and widely copied. The Cassell Publishing Company made it one of their gems in their elegant volume, "Representative Poems of Living Poets," and kindly consent to its use in this volume: 180
WHITMAN'S RIDE.
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of a hero's ride that saved a State.
A midnight ride? Nay, child, for a year
He rode with a message that could not wait.
Eighteen hundred and forty-two;
No railroad then had gone crashing through
To the Western coast; not a telegraph wire
Had guided there the electric fire;
But a fire burned in one strong man's breast
For a beacon light. You shall hear the rest.
He said to his wife; "At the Fort to-day,
At Walla Walla, I heard them say
That a hundred British men had crossed
The mountains; and one young, ardent priest
Shouted, 'Hurrah for Oregon!
The Yankees are late by a year at least!'
They must know this at once at Washington.
Another year, and all would be lost.
Someone must ride, to give the alarm
Across the Continent; untold harm
In an hour's delay, and only I
Can make them understand how or why
The United States must keep Oregon!"
Twenty-four hours he stopped to think,
To think! Nay then, if he thought at all,
He thought as he tightened his saddle-girth.
One tried companion, who would not shrink
From the worst to come, with a mule or two
To carry arms and supplies, would do.
With a guide as far as Fort Bent. And she,
