Classic Poem

No chartered right is mine to speak
The words of love when friends are meeting,
Yet truth, which brightens gifts most meek,
May gild my greeting.

For if to not another cause
My lines for merit were beholden,
Your names would make, spite of all flaws,
A picture golden.

It seems that while the Golden State
Since “Forty-nine” has drawn men thither,
To-night, for you, the Golden Gate
Has journeyed hither.

Thus fifty years, like fifty streams,
Have yielded ore in changeful weather,
Since when you staked, 'mid happy dreams,
Your claim together.

And now to overflow your till,—
No need to rise and pass the platter!—
The nuggets of our warmest will
We gladly scatter.

Wise Argonauts! Like you we might
Be wealthy, if we could divine it—
How our own lives with gold are bright
If we would mine it.

And through those fifty years unrolled—
Can you not see it brightly glinting,
The wondrous, precious, priceless gold
Of love's own minting?

Well may you join the song and laugh,
And hope with us, with hearts the lightest,
The century's coming other half
May be the brightest.