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Poem

by Bret Harte (Francis)

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 o'er eternal snows;

There War's 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 wain's 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 Caesar's 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 Nation's 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 God's providence it was to found

A Nation's bulwark on this chosen ground;

Not Jesuit's zeal nor pioneer's unrest

Planted these pickets in the distant West,

But He who first the Nation's 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 Nation's arm.

What nerves its hands to strike a deadlier blow

And hurl its legions on the rebel foe?

Lo! for each town new rising o'er our State

See the foe's hamlet waste and desolate,

While each new factory lifts its chimney tall,

Like a fresh mortar trained on Richmond's wall.

For this, O brothers, swings the fruitful vine,

Spread our broad pastures with their countless kine:

For this o'erhead the arching vault springs clear,

Sunlit and cloudless for one half the year;

For this no snowflake, e'er so lightly pressed,

Chills the warm impulse of our mother's breast.

Quick to reply, from meadows brown and sere,

She thrills responsive to Spring's 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 o'er the suffering land;

As the deep cleft in Mariposa's 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.