Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/456

394 While the shadows of Hood have been wheeling
 * Away from the face of the sun,

What a glamour of change has been stealing
 * On the fields that you painfully won !

Like the castles that fade at cock-crowing
 * The enchantments arise and advance

Where the cities of commerce are glowing
 * Like pearls in the braids of romance ;

For a state, in the shimmering armor
 * Of the Pallas Athena has come,

And her segis is fringen with the warmer
 * Refulgence that circles our home.

As for you, you are gray, and the thunder
 * Of the battle has smitten each brow

Where the freshness of youth was turned under
 * By Time's immemorial plow ;

But the pictures of memory linger,
 * Like the shadows that turn to the East,

And will point with a tremulous finger
 * To the things that are perished and ceased ;

For the trail and the foot-log have vanished,
 * The canoe is a song and a tale,

And flickering church spire has banished
 * The uncanny red man from the vale ;

The cayuse is no longer in fashion-
 * He is gone with a flutter of heels,

And the old wars are dead, and their passions
 * In the crystal of culture congeals;

And the wavering flare of the pitch light
 * That illumines your banquets no moro,

Will return like a wandering witch-light
 * And uncrimson the fancies of yore

When you dance the "Old Arkansaw" gaily
 * In brogans that had followed the bear,

And quaffed the delight of Castaly
 * From the fiddle that wailed like despair;

And so lightly you wrought with the hammer,
 * And so truly with ax and with plow

And you blazed your own trails through the gram mar,
 * As the record must fairly allow ;

But you builded a state in whose arches
 * Shall be carven the deed and the name,

And posterity lengthens its marches
 * In the golden starlight of your fame!