Toward the Gulf | Page 4

San Martin and
Bolivar,
Breathing the lightning thrown by Napoleon the Great
On
the thrones of Europe.
Father of Waters! 'twas you who made us say:

No kings this side of the earth forever!
One-half of the earth shall
be free
By our word and the might that is back of our word!

The falls of St. Anthony tumble the waters
In laughter and tumult and
roaring of voices!
And the river moves in its winding channel toward
the gulf, Over the breast of De Soto,
By the swamp grave of La Salle!

The old days sleep, the lion of Tennessee sleeps
With Daniel
Boone and the hunters,
The rifle men, the revelers,
The laughers
and dancers and choppers
Who climbed the crests of the Alleghenies,

And poured themselves into Tennessee, Ohio,
Kentucky, Illinois,
the bountiful West.
But the river never sleeps, the river flows forever,

Making land forever, reclaiming the wastes of the sea.
And the
race never sleeps, the race moves on forever.
And wars must come, as
the waters must sweep away
Drift-wood, dead wood, choking the
strength of the river--
For Liberty never sleeps!

The lion of Tennessee sleeps!
And over the graves of the hunters and
choppers
The tramp of troops is heard!
There is war again,
O,
Father of Waters!
There is war, O, symbol of freedom!
They have
chained your giant strength for the cause
Of trade in men.

But a

man of the West, a denizen of your shore,
Wholly American,

Compact, clear-eyed, nerved like a hunter,
Who knew no faster beat
of the heart,
Except in charity, forgiveness, peace;
Generous, plain,
democratic,
Scarcely appraising himself at full,
A spiritual rifleman
and chopper,
Of the breed of Daniel Boone--
This man, your child,
O, Father of Waters,
Waked from the winter sleep of a useless day

By the rising sun of a Freedom bright and strong,
Slipped like the
loosened snows of your mountain streams
Into a channel of fate as
sure as your own--
A fate which said: till the thing be done
Turn not
back nor stop.
Ulysses of the great Atlantis,
Wholly American,

Patient, silent, tireless, watchful, undismayed
Grant at Fort Donelson,
Grant at Vicksburg,
Leading the sons of choppers and riflemen,

Pushing on as the hunters and farmers
Poured from the mountains
into the West,
Freed you, Father of Waters,
To flow to the Gulf and
be one
With the earth-engirdled tides of time.
And gave us states
made ready for the hands
Wholly American:
Hunters, choppers,
tillers, fighters
For epochs vast and new
In Truth, in Liberty,

Posters from land to land and sea to sea
Till all the earth be free!

Ulysses of the great Atlantis,
Dream not of disaster,
Sleep the sleep
of the brave
In your couch afar from the Father of Waters!
A new
Ulysses arises,
Who turns not back, nor stops
Till the thing is done.

He cuts with one stroke of the sword
The stubborn neck that keeps
the Gulf
And the Caribbean

From the luring Pacific.
Roosevelt
the hunter, the pioneer,
Wholly American,
Winner of greater wests

Till all the earth be free!

And forever as long as the river flows toward the Gulf
Ulysses
reincarnate shall come
To guard our places of sleep,
Till East and
West shall be one in the west of heaven and earth!

In an old print
I see a thicket of masts on the river.
But in the prints
to be
There will be lake boats,
With port holes, funnels, rows of
decks,
Huddled like swans by the docks,
Under the shadows of
cliffs of brick.
And who will know from the prints to be,
When the
Albatross and the Golden Eagle,
The flying craft which shall carry
the vision
Of impatient lovers wounded by Spring
To the shaded
rivers of Michigan,
That it was the Missouri, the Iowa,
And the
City of Benton Harbor
Which lay huddled like swans by the docks?
You are not Lake Leman,
Walled in by Mt. Blanc.
One sees the
whole world round you,
And beyond you, Lake Michigan.
And
when the melodious winds of March
Wrinkle you and drive on the
shore
The serpent rifts of sand and snow,
And sway the giant limbs
of oaks,
Longing to bud,
The boats put forth for the ports that began
to stir,
With the creak of reels unwinding the nets,
And the ring of
the caulking wedge.
But in the June days--
The Alabama ploughs
through liquid tons
Of sapphire waves.
She sinks from hills to
valleys of water,
And rises again,
Like a swimming gull!
I wish a
hundred years to come, and forever
All lovers could know the rapture

Of the lake boats sailing the first Spring days
To coverts of
hepatica,
With the whole world sphering round you,
And the whole
of the sky beyond you.
I knew the captain of the City of Grand Rapids.
He had sailed the
seas as a boy.
And he stood on deck against the railing

Puffing a
cigar,
Showing in his eyes the cinema flash of the sun on the waves.
It was June and life was easy. ...
One could lie on deck and sleep,

Or sit in the sun and dream.
People were walking the decks and
talking,
Children were singing.
And down on the purser's deck
A
man was dancing by himself,
Whirling around like a dervish.
And
this captain said to me:
"No life is better than this.
I could live
forever,
And do nothing but run this boat
From the dock at Chicago

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