Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/202

 and widely copied. The Cassell Publishing Company made it one of their gems in their elegant volume, "Representative Poems of Living Poets," and kindly consent to its use in this volume: 180

WHITMAN'S RIDE.

Listen, my children, and you shall hear

Of a hero's ride that saved a State.

A midnight ride? Nay, child, for a year

He rode with a message that could not wait.

Eighteen hundred and forty-two;

No railroad then had gone crashing through

To the Western coast; not a telegraph wire

Had guided there the electric fire;

But a fire burned in one strong man's breast

For a beacon light. You shall hear the rest.

He said to his wife; "At the Fort to-day,

At Walla Walla, I heard them say

That a hundred British men had crossed

The mountains; and one young, ardent priest

Shouted, 'Hurrah for Oregon!

The Yankees are late by a year at least!'

They must know this at once at Washington.

Another year, and all would be lost.

Someone must ride, to give the alarm

Across the Continent; untold harm

In an hour's delay, and only I

Can make them understand how or why

The United States must keep Oregon!"

Twenty-four hours he stopped to think,

To think! Nay then, if he thought at all,

He thought as he tightened his saddle-girth.

One tried companion, who would not shrink

From the worst to come, with a mule or two

To carry arms and supplies, would do.

With a guide as far as Fort Bent. And she,