The Spenders

The wanderers of earth turned to her—outcast of the older lands— With a promise and hope in their pleading, and she reached them pitying hands; And she cried to the Old-World cities that drowse by the Eastern "Send me your weary, house-worn broods and I'll send you Men again! Lo, here in my wind-swept reaches, by my marshalled peaks of snow, Is room for a larger reaping than your o'ertilled fields can grow. Seed of the Main Seed springing to stature and strength in my sun, Free with a limitless freedom no battles of men have won," For men, like the grain of the corn fields, grow small in the huddled crowd, And weak for the breath of spaces where a soul may speak aloud; For hills, like stairways to heaven, shaming the level track, And sick with the clang of pavements and the marts of the trafficking pack. Greatness is born of greatness, and breadth of a breadth profound; The old Antaean fable of strength renewed from the ground Was a human truth for the ages; since the hour of the Edenbirth That man among men was strongest who stood with his feet on the earth! "The fair and sometimes uncertain daughter of the house of Milbrey" "'Well, Billy Brue,--what's doin'?'" "The spell was broken