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Home  »  An American Anthology, 1787–1900  »  800 Westward Ho!

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By JoaquinMiller

800 Westward Ho!

WHAT 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-checked 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 plough 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 levelled 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 gathered 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.