Amid white pines that rake the sky,
Crashes of waves on rocks that lie
Along our coasts, vales of red loam
And riverbeds, we made our home.
And so we live by mounts and spires,
Far in the West, and posts and wires
That plot the grasses of the plains,
And by thick clumps of rivercanes.
Our first forefathers saw this all.
They heard the breasted warblers’ call,
And felt a note of joy and fear
As if God’s providence drew near.
Here is a place of vast, good earth,
Where a new people comes to birth,
And work may find its dignity
In freedom and prosperity.
Freedom and work, and these in store,
But also failure, death, and war;
A sense that our unsettled state
Has lost its way, the hour grown late;
A sense words founder in the deed,
And noble speech masks petty greed,
Have cast their shadow on the land
And sent a tremor through our hand.
But steady it. Our nation still
Has genius and a noble will,
Reverences life and liberty,
And spreads their cause from sea to sea;
It reckons with each sin and flaw
By creed and custom, love, and law,
And teaches us to seek our good
In an enduring brotherhood.