Classic Poem

Servant of Man, well done!
Thy war of peace is won.
The dream of continents five and centuries four.
Is dream no more.

Once, on a waiting " peak in Darien, "
Obscure till then,
But made immortal by a single line
Of verse divine,
Bold Balboa, following the lure
Of fell Adventure's backward-glancing eyes,
Found the new wonder that he sought.
What did he not endure
That still another watery realm
He thus might add as kingdom to the Spanish helm!
Oh, joy supreme of half-divined surprise! —
When, foremost climber, to his heart he caught
The virgin sight of that uplifted sea,
As new, as free,
As though it had but just begun to be.
Then, as he knelt, a second dream there came:
The " wild surmise "
His silent followers felt, but could not frame.
For who could see so near those oceans flow
But wish them mated — nay, but see them so?
Did he not dream that, far beneath, some day,
The hungry waters would devour a way
To slip his caravels and shallops through
From Cadiz to the riches of Peru?
How could he guess that it would be mankind,
Not Nature, that would find
In that Herculean toil a labor to its mind;
And do with zest, ere infant grew to man,
What only geologic ages can;
That what in him was vague, prophetic fancy
Thy modern necromancy —
Thy will, thy wisdom, and the art
Of thy unconquerable heart,
With Love and Duty pure, —
Would make forever real and secure;
That Bounteous Fortune on that distant height,
Where Occident with Orient meets,
Her faith anew to all the world would plight,
Beckoning with either hand to myriad-masted fleets?
There let her statue crown a crowning tower
Like to the topmost flower
Upon a tropic tree,
For every ship of every land to see.
There some shall speak of Balboa, some of Keats
(For one must find and one must celebrate);
Others shall ponder long the fame and feats
Of him who forced the bars of that reluctant gate —
Contending whether he was great;
But all in perpetuity
Shall bless the names of Gorgas and of thee!
Servant of Man, well done!