Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
California’s Greeting to Seward
By Bret Harte (1836–1902)W
Or bonfire from the windy hill
To light to softer paths and ways
The world-worn man we honor still;
That burned through years of war and shame,
While History carves with surer stroke
Across our map his noonday fame;
Of blows dealt by the Scæan gate,
Who lived to pass its shattered bars,
And see the foe capitulate;
Toward the western setting sun,
To see his harvest all complete,
His dream fulfilled, his duty done,—
The one faith borne from sea to sea,—
For such a triumph, and such goal,
Poor must our human greeting be.
In simpler ways salute the Man,—
The tall pines bowing where they stand,
The bared head of El Capitan,
Pohono’s kerchief in the breeze,
The waving from the rocky walls,
The stir and rustle of the trees;
In sunset lands by sunset seas,
The Young World’s Premier treads the slope
Of sunset years in calm and peace.