I greet with a full heart the Land of the West, Whose Banner of Stars o'er a world is unrolled; Whose empire o'ershadows Atlantic's wide breast, And opens to sunset its gateway of gold! The land of the mountain, the land of the lake, And rivers that roll in magnificent tide-- Where the souls of the mighty from slumber awake, And hallow the soil for whose freedom they died! Thou Cradle of empire! though wide be the foam That severs the land of my fathers and thee, I hear, from thy bosom, the welcome of home, For song has a home in the hearts of the Free! And long as thy waters shall gleam in the sun, And long as thy heroes remember their scars, Be the hands of thy children united as one, And Peace shed her light on thy Banner of Stars! This award gave general satisfaction, although a few disappointed competitors complained. This remarkable competition and the other features of Miss Lind's reception in America, attracted so much attention in England that the London Times in one day devoted several columns of space to the subject. Of course the American press literally teemed with matter about Miss Lind and Barnum. The poetical competition demanded much attention, and presently a witty pamphlet was published, entitled "Barnum's Parnassus; being Confidential Disclosures of the Prize Committee on the Jenny Lind Song." It pretended to give all or most of the poems that had been offered in the competition, though of course none of them were genuine. Many of them, however, contained fine satirical hits on the whole business; such, for example, as the following: BARNUMOPSIS. A RECITATIVE. When to the common rest that crowns his days, Dusty and worn the tired pedestrian goes, What light is that whose wide o'erlooking blaze A sudden glory on his pathway throws? 'Tis not the setting sun, whose drooping lid Closed on the weary world at half-past six; 'Tis not the rising moon, whose rays are hid Behind the city's sombre piles of bricks. It is the Drummond Light, that from the top Of Barnum's massive pile, sky-mingling there, Dart's its quick gleam o'er every shadowed shop, And gilds Broadway with unaccustomed glare. There o'er the sordid gloom, whose deep'ning tracks Furrow the city's brow, the front of ages, Thy loftier light descends on cabs and hacks, And on two dozen different lines of stages! O twilight Sun, with thy far darting ray, Thou art a type of him whose tireless hands Hung thee on high to guide the stranger's way, Where, in its pride, his vast Museum stands. Him, who in search of wonders new and strange, Grasps the wide skirts of Nature's mystic robe Explores the circles of eternal change, And the dark chambers of the central globe. He, from the reedy shores of fabled Nile, Has brought, thick-ribbed and ancient as old iron, That venerable beast, the crocodile, And many a skin of many a famous lion.