Classic Poem

You named it better than you knew
Who called yon little town Lachine,
Though through the lapse of years between
The then and now, men jeered at you.

You thought by it to find a way,
Through voiceful woods and shimmering lakes,
To where the calm Pacific breaks
On weedy ledges at Cathay.

In fancy you beheld yon tide
Upbear a thousand argosies,
Whose spicy odors filled the breeze,
And floated far on every side.

'Twas but a wish-born dream, men said,
And sneered that you were so unwise.
Blind scoffers! Would that they could rise
A few short moments from the dead,

To see how, through the power of man,
Your vision is no more a dream,
And learn that this majestic stream
Is now the highway to Japan!

From year to year, with dauntless strides,
O'er fertile plains your sons have pressed,
Portaging from the East to West,
Between the two great ocean tides.

And in their trail they drew a chain
Of steel across the virgin land,
Uniting with this slender band
The eastern and the western main.

Where once the bison roamed, and woke
The heavens with his thunderous tread,
The tireless engine speeds instead,
And tosses high its plumes of smoke.

Like spider in a web, it creeps
On filmy bridge, o'er sparkling streams,
Or chasms where the sunlight gleams
Part-way, and dies amid the deeps.

It scales the rugged, snow-clad peaks,
And looks afar on East and West,
Then, like an eagle from its nest,
Darts down, and through the valley shrieks.

It was not formed by Nature's hand,
This sun-ward highway to Japan;
O'er mountain-range and prairie, man
Has forced the path his genius planned.

And Commerce, universal king,
Has followed with unnumbered needs,
And scatters everywhere the seeds
Of towns that in a night upspring.

In tumult strange the air abounds,
The whirr of birds is dying out,
The swart mechanic's lusty shout
Amid the clang of iron sounds.

And streams, that once unbroken ran,
Now on their outspread scroll reveal,
Written by many a sliding keel,
The lordly signature of man.