Ghosts Of The New World

"There are no ghosts in America."     There are no ghosts, you say,         To haunt her blaze of light;     No shadows in her day,         No phantoms in her night.     Columbus' tattered sail     Has passed beyond our hail.     What? On that magic coast,         Where Raleigh fought with fate,     Or where that Devon ghost         Unbarred the Golden Gate,     No dark, strange, ear-ringed men     Beat in from sea again?     No ghosts in Salem town         With silver buckled shoon?     No lovely witch to drown         Or burn beneath the moon?     Not even a whiff of tea,     On Boston's glimmering quay.     O, ghostly Spanish walls,         Where brown Franciscans glide,     Is there no voice that calls         Across the Great Divide,     To pilgrims on their way     Along the Santa Fe?     Then let your Pullman cars         Go roaring to the West,     Till, watched by lonelier stars,         The cactus lifts its crest.     There, on that painted plain,     One ghost will rise again.     Majestic and forlorn,         Wreck of a dying race,     The Red Man, half in scorn,         Shall raise his haughty face,     Inscrutable as the sky,     To watch our ghosts go by.     What? Is earth dreaming still?         Shall not the night disgorge     The ghosts of Bunker Hill         The ghosts of Valley Forge,     Or, England's mightiest son,     The ghost of Washington?     No ghosts where Lincoln fell?         No ghosts for seeing eyes?     I know an old cracked bell         Shall make ten million rise     When one immortal ghost     Calls to the slumbering host.