLY GHOST FLOWER

I
What time the Lord drew back the sea
And gave thee room, slight Panama,
"I will not have thee great," said he,
"But thou shalt bear the slender key
Of both the gates I builded me,
And all the great shall come to thee
For leave to pass, O Panama!"
(Flower of the Holy Ghost, white dove,
Breathe sweetness where he wrought in love.)

II
His oceans call across the land:
"How long, how long, fair Panama,
Wilt thou the shock of tides withstand,
Nor heed us sobbing by the strand?
Set wide thy gates on either hand,
That we may search through saltless sand—
May clasp and kiss, O Panama!"
(Flower of the deep-embosomed dove,
So should his mighty nations love.)

III
Out-peal his holy temple-clocks:
It is thine hour, glad Panama.
Now shall thy key undo the locks;
The strong shall cleave thy sunken rocks;
Swung loose and floating from their docks,
The world's white fleets shall come in flocks
To thread thy straits, O Panama!
(Flower of the tropics, snowy dove,
Forbid, unless they come in love.)

IV
How beautiful is thy demesne!
Search out thy wealth, proud Panama:
Thy gold, thy pearls of silver sheen,
Thy fruitful palms, thy thickets green;
Load thou the ships that ride between;
Attire thee as becomes a queen:
The great ones greet thee, Panama!
(Flower of the white and peaceful dove,
Let all men pass who come in love.)

Amanda T. Jones.

A working organization was perfected, improved machinery got into place, and when, in the fall of 1906, President Roosevelt visited the Isthmus, he found the dirt flying in a most satisfactory way. The canal was finally opened to commerce in April, 1916.

A SONG OF PANAMA

[1906]

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" An' a mountain-bluff
Is moved by the shovel's song;
"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" Oh, the grade is rough
A liftin' the landscape along!

We are ants upon a mountain, but we're leavin' of our dent,
An' our teeth-marks bitin' scenery they will show the way we went;
We're a liftin' half creation, an' we're changin' it around,
Just to suit our playful purpose when we're diggin' in the ground.

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" Oh, the grade is rough,
An' the way to the sea is long;
"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" an' the engines puff
In tune to the shovel's song!

We're a shiftin' miles like inches, and we grab a forest here
Just to switch it over yonder so's to leave an angle clear;
We're a pushin' leagues o' swamps aside so's we can hurry by—
An' if we had to do it we would probably switch the sky!

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" Oh, it's hard enough
When you're changin' a job gone wrong;
"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" an' there's no rebuff
To the shovel a singin' its song!

You hears it in the mornin' an' you hears it late at night—
It's our battery keepin' action with support o' dynamite;
Oh, you gets it for your dinner, an' the scenery skips along
In a movin' panorama to the chargin' shovel's song!

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" an' it grabs the scruff
Of a hill an' boosts it along;
"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" Oh, the grade is rough,
But it gives to the shovel's song!

This is a fight that's fightin', an' the battle's to the death;
There ain't no stoppin' here to rest or even catch your breath;
You ain't no noble hero, an' you leave no gallant name—
You're a fightin' Nature's army, an' it ain't no easy game!

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" Oh, the grade is rough,
An' the way to the end is long,
"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" an' the engines puff
As we lift the landscape along!

Alfred Damon Runyon.

In 1904 an industrial exposition to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the purchase of Louisiana from France was held at St. Louis, and was attended by millions of people. The official hymn was written by Edmund Clarence Stedman, and was sung on the opening day by a chorus of five hundred voices.

HYMN OF THE WEST

O Thou, whose glorious orbs on high
Engird the earth with splendor round,
From out thy secret place draw nigh
The courts and temples of this ground;
Eternal Light,
Fill with thy might
These domes that in thy purpose grew,
And lift a nation's heart anew!

Illumine Thou each pathway here,
To show the marvels God hath wrought!
Since first thy people's chief and seer
Looked up with that prophetic thought,
Bade Time unroll
The fateful scroll,
And empire unto Freedom gave
From cloudland height to tropic wave.

Poured through the gateways of the North
Thy mighty rivers join their tide,
And, on the wings of morn sent forth,
Their mists the far-off peaks divide.
By Thee unsealed,
The mountains yield
Ores that the wealth of Ophir shame,
And gems enwrought of seven-hued flame.

