OUR HEROES OF
TO-DAY.
TO-DAY.
Joaquin Miller
ith high face held to her ultimate star, - With swift feet set to her mountains of gold,
- This new-built world, where the wonders are,
- She has built new ways from the ways of old.
- II.
- Her builders of worlds are workers with hands;
- Her true world-builders are builders of these,
- The engines, the plows; writing poems in sands
- Of gold in our golden Hesperides.
- III.
- I reckon these builders as gods among men:
- I count them creators, creators who knew
- The thrill of dominion, of conquest, as when
- God set His stars spinning their spaces of blue.
- IV.
- A song for the groove, and a song for the wheel,
- And a roaring song for the rumbling car;
- But away with the pomp of the soldier's steel,
- And away forever with the trade of war.
- V.
- The hero of time is the hero of thought;
- The hero who lives is the hero of peace;
- And braver his battles than ever were fought,
- From Shiloh back to the battles of Greece.
- VI.
- The hero of heroes is the engineer;
- The hero of height and of gnome-built deep,
- Whose only fear is the brave man's fear
- That some one waiting at home might weep.
- VII.
- The hero we love in this land to-day
- Is the hero who lightens some fellow-man's load
- Who makes of the mountain some pleasant highway;
- Who makes of the desert some blossom-sown road.
- VIII.
- Then hurrah! for the land of the golden downs,
- For the golden land of the silver horn;
- Her heroes have built her a thousand towns,
- But never destroyed her one blade of corn.