Poem

We meet in peace, though from our native East     The sun that sparkles on our birthday feast     Glanced as he rose on fields whose dews were red     With darker tints than those Aurora spread.     Though shorn his rays, his welcome disk concealed     In the dim smoke that veiled each battlefield,     Still striving upward, in meridian pride,     He climbed the walls that East and West divide,     Saw his bright face flashed back from golden sand,     And sapphire seas that lave the Western land.     Strange was the contrast that such scenes disclose     From his high vantage oer eternal snows;     There Wars alarm the brazen trumpet rings     Here his love-song the mailed cicala sings;     There bayonets glitter through the forest glades     Here yellow cornfields stack their peaceful blades;     There the deep trench where Valor finds a grave     Here the long ditch that curbs the peaceful wave;     There the bold sapper with his lighted train     Here the dark tunnel and its stores of gain;     Here the full harvest and the wains advance     There the Grim Reaper and the ambulance.     With scenes so adverse, what mysterious bond     Links our fair fortunes to the shores beyond?     Why come we here last of a scattered fold     To pour new metal in the broken mould?     To yield our tribute, stamped with Caesars face,     To Caesar, stricken in the market-place?     Ah! love of country is the secret tie     That joins these contrasts neath one arching sky;     Though brighter paths our peaceful steps explore,     We meet together at the Nations door.     War winds her horn, and giant cliffs go down     Like the high walls that girt the sacred town,     And bares the pathway to her throbbing heart,     From clustered village and from crowded mart.     Part of Gods providence it was to found     A Nations bulwark on this chosen ground;     Not Jesuits zeal nor pioneers unrest     Planted these pickets in the distant West,     But He who first the Nations fate forecast     Placed here His fountains sealed for ages past,     Rock-ribbed and guarded till the coming time     Should fit the people for their work sublime;     When a new Moses with his rod of steel     Smote the tall cliffs with one wide-ringing peal,     And the old miracle in record told     To the new Nation was revealed in gold.     Judge not too idly that our toils are mean,     Though no new levies marshal on our green;     Nor deem too rashly that our gains are small,     Weighed with the prizes for which heroes fall.     See, where thick vapor wreathes the battle-line;     There Mercy follows with her oil and wine;     Or where brown Labor with its peaceful charm     Stiffens the sinews of the Nations arm.     What nerves its hands to strike a deadlier blow     And hurl its legions on the rebel foe?     Lo! for each town new rising oer our State     See the foes hamlet waste and desolate,     While each new factory lifts its chimney tall,     Like a fresh mortar trained on Richmonds wall.     For this, O brothers, swings the fruitful vine,     Spread our broad pastures with their countless kine:     For this oerhead the arching vault springs clear,     Sunlit and cloudless for one half the year;     For this no snowflake, eer so lightly pressed,     Chills the warm impulse of our mothers breast.     Quick to reply, from meadows brown and sere,     She thrills responsive to Springs earliest tear;     Breaks into blossom, flings her loveliest rose     Ere the white crocus mounts Atlantic snows;     And the example of her liberal creed     Teaches the lesson that to-day we heed.     Thus ours the lot with peaceful, generous hand     To spread our bounty oer the suffering land;     As the deep cleft in Mariposas wall     Hurls a vast river splintering in its fall,     Though the rapt soul who stands in awe below     Sees but the arching of the promised bow,     Lo! the far streamlet drinks its dews unseen,     And the whole valley wakes a brighter green.