Lo, through what years the soil hath lain
At thine own time to give increase—
The greater and the lesser grain,
The ripening boll, the myriad fleece!
Thy creatures graze
Appointed ways;
League after league across the land
The ceaseless herds obey thy hand.

Thou, whose high archways shine most clear
Above the plenteous Western plain,
Thine ancient tribes from round the sphere
To breathe its quickening air are fain:
And smiles the sun
To see made one
Their brood throughout Earth's greenest space,
Land of the new and lordlier race!

Edmund Clarence Stedman.

Particularly noteworthy was the growing sentiment of friendship between England and America. Not so many years before, the two countries had seemed on the verge of war, but all such clouds had long since been swept away.

BRITANNIA TO COLUMBIA

What is the voice I hear
On the wind of the Western Sea?
Sentinel, listen from out Cape Clear,
And say what the voice may be.
"'Tis a proud, free people calling aloud to a people proud and free.

"And it says to them, 'Kinsmen, hail!
We severed have been too long;
Now let us have done with a wornout tale,
The tale of an ancient wrong,
And our friendship last long as love doth last, and be stronger than death is strong!'"

Answer them, sons of the selfsame race,
And blood of the selfsame clan,
Let us speak with each other, face to face,
And answer as man to man,
And loyally love and trust each other as none but free men can.

Now fling them out to the breeze,
Shamrock, thistle, and rose,
And the Star-Spangled Banner unfurl with these,
A message to friends and foes,
Wherever the sails of peace are seen and wherever the war wind blows.

A message to bond and thrall to wake,
For wherever we come, we twain,
The throne of the tyrant shall rock and quake
And his menace be void and vain,
For you are lords of a strong young land and we are lords of the main.

Yes, this is the voice on the bluff March gale,
"We severed have been too long;
But now we have done with a wornout tale,
The tale of an ancient wrong,
And our friendship shall last long as love doth last and be stronger than death is strong."

Alfred Austin.

Within the United States a similar change was taking place. The old sectional lines of North and South were being forgotten, as a new generation arose, and the proposal to return to the South her captured battle flags—a proposal which, a few years before, had met with frenzied protest from fire-alarm patriots—received general and hearty approval.

THOSE REBEL FLAGS

DISCUSSED BY "ONE OF THE YANKS"

Shall we send back the Johnnies their bunting,
In token, from Blue to the Gray,
That "Brothers-in-blood" and "Good Hunting"
Shall be our new watchword to-day?
In olden times knights held it knightly
To return to brave foemen the sword;
Will the Stars and the Stripes gleam less brightly
If the old Rebel flags are restored?

Call it sentiment, call it misguided
To fight to the death for "a rag";
Yet, trailed in the dust, derided,
The true soldier still loves his flag!
Does love die, and must honor perish
When colors and causes are lost?
Lives the soldier who ceases to cherish
The blood-stains and valor they cost?

Our battle-fields, safe in the keeping
Of Nature's kind, fostering care,
Are blooming,—our heroes are sleeping,—
And peace broods perennial there.
All over our land rings the story
Of loyalty, fervent and true;
"One flag," and that flag is "Old Glory,"
Alike for the Gray and the Blue.

Why cling to those moth-eaten banners?
What glory or honor to gain
While the nation is shouting hosannas,
Uniting her sons to fight Spain?
Time is ripe, and the harvest worth reaping,
Send the Johnnies their flags f. o. b.,
Address to the care and safe-keeping
Of that loyal "old Reb," Fitzhugh Lee!

Yes, send back the Johnnies their bunting,
With greetings from Blue to the Gray;
We are "Brothers-in-blood," and "Good Hunting"
Is America's watchword to-day.

John H. Jewett.

On February 24, 1905, Congress directed that the flags be returned, and they now rest in the capitols of the various Southern States.

THE SONG OF THE FLAGS

ON THEIR RETURN TO THE STATES OF THE CONFEDERACY

[February 24, 1905]

We loved the wild clamor of battle,
The crash of the musketry's rattle,
The bugle and drum;
We have drooped in the dust, long and lonely;
The blades that flashed joy are rust only,
The far-rolling war music dumb.

God rest the true souls in death lying,
For whom overhead proudly flying
We challenged the foe.
The storm of the charge we have breasted,
On the hearts of our dead we have rested,
In the pride of a day, long ago.

