Madison Julius Cawein

“ Long, long ago, beneath heaven's stormy slope,
In deeds of faith and hope,
Our fathers laid Freedom's foundations here,
And raised, invisible, vast,—
Embodying naught of doubt or fear,
A monument whose greatness shall outlast
The future, as the past,
Of all the Old World's dynasties and kings.—
A symbol of all things
That we would speak, but cannot say in words,
Of those who first began our Nation here,
Behold, we now would rear!
A different monument! a thought, that girds
Itself with granite; dream made visible
In rock and bronze to tell
To all the Future what here once befell ”

“ With psalm and prayer, the Mayflower on its way?—
Such faith as led
The Dorchester fishers to this sea-washed point,
This granite headland of Cape Ann?
Where first they made their bed,
Salt-blown and wet with brine,
In cold and hunger, where the storm-wrenched pine
Clung to the rock with desperate footing. They,
With hearts courageous whom hope did anoint,
Despite their tar and tan,
Worn of the wind and spray,
Seem more to me than man,
With their unconquerable spirits.—Mountains may
Succumb to men like these, to wills like theirs,—
The Puritan's tenacity to do ”

“ THE DUNES
Far as the eye can see, in domes and spires,
Buttress and curve, ruins of shifting sand,—
In whose wild making wind and sea took hand,—
The white dunes stretch. The wind, that never tires,
Striving for strange effects that he admires,
Changes their form from time to time ”