THE EXPLORER Up along the hostile mountains, where the hairpoised snow-slide shivers Down and through the big fat marshes that the virgin ore-bed stains, Till I heard the mile-wide mutterings of unimagined rivers, And beyond the nameless timber saw illimitable plains! 'Plotted sites of future cities, traced the easy grades between 'em; Watched unharnessed rapids wasting fifty thousand head an hour; Counted leagues of water-frontage through the axe ripe woods that screen 'em Saw the plant to feed a people-up and waiting for the power! Well I know who'll take the credit-all the clever chaps that followed Came, a dozen men together-never knew my desert fears; Tracked me by the camps I'd quitted, used the water holes I'd hollowed. They'll go back and do the talking. They'll be called the Pioneers! THE EXPLORER They will find my sites of townships-not the cities that I set there. They will rediscover rivers-not my rivers heard at night. By my own old marks and bearings they will show me how to get there, By the lonely cairns I builded they will guide my feet aright. Have I named one single river? Have I claimed one single acre? Have I kept one single nugget-(barring samples)? No, not I. Because my price was paid me ten times over by my Maker. But you wouldn't understand it. You go up and оссиру. Ores you'll find there; wood and cattle; water transit sure and steady (That should keep the railway rates down), coal and iron at your doors. God took care to hide that country till He judged His people ready, Then He chose me for His Whisper, and I've found it, and it's yours! THE EXPLORER Yes, your "Never-never country "-yes, your "edge of cultivation " And "no sense in going further"-till I crossed the range to see. God forgive me! No, I didn't. It's God's present to our nation. Anybody might have found it but-His Whisper came to Me! THE WAGE-SLAVES OH glorious are the guarded heights An ampler arc their spirit swings- We have their word for all these things, Yet we the bondslaves of our day, And leagued unfaithfulness Such is our need must seek indeed The men who merely do the work For which they draw the wage. THE WAGE-SLAVES From forge and farm and mine and bench, Deck, altar, outpost lone Mill, school, battalion, counter, trench, Rail, senate, sheepfold, throneCreation's cry goes up on high From age to cheated age: "Send us the men who do the work For which they draw the wage." Words cannot help nor wit achieve, Too weak to enter, bide, or leave Beneath the sun we count on none Our evil to assuage, Except the men that do the work For which they draw the wage. When through the Gates of Stress and Strain Comes forth the vast Event The simple, sheer, sufficing, sane Result of labour spent They that have wrought the end unthought Be neither saint nor sage, But men who merely did the work For which they drew the wage. |