Where ranged thy black-maned, woolly bulls By millions, fat and unafraid; Where gold, unclaimed in cradlefuls, Slept 'mid the grass roots, gorge, and glade; Where peaks companioned with the stars, And propped the blue with shining white, With massive silver beams and bars, With copper bastions, height on height -- There wast thou born, O lord of strength! O yellow lion, leap and length Of arm from out an Arctic chine To far, fair Mexic seas are thine! What colors? Copper, silver, gold With sudden sweep and fury blent, Enwound, unwound, inrolled, unrolled, Mad molder of the continent! What whirlpools and what choking cries From out the concave swirl and sweep As when some god cries out and dies Ten fathoms down thy tawny deep! Yet on, right on, no time for death, No time to gasp a second breath! You plow a pathway through the main To Morro's castle, Cuba's plain. Hoar sire of hot, sweet Cuban seas, Gray father of the continent, Fierce fashioner of destinies, Of states thou hast upreared or rent, Thou know'st no limit; seas turn back, Bent, broken from the shaggy shore; But thou, in thy resistless track, Art lord and master evermore. Missouri, surge and sing and sweep! Missouri, master of the deep, From snow-reared Rockies to the sea Sweep on, sweep on eternally! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SUNKEN GOLD by EUGENE JACOB LEE-HAMILTON THE BLOOD HORSE by BRYAN WALLER PROCTER A VISION UPON [THIS CONCEIT] OF THE FAERIE QUEENE (2) by WALTER RALEIGH AN ECHO FROM WILLOW-WOOD by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI KNOWLEDGE by HENRY DAVID THOREAU |