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.