PIONEERS! O PIONEERS!
(Selection)
Come, my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready;
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!
For we cannot tarry here;
We must march, my darlings, we must bear the brunt of
danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers
O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and
friendship,
Plain I see you, Western youths, see you tramping with the
foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers
Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there
beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the
lesson,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
All the past we leave behind,
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world;
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and
the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers
We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains
steep,
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the
unknown ways,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
We primeval forests felling,
We the rivers stemming, vexing and piercing deep the mines
within,
We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil
upheaving,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Colorado men are we;
From the peaks gigantic, from the great Sierras and the
high plateaus,
From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail,
we come,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the
continental blood intervein'd;
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all
the Northern,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O resistless restless race!
O beloved race in all! O my-breast aches with tender love
for all!
O I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Raise the mighty mother mistress,
Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry
mistress (bend your heads all),
Raise the fang'd and warlike mistress, stern, impassive,
weapon'd mistress,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
See, my children, resolute children,
By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or
falter,
Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us
urging,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
On and on the compact ranks,
With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead
quickly fill'd,
Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never
stopping,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Minstrels latent on the prairies
(Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have
done your work),
Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp
amid us,
Pioneers! 0 pioneers!
Not for delectations sweet,
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful, and the
studious,
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame
enjoyment,
Pioneers! O Pioneers!
Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock'd and
bolted doors?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the
ground,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Has the night descended?
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged
nodding on our way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause
oblivious,
Pioneers! 0 pioneers
Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the daybreak call—hark! how loud and clear I
hear it wind!
Swift! to the head of the army!—swift! Spring to your
places,
Pioneers! O pioneers!