While the shadows of Hood have been wheeling
- Away from the face of the sun,
What a glamour of change has been stealing
- On the fields that you painfully won !
Like the castles that fade at cock-crowing
- The enchantments arise and advance
Where the cities of commerce are glowing
- Like pearls in the braids of romance ;
For a state, in the shimmering armor
- Of the Pallas Athena has come,
And her segis is fringen with the warmer
- Refulgence that circles our home.
As for you, you are gray, and the thunder
- Of the battle has smitten each brow
Where the freshness of youth was turned under
- By Time's immemorial plow ;
But the pictures of memory linger,
- Like the shadows that turn to the East,
And will point with a tremulous finger
- To the things that are perished and ceased ;
For the trail and the foot-log have vanished,
- The canoe is a song and a tale,
And flickering church spire has banished
- The uncanny red man from the vale ;
The cayuse is no longer in fashion-
- He is gone with a flutter of heels,
And the old wars are dead, and their passions
- In the crystal of culture congeals;
And the wavering flare of the pitch light
- That illumines your banquets no moro,
Will return like a wandering witch-light
- And uncrimson the fancies of yore
When you dance the "Old Arkansaw" gaily
- In brogans that had followed the bear,
And quaffed the delight of Castaly
- From the fiddle that wailed like despair;
And so lightly you wrought with the hammer,
- And so truly with ax and with plow
And you blazed your own trails through the gram mar,
- As the record must fairly allow ;
But you builded a state in whose arches
- Shall be carven the deed and the name,
And posterity lengthens its marches
- In the golden starlight of your fame!
