Classic Poem

Where ranged thy black-maned, woolly bulls
By millions, fat and unafraid;
Where gold, unclaimed in cradlefuls,
Slept 'mid the grass roots, gorge, and glade;
Where peaks companioned with the stars,
And propped the blue with shining white,
With massive silver beams and bars,
With copper bastions, height on height—
There wast thou born, O lord of strength!
O yellow lion, leap and length
Of arm from out an Arctic chine
To far, fair Mexic seas are thine!

What colors? Copper, silver, gold
With sudden sweep and fury blent,
Enwound, unwound, inrolled, unrolled,
Mad molder of the continent!
What whirlpools and what choking cries.

From out the concave swirl and sweep
As when some god cries out and dies
Ten fathoms down thy tawny deep!
Yet on, right on, no time for death,
No time to gasp a second breath!
You plow a pathway through the main
To Morro's castle, Cuba's plain.

Hoar sire of hot, sweet Cuban seas,
Gray father of the continent,
Fierce fashioner of destinies,
Of states thou hast upreared or rent,
Thou know'st no limit; seas turn back,
Bent, broken from the shaggy, shore;
But thou, in thy resistless track,
Art lord and master evermore.
Missouri, surge and sing and sweep!
Missouri, master of the deep,
From snow-reared Rockies to the sea
Sweep on, sweep on eternally!