The Falls of St. Anthony tumble the waters In laughter and tumult and roaring of voices, Swirling, dancing, leaping, foaming, Spirits of caverns, of canyons and gorges: Waters tinctured by star-lights, sweetened by breezes Blown over snows, out of the rosy northlands, Through forests of pine and hemlock, Whisperings of the Pacific grown symphonic. Voices of freedom, restless, unconquered, Mad with divinity, fearless and free:-- Hunters and choppers, warriors, revelers, Laughers, dancers, fiddlers, freemen, Climbing the crests of the Alleghenies, Singing, chopping, hunting, fighting Erupting into Kentucky and Tennessee, Into Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Sweeping away the waste of the Indians, As the river carries mud for the making of land. And taking the land of Illinois from kings And handing its allegiance to the Republic. What riflemen with Daniel Boone for leader, And conquerors with Clark for captain Plunge down like melted snows The rocks and chasms of forbidden mountains, And make more land for freemen! Clear-eyed, hard-muscled, dauntless hunters, Choppers of forests and tillers of fields Meet at last in a field of snow-white clover To make wise laws for states, And to teach their sons of the new West That suffrage is the right of freemen. Until the lion of Tennessee, Who crushes king-craft near the gulf. Where La Salle proclaimed the crown, And the cross, Is made the ruler of the republic By freeman suffragans, And winners of the West! * * * * * Father of Waters! Ever recurring symbol of wider freedom, Even to the ocean girdled earth, The out-worn rule of Florida rots your domain. But the lion of Tennessee asks: Would you take from Spain The land she has lost but in name? It shall be done in a month if you loose my sword. It was done as he said. And the sick and drunken power of Spain that clung, And sucked at the life of Chile, Peru, Argentina, Loosened under the blows of San Martin and Bolivar, Breathing the lightning thrown by Napoleon the Great On the thrones of Europe. Father of Waters! 'twas you who made us say: No kings this side of the earth forever! One-half of the earth shall be free By our word and the might that is back of our word! * * * * *