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 THE EMPIRE BUILDER

(On the death of a Catholic gentleman)

I

This is the song of the Empire Builder, Who out of the ends of the earth, Thro' travail of war and of carnage Brings strange, new realms to birth.

This is the boast of the Empire Builder: Give heed to the deeds of his hands And scorn thou not the glory he hath In his gold and his wasted lands.

He hath counted his neighbors' cattle With the cold, gray eye of greed: He hath marked for his own the fields of wheat Where he never had sown the seed:

The vine-clad cot by the hillside, Where the farmer's children play,— "This shall fit in my plan," he said; "What use for such as they?"

And so, in the dusk of evening, He brought his arméd men, And where had shone the clustering grapes There stretched a waste again.

Homeless, the children wandered Thro' the fields their father won: