WHEN the hollow void of Chaos

By the sun's first flame was lit,

And morning kissed the new earth's leaden sky,

When the hand of God reached downward

To the ocean's utmost pit

And reared the ragged continents on high,

From the naked, dripping ranges

Of the Rocky's granite sweep,

In a pathway through the quaking mud-plains torn,

Surged a waste of briny waters,

Roaring backward to the deep,

And the great Missouri, king of floods, was born.

It was there when, dank and noisome,

On the primal beds of shale

The fern and cycad forests fringed its shore,

And its depths have heaved in whirlpools

To the thresh of fin and tail

As the monster sea-snakes closed in deadly war.

Foot by foot through crumbling valleys

It has fought the Glacial Drift

As from out the North the rock-fanged moraines spread,

Hurling seas of thunderous waters

Through the slowly strangling rift

Where the ice-floes ground and gritted in its bed.

Huge of limb and tusked like tree-trunks,

When the evening sun hung low

Slugged the mammoths down to gambol in its tide,

And 'twas there that, ringed and goaded

By the cave-men's spears and bows,

They fell in blinded agony and died.

So, for dim, uncounted aeons

Did the torrent sweep along,

Rolling centuries like pebbles in its sands,

And the prairies sprung and blossomed

And the bison herds grew strong,

And the red men camped and hunted through its lands.

Till there came at last a season

When a gaunt-limbed figure burst

Through the woods that lipped the current's whirling foam,

And the flint-lock that he shifted

As he stooped to quench his thirst

Told the wilderness the first white man was come!

He, the white man, the magician,

Searcher, soldier, settler, lord,

Heir to all the crusted cycles of the past!

What were endless, lagging eras

While earth's wealth was being stored

To the pageant of his power at the last?

Came new visions to the river;

Came the voyageur's swift canoe,

Gliding ghost-like to the silent, dipping oar;

And the blunt-bowed keel-boat harnessed

To its brawny, sweating crew,

As they trailed the long cordelle-rope up the shore.

Came the block-house of the fur-trade,

Where the trappers brought their spoil

From bison-range and log-laced beaver fall;

French and half-breed, Sioux and Yankee,

Flinging out a season's toil

For a week of drunken revelry and brawl.

Up the swinging, bluff-bound reaches

Where the lonely bittern boomed

Throbbed a dull, insistent whisper, growing strong,

As the steamboat, flame-winged herald

To an age forespent and doomed,

Waked the woodlands with its piston's pulsing song.

Reeling down the rain-washed gullies

To its fertile, grassy vales

The Missouri saw the weary ox-teams plod;

Saw the red scouts on the ridges,

Heard the shots and dying wails,

Knew the unmarked graves beneath the prairie sod.

It has watched the thin, gray dust-cloud

With the summer heat-haze blent,

And the glint below of swords and bridle-chains,

As some squad of blue-clad troopers,

Like a wolf-pack on the scent,

Trailed the fleeing travois' track across the plains.

It has seen the long-horned cattle

Take the bisons' pasture lands,

Seen the cornfields spread where once the wild grass stood,

Marked the railroad bind the prairies,

League by league, with iron bands,

Felt the dizzy bridge-span leap its own dark flood.

Till the cow-town's rutted roadways

Into asphalt pavements grew.

By wires webbed and busy markets walled,

And the steel-trussed office building

Reared its cornice to the blue

Where the shanties of the mining camp had sprawled.

Now the hissing, rock-jammed rapids

Where of yore the fish-hawks bred,

Hear the thirsty turbines mumble in the gorge,

Tearing twice ten thousand horse-power

From the prisoned waters' head

To drive the distant smelter, mill and forge.

Now lakes of water ripple

Where before the sands lay dry,

And beyond the concrete walls which hold them caged—

Run shimmering, silver channels

Through fields of wheat and rye

Where yesterday the searing sand-storm raged.

But splendid though the epic

Of the river's wondrous past

As Homer e'er could sing or Milton pen,

It will know its grandest numbers

In the ages yet uncast

When its worth shall yield full measure unto men.

In this storehouse of the Nations,

Where but thousands prosper now,

The homes of teeming millions soon shall be;

On this noble waste of waters,

Untouched by steamer's prow,

Shall roll a people's commerce toward, the sea.

Unto us and to our children

Will be dealt the untold gains

If, shaping Nature's promise into deeds,

We accept the willing service

Of this Titan of the plains

And compel its mighty muscles to our needs,

Till its flood runs deep and constant

To the Mississippi's tide,

And the wedded torrents down the South are hurled,

Pouring forth their fleets of plenty

O'er oceans far and wide

To bear our country's riches to the world.

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