Our freeborn race, averse to every check, Has tossed the yoke of Europe from its _neck_; From the green prairie to the sea-girt town, The whole wide nation turns its collars down. The stately neck is manhood's manliest part; It takes the life-blood freshest from the heart. With short, curled ringlets close around it spread, How light and strong it lifts the Grecian head! Thine, fair Erechtheus of Minerva's wall; Or thine, young athlete of the Louvre's hall, Smooth as the pillar flashing in the sun That filled the arena where thy wreaths were won, Firm as the band that clasps the antlered spoil Strained in the winding anaconda's coil I spare the contrast; it were only kind To be a little, nay, intensely blind. Choose for yourself: I know it cuts your ear; I know the points will sometimes interfere; I know that often, like the filial John, Whom sleep surprised with half his drapery on, You show your features to the astonished town With one side standing and the other down;-- But, O, my friend! my favorite fellow-man! If Nature made you on her modern plan, Sooner than wander with your windpipe bare,-- The fruit of Eden ripening in the air,-- With that lean head-stalk, that protruding chin, Wear standing collars, were they made of tin! And have a neckcloth--by the throat of Jove!-- Cut from the funnel of a rusty stove! The long-drawn lesson narrows to its close, Chill, slender, slow, the dwindled current flows; Tired of the ripples on its feeble springs, Once more the Muse unfolds her upward wings. Land of my birth, with this unhallowed tongue, Thy hopes, thy dangers, I perchance had sung; But who shall sing, in brutal disregard Of all the essentials of the "native bard"? Lake, sea, shore, prairie, forest, mountain, fall, His eye omnivorous must devour them all; The tallest summits and the broadest tides His foot must compass with its giant strides, Where Ocean thunders, where Missouri rolls, And tread at once the tropics and the poles; His food all forms of earth, fire, water, air, His home all space, his birthplace everywhere. Some grave compatriot, having seen perhaps The pictured page that goes in Worcester's Maps, And, read in earnest what was said in jest, "Who drives fat oxen"--please to add the rest,-- Sprung the odd notion that the poet's dreams Grow in the ratio of his hills and streams; And hence insisted that the aforesaid "bard," Pink of the future, fancy's pattern-card, The babe of nature in the "giant West," Must be of course her biggest and her best. Oh! when at length the expected bard shall come, Land of our pride, to strike thine echoes dumb, (And many a voice exclaims in prose and rhyme, It's getting late, and he's behind his time,) When all thy mountains clap their hands in joy, And all thy cataracts thunder, "That 's the boy,"-- Say if with him the reign of song shall end, And Heaven declare its final dividend!