Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/140

 Thence I ran my first rough survey—chose my trees and blazed and ringed 'em— Week by week I pried and sampled—week by week my findings grew. Saul he went to look for donkeys, and by God he found a kingdom! But by God, who sent His Whisper, I had struck the worth of two!

Up along the hostile mountains, where the hair-poised snowslide shivers— Down and through the big fat marshes that the virgin ore-bed stains, Till I heard the mile-wide mutterings of unimagined rivers, And beyond the nameless timber saw illimitable plains!

'Plotted sites of future cities, traced the easy grades between 'em; Watched unharnessed rapids wasting fifty thousand head an hour; Counted leagues of water-frontage through the axe-ripe woods that screen 'em— Saw the plant to feed a people—up and waiting for the power!

Well, I know who'll take the credit—all the clever chaps that followed— Came, a dozen men together—never knew my desert-fears; Tracked me by the camps I'd quitted, used the water-holes I hollowed. They'll go back and do the talking. They'll be called the Pioneers!

They will find my sites of townships—not the cities that I set there. They will rediscover rivers—not my rivers heard at night. By my own old marks and bearings they will show me how to get there, By the lonely cairns I builded they will guide my feet aright.