Ah, surely the good of God's making
Shall answer both those past awaking
And life's cry of pain;
But we nevermore shall be tossing
On surges of battle where crossing
The swift-flying death bearers rain.

Again in the wind we are streaming,
Again with the war lust are dreaming
The call of the shell.
What gray heads look up at us sadly?
Are these the stern troopers who madly
Rode straight at the battery's hell?

Nay, more than the living have found us,
Pale spectres of battle around us;
The gray line is dressed.
Ye hear not, but they who are bringing
Your symbols of honor are singing
The song of death's bivouac rest.

Blow forth on the south wind to greet us,
O star flag! once eager to meet us
When war lines were set.
Go carry to far fields of glory
The soul-stirring thrill of the story,
Of days when in anger we met.

Ah, well that we hung in the churches
In quiet, where God the heart searches,
That under us met
Men heard through the murmur of praying
The voice of the torn banners saying,
"Forgive, but ah, never forget."

S. Weir Mitchell.

The territories of the West were clamoring for admission to statehood, and finally, in the summer of 1906, Oklahoma and the Indian Territory were admitted as one state. Arizona and New Mexico were offered joint statehood, but the former refused to link her destinies with her sister territory.

ARIZONA

No beggar she in the mighty hall where her bay-crowned sisters wait,
No empty-handed pleader for the right of a free-born state,
No child, with a child's insistence, demanding a gilded toy,
But a fair-browed, queenly woman, strong to create or destroy—
Wise for the need of the sons she has bred in the school where weaklings fail,
Where cunning is less than manhood, and deeds, not words, avail—
With the high, unswerving purpose that measures and overcomes,
And the faith in the Farthest Vision that builded her hard-won homes.

Link her, in her clean-proved fitness, in her right to stand alone—
Secure for whatever future in the strength that her past has won—
Link her, in her morning beauty, with another, however fair?
And open your jealous portal and bid her enter there
With shackles on wrist and ankle, and dust on her stately head,
And her proud eyes dim with weeping? No! Bar your doors instead
And seal them fast forever! but let her go her way—
Uncrowned if you will, but unshackled, to wait for a larger day.

Ay! Let her go bare-handed, bound with no grudging gift,
Back to her own free spaces where her rock-ribbed mountains lift
Their walls like a sheltering fortress—back to her house and blood.
And we of her blood will go our way and reckon your judgment good.
We will wait outside your sullen door till the stars you wear grow dim
As the pale dawn-stars that swim and fade o'er our mighty Cañon's rim.
We will lift no hand for the bays ye wear, nor covet your robes of state—
But ah! by the skies above us all, we will shame ye while we wait!

We will make ye the mold of an empire here in the land ye scorn,
While ye drowse and dream in your well-housed ease that States at your nod are born.
Ye have blotted your own beginnings, and taught your sons to forget
That ye did not spring fat-fed and old from the powers that bear and beget.
But the while ye follow your smooth-made roads to a fireside safe of fears,
Shall come a voice from a land still young, to sing in your age-dulled ears
The hero song of a strife as fine as your fathers' fathers knew,
When they dared the rivers of unmapped wilds at the will of a bark canoe—

The song of the deed in the doing, of the work still hot from the hand;
Of the yoke of man laid friendly-wise on the neck of a tameless land.
While your merchandise is weighing, we will bit and bridle and rein
The floods of the storm-rocked mountains and lead them down to the plain;
And the foam-ribbed, dark-hued waters, tired from that mighty race,
Shall lie at the feet of palm and vine and know their appointed place;
And out of that subtle union, desert and mountain-flood,
Shall be homes for a nation's choosing, where no home else had stood.

We will match the gold of your minting, with its mint-stamp dulled and marred
By the tears and blood that have stained it and the hands that have clutched too hard,
With the gold that no man has lied for—the gold no woman has made
The price of her truth and honor, plying a shameless trade—
The clean, pure gold of the mountains, straight from the strong, dark earth,
With no tang or taint upon it from the hour of its primal birth.
The trick of the money-changer, shifting his coins as he wills,
Ye may keep—no Christ was bartered for the wealth of our lavish hills.

