"The United Seas"

by Robert W. Rogers

* * * * *

And inconquerable Cyrus Field you were one;
Who by linking Valentia and New Foundland,
Awakening to mutual speech two continents that were mutually dumb,—
Was, in spite of repeated breakings and the cowardly desertion of avowed friends,
The first, O indomitable knight of a world's progress,
To successfully lay the Atlantic cable.
The first to start a conversation between two hemispheres
And with initial message to yonder shores proclaim:
"Europe and America are now by telegraph united
To God be glory, in the highest
And on earth peace and good will toward men."
Indispensable pioneer, you wedded the continents as Goethals united the seas.
And now the voice of man is naturalized to a sphere.
It can be heard through the nations, around the world.
Whether Caucasian or Mongolian—he can talk about the globe.

* * * * *

And distance-vanishing Fulton, you were one;
Who—launching upon the waters the first steam-propelled ship, the Cleremont,
From who's experimental hull leaped into existence
The Savanah, the Great Eastern and Britannia,
Each moving faster, faster than the one before—
Was the first to draw together the continents, like some Colossus with a shortening cord of time
Until from coast range to distant shores
And from distant shores to coast range
Each new speeding steamer brings us closer,
Making more certain the intermingling of the races preparing for the brotherhood of man.

* * * * *

And great Augustine, dissolute as a youth
But angelic as a man, you were one;
Who—the humblest and the quickest to recognize
That since the day of Christ all noble men were sent,
And that constrained and resolute with Paul and with Peter they had gone—
Was the first—thank God you appeared—to marshal the good men for conquest,
To organize into missionary ranks the vision'd souls of the church,
Dispatching spirit-armored heroes from Rome to early England's soil
And preventing the annihilation of Christian hope and truth.

* * * * *

Noble prophet! Little did you know, O Augustine, what you had done.
Unbrazened in the face, illuminated with the divine,
With the crystal eye of goodness looking light and health into pagan nights,
And cowering Lust's mountain hurling hosts,
Followed by new recruits, since then the ranks have grown.
Men have come one by one and year by year
Until fifteen thousand heralded volunteers and ninety thousand native workers
Now can be seen from glad heavens Missionary Ridge, offering light and character on heathen fields!
Far-reaching, sea-exploring, colonizing England in its youth saved for enlightenment!
Christ inspired it! But you achieved it!
And today, as the oceans and the continents are united,
So five hundred and sixty-five million followers are gradually demanding that the races and the peoples
In essential Christianity—the good recognizing in other faiths—shall be one.

* * * * *

And mind-emancipating Luther, thou art one—
Fearing only God and truth.
Hating naught but sham and falsehood!
For traveling back from our day into medieval darkness—
(The chains, hear them rattle! But also hear them snap in a true reformers clutch
Causing multitudes to rise from superstition
And stand upon their feet, erect in the freedom of a simple faith)—
We there behold the pioneer of intellectual freedom,
A simple monk, commanding the low-browed ignorance of a whole dark continent to think,
Awakening the western world to science, to true religion and to thought;
Until the mind of the sullen masses of Europe now is brooding,
And in America it is voting,
While the public mind of the world is becoming more and more habituated to reason for international concourse.
For the Bible, the rocks and the skys are unchained,
Because Luther lived and honestly dared for the truth!