Classic Poem

Come, ye that despair of the land
Which the Future shall know —
Who doubt what the years that expand
In their fulness must show —
Who grasp not the thing which shall be
When deliverance comes
To millions in bondage — and see,
At the verge of the slums,
These foreign-born children that march
In their hundreds and more
In sunshine and storm, through the arch
Of the library door!

Their race? Ah, what matters their race
To our generous Mold
Of Nations! Yet, if ye would trace
All the record unrolled,
Take heart from the days that are dead:
For the fathers of these
With Lief or with Eric the Red
Braved mysterious seas,
Or followed Yermak through the snows
Of a boreal dome,
Or gave to the eagles the foes
Of Imperial Rome;
Or tented with David, or ranked
In the Balkans those swords
That bulwarked all Europe, unthanked,
From the Ottoman hordes.
Aye, old at the time of the Flood,
Still the law is the same;
The Builder shall spring from the blood
Whence the Warrior came.

They trail through the alley and mart
To this Palace of Tomes —
Wee urchins, red-hatted and swart
As their underworld gnomes,
And hundreds of quaint little maids
Wearing ribands of green
Or scarlet on duplicate braids,
Quick-eyed, orderly, clean,
And silent. Some take from the shelves
Of the volumes arow
Those legends of goblins and elves
That we loved long ago;
Yet more choose the stories of men
Whom a nation reveres —
Of Lincoln and Washington, then
Of the bold pioneers
Who plowed in a blood-sprinkled sod,
Whose strong hands caused to rise
That Temple which these, under God,
Yet shall rear to the skies!