"Yet we are a little people—too weak for the cares of state!"
Let us go our way! When ye look again, ye shall find us, mayhap, too great.
Cities we lack—and gutters where children snatch for bread;
Numbers—and hordes of starvelings, toiling but never fed.
Spare pains that would make us greater in the pattern that ye have set;
We hold to the larger measure of the men that ye forget—
The men who, from trackless forests and prairies lone and far,
Hewed out the land where ye sit at ease and grudge us our fair-won star.

"There yet be men, my masters," though the net that the trickster flings
Lies wide on the land to its bitter shame, and his cunning parleyings
Have deafened the ears of Justice, that was blind and slow of old.
Yet time, the last Great Judge, is not bought, or bribed, or sold;
And Time and the Race shall judge us—not a league of trafficking men,
Selling the trust of the people, to barter it back again;
Palming the lives of millions as a handful of easy coin,
With a single heart to the narrow verge where craft and statecraft join.

Sharlot M. Hall.

On the morning of Wednesday, April 18, 1906, an appalling calamity visited California, and especially the great city of San Francisco. At a few minutes past five o'clock a severe earthquake shock desolated the cities of the central coast region, snuffed out hundreds of lives, and destroyed millions of dollars' worth of property.

SAN FRANCISCO

[April 18, 1906]

Such darkness as when Jesus died!
Then sudden dawn drave all before.
Two wee brown tomtits, terrified,
Flashed through my open cottage door;
Then instant out and off again
And left a stillness like to pain—
Such stillness, darkness, sudden dawn
I never knew or looked upon!

This ardent, Occidental dawn
Dashed San Francisco's streets with gold,
Just gold and gold to walk upon,
As he of Patmos sang of old.
And still, so still, her streets, her steeps,
As when some great soul silent weeps;
And oh, that gold, that gold that lay
Beyond, above the tarn, brown bay!

And then a bolt, a jolt, a chill,
And Mother Earth seemed as afraid;
Then instant all again was still,
Save that my cattle from the shade
Where they had sought firm, rooted clay,
Came forth loud lowing, glad and gay,
Knee-deep in grasses to rejoice
That all was well, with trumpet voice.

Not so yon city—darkness, dust,
Then martial men in swift array,
Then smoke, then flames, then great guns thrust
To heaven, as if pots of clay—
Cathedral, temple, palace, tower—
An hundred wars in one wild hour!
And still the smoke, the flame, the guns
The piteous wail of little ones!

The mad flame climbed the costly steep,
But man, defiant, climbed the flame.
What battles where the torn clouds keep!
What deeds of glory in God's name!
What sons of giants—giants, yea—
Or beardless lad or veteran gray.
Not Marathon nor Waterloo
Knew men so daring, dauntless, true.

Three days, three nights, three fearful days
Of death, of flame, of dynamite,
Of God's house thrown a thousand ways;
Blown east by day, blown west by night—
By night? There was no night. Nay, nay,
The ghoulish flame lit nights that lay
Crouched down between this first, last day.
I say those nights were burned away!

And jealousies were burned away,
And burned were city rivalries,
Till all, white crescenting the bay,
Were one harmonious hive of bees.
Behold the bravest battle won!
The City Beautiful begun:
One solid San Francisco, one,
The fairest sight beneath the sun.

Joaquin Miller.

In San Francisco, fire followed the shock; the water-mains had been broken, and the flames were soon utterly beyond control, and raged for two days, destroying the business and principal residence portions of the city—an area of four square miles. The loss of life reached a thousand, the property loss three hundred million dollars.

SAN FRANCISCO

Who now dare longer trust thy mother hand?
So like thee thou hadst not another child;
The favorite flower of all thy Western sand,
She looked up, Nature, in thy face and smiled,
Trustful of thee, all-happy in thy care.
She was thine own, not to be lured away
Down joyless paths of men. Happy as fair,
Held to thy heart—that was she yesterday.
To-day the sea is sobbing her sweet name;
She cannot answer—she that loved thee best,
That clung to thee till Hell's own shock and flame
Wrenched her, swept her, from thy forgetting breast.
Day's darling, playmate of thy wind and sun—
Mother, what hast thou done, what hast thou done!

John Vance Cheney.

The whole country rushed to the relief of the stricken state; the Californians met their losses bravely, and started at once to build a greater San Francisco.

