To lead us for the cymbaled song .
To him, the beautiful and strong,
- Who dashed the brimming cup of woe
And was our cloud and flame so long!"
Forward! the crested mountains kneel
To patient toils of fire and steel
A way is hewn and you emerge
Upon the Cascades' battled verge;
- And far beneath you and away
- To ocean's shining fringe of foam
- And summer vail of floating spray,
Behold the land of your emprise,
Serene as tender twilight skies
- When day is swooning into gloam!
It is the morning twilight now
That wraps the valley's misted brow;
The bourgeoning and blooming dawn
The reveille of Oregon.
How brightly on your vision, first
The pictured vales and woodlands burst,
The lakelets set like twinkling gems
Along the prairies' pleated hems,
- The silver crooks and rippled sweeps
- Of happy rivers here and there,
- And many a waterfall that leaps
- In rainbow garlands through the air,
- The skirted maples and the groves
- Of oak the mild home-spirit loves-
- Enameled plains and crenelled hills
- And tangled skeins of brooks and rills,
Imperial forests of the fir,
All redolent of musk and myrrh,
That fling and furl their banners old,
And still their gloomy secret hold
- As Time his cloudy censer fills.
Where the foothills are wedded to the meadow
- In the dimples that dally and pass
And the oak swings an indolent shadow
- On the daisies that dial the grass.
In the crescents of rivers; in hollows
- Red-lipped in the strawberry time,
And the slope where the forests half follows,
- A brooklet's melodious rhyme,
On the sun-rippled knolls, and the prairies,
- Beloved of the wandering kine
In the skirts of the woodland the fairies
- Embroidered with rose and with vine
There's a tent, and a smoke that is curling
- Above in the beautiful dome,
Like a guardian spirit unfurling
- Soft wings o'er the temple of home.
