Classic Poem

You ask for manliest, martial deeds?
Go back to Ohio's natal morn—
Go back to Kentucky's fields of corn;
Just weeds and stumps and stumps and weeds!
Just red men blazing from stump and tree
Where buckskin'd prophets 'midst strife and stress
Came crying, came dying in the wilderness,
That hard, first, cruel half-century!

What psalms they sang! what prayers they said,
Cabin or camp, as the wheels rolled west;
Silently leaving their bravest, best—
Paving a Nation's path with their dead!
What unnamed battles! what thumps and bumps!
What saber slashes with the broad, bright hoe!
What weeds in phalanx! what stumps in row!
What rank vines fortressed in rows of stumps!
Just stumps and nettles and weed-choked corn
Tiptoeing to wave but one blade in air!
Dank milkweed here, and rank burdock there
Besieging and storming that blade forlorn!
Such weed-bred fevers, slow sapping the brave—
The homesick heart and the aching head!
The hoe and the hoe, 'till the man lay dead
And the great west wheels rolled over his grave.

And the saying grew, as sayings will grow
From hard endeavor and bangs and bumps:
“He got in a mighty hard row of stumps;
But he tried, and died trying to hoe his row.”
O braver and brighter this ten-pound hoe,
Than brightest, broad saber of Waterloo!
Nor ever fell soldier more truly true
Than he who died trying to hoe his row.

The weeds are gone and the stumps are gone—
The huge hop-toad and the copper-head,
And a million bent sabers flash triumph instead
From stately, clean corn in the diamond-sown dawn.
But the heroes have vanished, save here and there,
Far out and afield like some storm-riven tree,
Leans a last survivor of Thermopylæ,
Leafless and desolate, lone and bare.

His hands are weary, put by the hoe;
His ear is dull and his eyes are dim.
Give honor to him and give place for him,
For he bled and he led us, how long ago!
And ye who inherit the fields he won,
Lorn graves where the Wabash slips away,
Go fashion green parks where your babes may play
Unhindered of stumps or of weeds in sun.

I have hewn some weeds, swung a heavy, broad hoe—
Such weeds! such a mighty hard row for stumps!
Such up-hill struggles, such down-hill slumps
As you, please God, may never once know!
But the sea lies yonder, just a league below,
All down-hill now, and I go my way—
Not far to go, and not much to say,
Save that I tried, tried to hoe my row.