TO SAN FRANCISCO

If we dreamed that we loved Her aforetime, 'twas the ghost of a dream; for I vow
By the splendor of God in the highest, we never have loved Her till now.

When Love bears the trumpet of Honor, oh, highest and clearest he calls,
With the light of the flaming of towers, and the sound of the rending of walls.
When Love wears the purple of Sorrow, and kneels at the altar of Grief,
Of the flowers that spring in his footsteps, the white flower of Service is chief.
And as snow on the snow of Her bosom, as a star in the night of Her hair,
We bring to our Mother such token as the time and the elements spare.

If we dreamed that we loved Her aforetime, adoring we kneel to Her now,
When the golden fruit of the ages falls, swept by the wind from the bough.
The beautiful dwelling is shattered, wherein, as a queen at the feast,
In gems of the barbaric tropics and silks of the ultimate East,
Our Mother sat throned and triumphant, with the wise and the great in their day.
They were captains, and princes, and rulers; but She, She was greater than they.

We are sprung from the builders of nations; by the souls of our fathers we swear,
By the depths of the deeps that surround Her, by the height of the heights she may dare,
Though the Twelve league in compact against Her, though the sea gods cry out in their wrath,
Though the earth gods, grown drunk of their fury, fling the hilltops abroad in Her path,
Our Mother of masterful children shall sit on Her throne as of yore,
With Her old robes of purple about Her, and crowned with the crowns that She wore.

She shall sit at the gates of the world, where the nations shall gather and meet,
And the East and the West at Her bidding shall lie in a leash at Her feet.

S. J. Alexander.

The regeneration was moral as wall as physical, for not only was the town rebuilt, but it was rescued from the corrupt ring which, for years, had kept control of the city government.

RESURGE SAN FRANCISCO

Behold her Seven Hills loom white
Once more as marble-builded Rome.
Her marts teem with a touch of home
And music fills her halls at night;
Her streets flow populous, and light
Floods every happy, hopeful face;
The wheel of fortune whirls apace
And old-time fare and dare hold sway.
Farewell the blackened, toppling wall,
The bent steel gird, the sombre pall—
Farewell forever, let us pray;
Farewell, forever and a day!

Joaquin Miller.

On June 24, 1908, Grover Cleveland, twice President of the United States, died at his home in Princeton, N. J., at the age of seventy-one. His death called forth a remarkable tribute from men of all parties and in all walks of life—a tribute to his stainless service of the state, to his honesty, courage, and fidelity. Lowell had called him "the most typical American since Lincoln."

GROVER CLEVELAND

[1837-1908]

Bring cypress, rosemary and rue
For him who kept his rudder true;
Who held to right the people's will,
And for whose foes we love him still.

A man of Plutarch's marble mold,
Of virtues strong and manifold,
Who spurned the incense of the hour,
And made the nation's weal his dower.

His sturdy, rugged sense of right
Put selfish purpose out of sight;
Slowly he thought, but long and well,
With temper imperturbable.

Bring cypress, rosemary and rue
For him who kept his rudder true;
Who went at dawn to that high star
Where Washington and Lincoln are.

Joel Benton.

One feature of the country's growth has awakened great uneasiness. Over a million emigrants have been landing every year upon her shores, and the feeling has grown that America must cease to be an asylum for the ignorance and vice of Europe.

UNGUARDED GATES

Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,
Named of the four winds, North, South, East, and West;
Portals that lead to an enchanted land
Of cities, forests, fields of living gold,
Vast prairies, lordly summits touched with snow,
Majestic rivers sweeping proudly past
The Arab's date-palm and the Norseman's pine—
A realm wherein are fruits of every zone,
Airs of all climes, for lo! throughout the year
The red rose blossoms somewhere—a rich land,
A later Eden planted in the wilds,
With not an inch of earth within its bound
But if a slave's foot press it sets him free.
Here, it is written, Toil shall have its wage,
And Honor honor, and the humblest man
Stand level with the highest in the law.
Of such a land have men in dungeons dreamed,
And with the vision brightening in their eyes
Gone smiling to the fagot and the sword.

Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,
And through them presses a wild motley throng—
Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes,
Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho,
Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt, and Slav,
Flying the Old World's poverty and scorn;
These bringing with them unknown gods and rites,
Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws.
In street and alley what strange tongues are loud,
Accents of menace alien to our air,
Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew!

