Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/97

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Men of America, you that march to-day

Through roaring London, supple and lean of limb,

Glimpsed in the crowd I saw you, and in your eye

Something alert and grim,

As knowing on what stern call you march away

To the wrestle of nations; saw your heads held high

And, that same moment, far in a glittering beam

High over old and storied Westminster

The Stars and Stripes with England's flag astir,

Sisterly twined and proud on the air astream.

Men of America, what do you see? Is it old

Towers of fame and grandeur time-resigned?

The frost of custom's backward-gazing thought?

Seek closer! You shall find

Miracles hour by hour in silence wrought;

Births, and awakenings; dyings never tolled;

Invisible crumble and fall of prison-bars.

O, wheresoever his home, new or decayed,

Man is older than all the things he has made

And yet the youngest spirit beneath the stars.

Rock-cradled, white, and soaring out of the sea,

I behold again the fabulous city arise,

Manhattan! Queen of thronged and restless bays

And of daring ships is she.

O lands beyond, that into the sunset gaze,

Limitless, teeming continent of surmise!

I drink again that diamond air, I thrill

To the lure of a wonder more than the wondrous past,

And see before me ages yet more vast

Rising, to challenge heart and mind and will.

What sailed they out to seek, who of old came

To that bare earth and wild, unhistoried coast?

Not gold, nor granaries, nay, nor a halcyon ease

For the weary and tempest-tost:

The unshaken soul they sought, possessed in peace