The Frontier in American History — Chapter IX

"For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,And, choosing sweet clay from the breastOf the unexhausted West,With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.

His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind,Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars,A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind;Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined,Fruitful and friendly for all human kind,Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars.Nothing of Europe here,Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still,Ere any names of Serf and Peer,Could Nature's equal scheme deface;New birth of our new soil, the first American."

"We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town;We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down.Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power with the Need,Till the Soul that is not man's soul was lent us to lead.As the deer breaks—as the steer breaks—from the herd where they graze,In the faith of little children we went on our ways.Then the wood failed—then the food failed—then the last water dried—In the faith of little children we lay down and died.

"On the sand-drift—on the veldt-side—in the fern-scrub we lay,That our sons might follow after by the bones on the way.Follow after—follow after! We have watered the rootAnd the bud has come to blossom that ripens for fruit!Follow after—we are waiting by the trails that we lostFor the sound of many footsteps, for the tread of a host.

"Follow after—follow after—for the harvest is sown:By the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your own!"