With ardent hearts, and ever-open hands,
Candid and honest, brave and proud they grew,
Their lives and habits colored by fair lands
As skies give waters hue.
The race in semi-Feudal State appears—
Their Knightly figures glow in tender mist,
With ghostly pennons flung from ghostly spears
And ghostly hawks on wrist.
By enterprise and high adventure stirred,
From rude lunette and sentry-guarded croft
They hawked at Empire, and, as on they spurred,
Fate's falcon soared aloft!
Fate's falcon soared aloft full strong and free,
With blood on talons, plumage, beak, and breast!
Her shadow like a storm-shade on the sea
Far-sailing down the West!
Swift hoofs clang out behind that Falcon's flights—
Hoofs shod with Golden Horse Shoes catch the eye!
And as they ring, we see the Forest-Knights—
The Cavaliers ride by!
THE OLD DOMINION.
Midway between the orange and the snows
As some fair planet rounds up from the sea,
Eldest of all, the Central Power arose
In vague immensity.
She stretched from Seas in sun to Lakes in Shade,
O'erstepped swift Rio Escondido's stream—
Her bounds expressed, as by the Tudor made,
An Alexander's dream.
And liberal Stuart granted broad and free
Bound'ries which still the annalist may boast—
Limits which ran "throughout from sea to sea,"
And far along the coast!
A mighty shaft through Raleigh's fingers slipped,
Smith shot it, and—a Continent awoke!
For that great arrow with an acorn tipped,
Planted an English Oak!