Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ODE TO ASTORIA, by WILLIAM STEWARD GORDON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ODE TO ASTORIA, by                    
First Line: On columbia's broadened breast
Last Line: While you safely guard the gateway of the west.
Subject(s): Pioneers; West (u.s.); Southwest; Pacific States


On Columbia's broadened breast
At the Gateway of the West
Is a city which the Muses did decree
Was to sit a sylvan queen
On her terraced hills of green
While she listens to the music of the sea.

Once a famous financier
With a prophet's listful ear
Built a rustic little hamlet on the shore.
With its rugged palisade
In the gloomy forest shade,
Methinks that I can see it as of yore.

In the mists of early dawn,
In the century agone,
I seem to hear a siren as it sings:
"Let the trapper ply his trade,
While the dusky Clatsop maid
Looks with wonder on 'the ships with the wings.'

"Let the sportive spotted fawn
Feed upon the sylvan lawn,
But mind the couchant shadow in the tree!
Let the mighty, magic river
Mingle with the mists forever
As it's wedded to the waters of the sea.

"O the lonely, nameless shore
Where dumb silence evermore
Is but deepened by the sobbing of the tide!
O the mute and muffled sigh
When the bloody arrows fly,
And a scalp is brought a-quiver to a bride"!

But the mystery and maze
Of romantic early days
Are but setting for the centuries before.
There's a flush upon the sky,
Her crowning day is nigh,
And she finds herself sitting at the world's front door.

Port of entry potentate,
In an empire growing great,
Stretching eastward to the Rocky Mountain's crest—
Pioneer of pioneers,
Gath'ring treasure with the years,
Old Astoria, the Brooklyn of the West!

Not an isolated post,
But a city she shall boast
Where the ships shall ride at anchor from the world.
Firmly fixed by Nature's law
On the path to Panama,
Let her banners to the breeze be unfurled.

O Astoria, my pride,
On Columbia's heaving tide,
With the balmy ocean breath on your breast,
May your purpose point as high
As your cedars in the sky,
While you safely guard the Gateway of the West.





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