As for you, you are gray, and the thunder Of the battle has smitten each brow Where the freshness of youth was turned under By Time’s immemorial plow; But the pictures of memory linger, Like the shadows that turn to the East, And will point with a tremulous finger To the things that are perished and ceased; For the trail and the foot-log have vanished, The canoe is a song and a tale, And flickering church spire has banished The uncanny red man from the vale; The cayuse is no longer in fashion— He is gone—with a flutter of heels, And the old wars are dead, and their passions In the crystal of culture congeals; And the wavering flare of the pitch light That illumines your banquets no more, Will return like a wandering witch-light And uncrimson the fancies of yore— When you dance the “Old Arkansaw” gaily In brogans that had followed the bear, And quaffed the delight of Castaly From the fiddle that wailed like despair; And so lightly you wrought with the hammer, And so truly with ax and with plow— And you blazed your own trails through the grammar, As the record must fairly allow; But you builded a state in whose arches Shall be carven the deed and the name, And posterity lengthens its marches In the golden starlight of your fame! PILGRIMS OF THE PLAINS. By JOAQUIN MILLER. A tale half told and hardly understood; The talk of bearded men that chanced to meet, That lean’d on long quaint rifles in the wood, That look’d in fellow faces, spoke discreet And low, as half in doubt and in defeat Of hope; a tale it was of lands of gold That lay toward the sun. Wild wing’d and fleet It spread among the swift Missouri’s bold Unbridled men, and reach’d to where Ohio roll’d. Then long chain’d lines of yoked and patient steers; Then long white trains that pointed to the west; Beyond the savage west; the hopes and fears Of blunt, untutor’d men, who hardly guess’d Their course; the brave and silent women, dress’d In homely spun attire, the boys in bands, The cheery babes that laughed at all and bless’d The doubting hearts with laughing lifted hands— What exodus for far untraversed lands!