A noble discontent
Cries for a wider scope
To use the wider wings of human hope;
A vision of the common good
Opens the prison-door of solitude;
And, once beyond the wall,
Breathing the ampler air,
The heart becomes aware
That life without a country is not life at all.
A country worthy of a freeman’s love;
A country worthy of a good man’s prayer;
A country strong, and just, and brave, and fair—
A woman’s form of beauty throned above
The shrine where noble aspirations meet—
To live for her is great, to die is sweet!
Heirs of the rugged pioneers
Who dreamed this dream and made it true,
Remember that they dreamed for you.
They did not fear their fate
In those tempestuous years,
But put their trust in God, and with keen eyes,
Trained in the open air for looking far,
They saw the many-million-acred land
Won from the desert by their hand,
Swiftly among the nations rise—
Texas a sovereign State,
And on her brow a star!
III
The Constellation
How strange that the nature of light is a thing beyond our ken,
And the flame of the tiniest candle flows from a fountain sealed!
How strange that the meaning of life, in the little lives of men,
So often baffles our search with a mystery unrevealed!
But the larger life of man, as it moves in its secular sweep,
Is the working out of a Sovereign Will whose ways appear;
And the course of the journeying stars on the dark blue boundless deep,
Is the place where our science rests in the reign of law most clear.
I would read the story of Texas as if it were written on high;
I would look from afar to follow her path through the calms and storms;
With a faith in the world-wide sway of the Reason that rules in the sky,
And gathers and guides the starry host in clusters and swarms.
When she rose in the pride of her youth, she seemed to be moving apart,
As a single star in the South, self-limited, self-possessed;
But the law of the constellation was written deep in her heart,
And she heard when her sisters called, from the North and the East and the West.
They were drawn together and moved by a common hope and aim—
The dream of a sign that should rule a third of the heavenly arch;
The soul of a people spoke in their call, and Texas came
To enter the splendid circle of States in their onward march.
So the glory gathered and grew and spread from sea to sea,
And the stars of the great republic lent each other light;
For all were bound together in strength, and each was free—
Suddenly broke the tempest out of the ancient night!
It came as a clash of the force that drives and the force that draws;
And the stars were riven asunder, the heavens were desolate,
While brother fought with brother, each for his country’s cause:
But the country of one was the Nation, the country of other the State.
Oh, who shall measure the praise or blame in a strife so vast?
And who shall speak of traitors or tyrants when all were true?
We lift our eyes to the sky, and rejoice that the storm is past,
And we thank the God of all that the Union shines in the blue.
Yea, it glows with the glory of peace and the hope of a mighty race,
High over the grave of broken chains and buried hates;
And the great, big star of Texas is shining clear in its place
In the constellate symbol and sign of the free United States.
IV
After the Pioneers
After the pioneers—
Big-hearted, big-handed lords of the axe and the plow and the rifle,
Tan-faced tamers of horses and lands, themselves remaining tameless,
Full of fighting, labour and romance, lovers of rude adventure—
After the pioneers have cleared the way to their homes and graves on the prairies:
After the State-builders—
Zealous and jealous men, dreamers, debaters, often at odds with each other,
All of them sure it is well to toil and to die, if need be,
Just for the sake of founding a country to leave to their children—
After the builders have done their work and written their names upon it:
After the civil war—
Wildest of all storms, cruel and dark and seemingly wasteful,
Tearing up by the root the vines that were splitting the old foundations,
Washing away with a rain of blood and tears the dust of slavery,
After the cyclone has passed and the sky is fair to the far horizon;
After the era of plenty and peace has come with full hands to Texas,
Then—what then?
Is it to be the life of an indolent heir, fat-witted and self-contented,
Dwelling at ease in the house that others have builded,
Boasting about the country for which he has done nothing?
Is it to be an age of corpulent, deadly-dull prosperity,
Richer and richer crops to nourish a race of Philistines,
Bigger and bigger cities full of the same confusion and sorrow,
The people increasing mightily but no increase of the joy?
Is this what the forerunners wished and toiled to win for you,
This the reward of war and the fruitage of high endeavor,
This the goal of your hopes and the vision that satisfies you?
Nay, stand up and answer—I can read what is in your hearts—
You, the children of those who followed the wild-bees,
You, the children of those who served the Lone Star,
Now that the hives are full and the star is fixed in the constellation,
I know that the best of you still are lovers of sweetness and light!
You hunger for honey that comes from invisible gardens;
Pure, translucent, golden thoughts and feelings and inspirations,
Sweetness of all the best that has bloomed in the mind of man.
You rejoice in the light that is breaking along the borders of science;
The hidden rays that enable a man to look through a wall of stone;
The unseen, fire-filled wings that carry his words across the ocean;
The splendid gift of flight that shines, half-captured, above him;
The gleam of a thousand half-guessed secrets, just ready to be discovered!
You dream
