Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PANAMA HYMN, by PERCY MACKAYE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PANAMA HYMN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Lord of the sundering land and deep
Last Line: And marry sundered deep to deep!
Alternate Author Name(s): Mackaye, Percy Wallace
Subject(s): Panama


LORD of the sundering land and deep,
For whom of old, to suage thy wrath,
The floods stood upright as a heap
To shape thy host a dry-shod path,

Lo, now, from tide to sundered tide
Thy hand, outstretched in glad release,
Hath torn the eternal hills aside
To blaze a liquid path for Peace.

Thy hand, englaived in flaming steel,
Hath clutched the demons of the soil
And made their forge-fires roar and reel
To serve thy seraphim in toil;

While round their pits the nations, bowed,
Have watched thine awful enginery
Compel, through thunderbolt and cloud,
The demigods to slave for thee.

For thee hath glaring Cyclops sweat,
And Atlas groaned, and Hercules
For thee his iron sinews set,
And thou wast lord of Rameses;

Till now they pause, to watch thy hand
Lead forth the first leviathan
Through mazes of the jungled land,
Submissive to the will of man:

Submissive through the will of us
To thine, the universal will,
That leads, divine and devious,
To world-communions vaster still. —

The titans rest; intense, aware,
The host of nations dumbly waits;
The mountains lift their brows and stare;
The tides are knocking at the gates.

Almighty of the human mind,
Unlock the portals of our sleep
That lead to visions of our kind,
And marry sundered deep to deep!





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