When eastern snows are melting and the south wind softly blows,
The old hives swarm, and westward the Star of Empire goes.
"Westward ho!" is ever the watchword of the spring;
As sure as birds fly northward, is this a settled thing.
'Tis heard again in autumn, when crops are gathered in—
When the corn is in the barn and the wheat is in the bin.
Westward, and ever westward, the long, white wagons creep,
Through towns and open country, and forests dark and deep.
Westward—women and children, bearded and stalwart men—
From stern New England hillside, from wild and rocky glen;
From steeps of the Alleghanies, where bleak winds fiercely blow;
And down whose crags of granite roll storms of sleet and snow.
Westward—from o'er the ocean a crowd comes pressing on,
Russian, Norwegian, German—all bloods under the sun
Here meet and mingle kindly. As all the world doth know,
When other lands are full, hither rolls the overflow.
Westward, and ever westward, the peaceful army comes—
Workmen for better wages, the homeless seeking homes;
Young men—life all before them, with all that life endears—
And old men, faint and weary, with the bootless toil of years.
Still they come, and still we greet them with the clasp of friendly hand;
Still they flood and swell our cities, still they spread across the land;
Westward, westward—led or followed by the headlight's ghostly gleam,
While lonely wilds are startled by the engine's eerie scream.
On bare, wide slopes the dug-out yields shelter safe and sure,
And from its fireside altar floats incense sweet and pure.
Beside the lowly door sits the grandsire old and gray,
While round him, tanned and merry, the barefoot children play.
The sod, upturned, wooes surely the sunshine and the rain;
Anon the swells are golden with seas of waving grain.
Where all was bare and barren, thick stand the clustered sheaves;
Where all was bare and treeless, winds whisper through the leaves.
Towns spring as by enchantment along the great frontier;
Where the owl dwelt silent, solemn, with the prairie dog last year,
Now stands the store and school house, and church with steeple white,
In a city reared by magic, like the gourd that grew in a night.