* * * * *
"The earth is rude, silent and incomprehensive at first—
Be not discouraged—keep on—there are divine things well enveloped;
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell."
—Walt Whitman.
THE PIONEERS OF THE WORLD
O far-seeing seers,
Looking over the shoulders of empires and nations, unconsciously dwarfed with prejudice,
Telescopic in vision, down the vista of the centuries,
You know not how far and deep you thought,
Nor what beginnings you wrought;
For we hasten to crown you, the world pioneers.
* * * * *
Call the roll of the men whose minds have companioned with the globe!
Who were these staunch henchmen of a race,
Getting their inspiration from a pillared cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night,
And negotiating with the continents and seas of an earth?
Who were these world pioneers?
* * * * *
Courageous Magellan, you were the first of the spheric heroes,
Who with your fifteen braves looking out from an isthmian cliff, civilization's bleakest frontier,
Out upon an untrailed, unsailed, trackless deep,
Was the first to push away from an Astec—hugged shore,
And send westward your creaking craft so mightily propelled by an explorer's tireless heart,
That when at Maclan island the red man's arrow struck you to the earth,
The mighty spirit of your immortal soul so fired your companion's wills,
That they with invincible force encircled the globe—
Past the Celestial Empire, doubling Cape Good Hope
And into Seville Roads, they came!
The first to complete the voyage about the sphere!
The first to exclaim, "the world, the world."