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STATESMAN, whose pæaens have sounded
out fourscore Accept a greeting from our echoing shore - Approach the twentieth century's portico With steps that never senile lapse foreshow - For now upon this opened eightieth year, With virile cause and firm advanced career, A continent may not contain your name, Nor ocean's bound confine your buoyant fame. Grand oak that spreads with ever-strengthening form - That grows and towers through strivings and through storm - Your boughs all people's aspirations span, All hopes uphold that reach the rights of man - Your sprays their sundered works for freedom bind With sympathies and oratory twined. Still in the roll of deeds for manhood done - The record of those moral victories won - In rounded life of thought for all the race, Our partial eyes perceive one interspace - 'Mid strifes with vested wrong - with racial woe - We see you in remote horizon low; Turn now from themes of home or Orient far, Meet once the Western trend of empire's Star - Visit this soil with trans-Atlantic rays Whose proud autonomy evokes your praise; Come as a meteor at meridian height That arches lands with eloquence of light - The century shall not mark a nobler meeting - Columbia claims to speak this life's autumnal greeting. |
| BENJAMIN P. SHILLABER | CONTENTS | BOSTON TO MARIETTA |
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