An hundred years have passed—what wonders wrought
Along the Mississippi's mighty stream!
The changes time's transforming wand hath brought
Seem but the unreal visions of a dream!
Where stretched in vast expanse to western sea
The pathless forest and the trackless plain,
Great States and teeming millions soon should be,
And orchards fair and fields of waving grain
And every art of peace through that broad land should reign.
IV
Hail to the Statesman whose far-seeing eyes
Saw in the germ the nation that should be,
Saw how a mighty empire should arise
And span the continent from sea to sea,
And building for the future, led the way
With prescience and high courage, daring fate,
An emperor's domain in a single day
Bought for a purse of gold! a vast estate,
From Europe's despot gained—to Freedom consecrate!
V
Conquest of Peace! on thy triumphal day
No mourning captives, chained to victor's car,
Nor spoil of war, nor bloodshed marked thy way,
Nor hate, nor wrong did thy escutcheon mar!
No throng of armed hosts thy mountains crossed.
Thy forests echoed to no battle cry,
No glory gained with nation's honor lost,
Nor victor's plaudit, echoed with a sigh.
Louisiana won—nor any doomed to die!
VI
Conquest of Peace! No Alsace here doth kneel,
And Lorraine, scarred with unforgotten scar;
No riven Poland, 'neath the warrior's heel,
Spoil of the victor from the field of war.
The sun that shines thy boundless plains along
Lights not the smallest hamlet but is free;
The winds that sweep thy mountains bear no song
Save that the patriot sings—where Liberty
And Peace and Law now are, and evermore shall be!
VII
So be it ever, through the coming age
Our nation's destiny shall be fulfilled,
Not by the tears that greed or passion wage,
Not by the blood of foes or brethren spilled!
But in the wiser and the nobler way
The patriot Statesman taught us, when of yore
His victory of Peace in one brief day
Won glory greater than a year of war!
So may it be, dear land, with thee for evermore!
At the conclusion of the exercises the benediction was pronounced by the
Reverend Doctor Wintner, of Brooklyn, New York, in the following words: