OUR HEROES OF TODAY
I
With high face held to her ultimate star,
With swift feet set to her mountains of gold,
This new-built world, where the wonders are,
She has built new ways from the ways of old.
II
Her builders of worlds are workers with hands;
Her true world-builders are builders of these,
The engines, the plows; writing poems in sands
Of gold in our golden Hesperides.
III
I reckon these builders as gods among men:
I count them creators, creators who knew
The thrill of dominion, of conquest, as when
God set His stars spinning their spaces of blue.
IV
A song for the groove, and a song for the wheel,
And a roaring song for the rumbling car;
But away with the pomp of the soldier's steel,
And away forever with the trade of war.
V
The hero of time is the hero of thought;
The hero who lives is the hero of peace;
And braver his battles than ever were fought,
From Shiloh back to the battles of Greece.
VI
The hero of heroes is the engineer;
The hero of height and of gnome-built deep,
Whose only fear is the brave man's fear
That some one waiting at home might weep.
VII
The hero we love in this land today
Is the hero who lightens some fellow-man's load—
Who makes of the mountain some pleasant highway;
Who makes of the desert some blossom-sown road.
VIII
Then hurrah! for the land of the golden downs,
For the golden land of the silver horn;
Her heroes have built her a thousand towns,
But never destroyed her one blade of corn.
