WESTWARD HO!
Joaquin Miller
hat strength! what strife! what rude unrest! - What shocks! what half-shaped armies met!
- A mighty nation moving west,
- With all its steely sinews set
- Against the living forests. Hear
- The shouts, the shots of pioneer,
- The rended forests, rolling wheels,
- As if some half-check'd army reels,
- Recoils, redoubles, comes again,
- Loud sounding like a hurricane.
- O bearded, stalwart, westmost men,
- So tower-like, so Gothic built!
- A kingdom won without the guilt
- Of studied battle, that hath been
- Your blood's inheritance Your heirs
- Know not your tombs: The great plow shares
- Cleave softly through the mellow loam
- Where you have made eternal home,
- And set no sign. Your epitaphs
- Are writ in furrows. Beauty laughs
- While through the green ways wandering
- Beside her love, slow gathering
- White starry-hearted May-time blooms
- Above your lowly level'd tombs;
- And then below the spotted sky
- She stops, she leans, she wonders why
- The ground is heaved and broken so,
- And why the grasses darker grow
- And droop and trail like wounded wing.
- Yea, Time, the grand old harvester,
- Has gather'd you from wood and plain.
- We call to you again, again;
- The rush and rumble of the car
- Comes back in answer. Deep and wide
- The wheels of progress have passed on;
- The silent pioneer is gone.
- His ghost is moving down the trees
- And now we push the memories
- Of bluff, bold men who dared and died
- In foremost battle, quite aside.