Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A SONG TO ILLINOIS, by HORACE SPENCER FISKE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A SONG TO ILLINOIS, by                    
First Line: Lift a song to illinois, a song of pride and praise
Last Line: Her mighty, marching city, and the lifting hopes of men.
Subject(s): Illinois; Praise; Pride; Self-esteem; Self-respect


Lift a song to Illinois, a song of pride and praise;
Crown her life with tribute and with everlasting bays;
Sing her sweep of prairie and her free, unbounded sky,
Her rustling wealth of corn lands reaching endless to the eye.

Lift her banners to the breezes, from the Lake that brings the sun
To the radiant western gateway where the mighty waters run.
Sing Marquette's immortal mission with its fevered, fateful quest,
And LaSalle's all conquering vision of an empire in the west.

Sing a song of statehood and a widening common-wealth,
A land of mine and shining stream, a granary of health;
The fruit of forge and furnace, the man against the sky,
And all the flags of commerce that ceaselessly go by.

Sing her love of freedom and her fight to free the slave,
And Grant's uncounted soldiers that swept into the grave;
Life a song for Lincoln who saved a shackled race
And bore a nation's sorrow written deeply in his face.

Send a pæan ringing for her boys that fought and fell
To crush a spiked autocracy beneath a shower of shell.
And sing her song of science, her gifts of art and pen,
Her mighty, marching city, and the lifting hopes of men.





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