O Liberty, white Goddess! is it well
To leave the gates unguarded? On thy breast
Fold Sorrow's children, soothe the hurts of fate,
Lift the down-trodden, but with hands of steel
Stay those who to thy sacred portals come
To waste the gifts of freedom. Have a care
Lest from thy brow the clustered stars be torn
And trampled in the dust. For so of old
The thronging Goth and Vandal trampled Rome,
And where the temples of the Cæsars stood
The lean wolf unmolested made her lair.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

The first decade of the new century has witnessed a long stride forward toward better government. State and Nation have asserted the right to regulate railroad rates, to abolish gambling, to supervise the sale of poisons and intoxicants, to protect the people from impure food, from quackery and swindling, and to break up combinations in restraint of trade.

NATIONAL SONG

America, my own!
Thy spacious grandeurs rise
Faming the proudest zone
Pavilioned by the skies;
Day's flying glory breaks
Thy vales and mountains o'er,
And gilds thy streams and lakes
From ocean shore to shore.

Praised be thy wood and wold,
Thy corn and wine and flocks,
The yellow blood of gold
Drained from thy cañon rocks;
Thy trains that shake the land,
Thy ships that plough the main,
Triumphant cities grand
Roaring with noise of gain.

Earth's races look to Thee:
The peoples of the world
Thy risen splendors see
And thy wide flag unfurled;
Thy sons, in peace or war,
That emblem who behold,
Bless every shining star,
Cheer every streaming fold!

Float high, O gallant flag,
O'er Carib Isles of palm,
O'er bleak Alaskan crag,
O'er far-off lone Guam;
Where Mauna Loa pours
Black thunder from the deeps;
O'er Mindanao's shores,
O'er Luzon's coral steeps.

Float high, and be the sign
Of love and brotherhood,—
The pledge, by right divine
Of Power, to do good;
For aye and everywhere,
On continent and wave,
Armipotent to dare,
Imperial to save!

William Henry Venable.

Especially significant has been the awakening of the public conscience, the growing intolerance of corruption in office, the demand for honesty in public as in private life, and the realization of the fact that the great public service corporations are accountable to the people and amenable to law.

AD PATRIAM

To deities of gauds and gold,
Land of our Fathers, do not bow!
But unto those beloved of old
Bend thou the brow!

Austere they were of front and form;
Rigid as iron in their aim;
Yet in them pulsed a blood as warm
And pure as flame;—

Honor, whose foster-child is Truth;
Unselfishness in place and plan;
Justice, with melting heart of ruth;
And Faith in man.

Give these our worship; then no fears
Of future foes need fright thy soul;
Triumphant thou shalt mount the years
Toward thy high goal!

Clinton Scollard.

O LAND BELOVED

From "My Country"

O Land beloved!
My Country, dear, my own!
May the young heart that moved
For the weak words atone;
The mighty lyre not mine, nor the full breath of song!
To happier sons shall these belong.
Yet doth the first and lonely voice
Of the dark dawn the heart rejoice,
While still the loud choir sleeps upon the bough;
And never greater love salutes thy brow
Than his, who seeks thee now.
Alien the sea and salt the foam
Where'er it bears him from his home;
And when he leaps to land,
A lover treads the strand;
Precious is every stone;
No little inch of all the broad domain
But he would stoop to kiss, and end his pain,
Feeling thy lips make merry with his own;
But oh, his trembling reed too frail
To bear thee Time's All-Hail!

Faint is my heart, and ebbing with the passion of thy praise!
The poets come who cannot fail;
Happy are they who sing thy perfect days!
Happy am I who see the long night ended.
In the shadows of the age that bore me,
All the hopes of mankind blending,
Earth awaking, heaven descending,
While the new day steadfastly
Domes the blue deeps over thee!
Happy am I who see the Vision splendid
In the glowing of the dawn before me,
All the grace of heaven blending,
Man arising, Christ descending,
While God's hand in secrecy
Builds thy bright eternity.

George Edward Woodberry.

So America faces the future unafraid,—confident that her problems will be wisely solved, that a splendid destiny awaits her, and that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

THE REPUBLIC

From "The Building of the Ship"

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
'Tis of the wave and not the rock;
'Tis but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest's roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,
Are all with thee,—are all with thee!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

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