Volume 10 , Issue 4

Oklahoma: An Ode

Oklahoma: An Ode, by Freeman E. Miller - read on "Oklahoma Day," July 19, 1915, at the Oklahoma Building, Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, California.

I.
Oklahoma! Oklahoma!
Romance of the ages thou!
Now unknown; a moment later
Crowns of glory on they brow!
Morning saw a captive sleeping
In the wards of long distress;
Night beheld an empire keeping
Watch above the wilderness!
Lo! Above the lonely valleys
Progress swung her torch of light,
And they leaped with instant vigor
Shaking out their locks of might!
O, the Fair God Wreathes his roses
Into garlands for thy brow;
Oklahoma! Oklahoma!
Romance of the ages thou!

II.
Beyond the gates the Land of promise lay
And slept unvexed through all the storms of men,
Save when to her their mighty dreams found way
And shook her limbs -- and then she slept again!
The gaunt wolf dug unseared his public den
And knew no danger when he roamed to slay;
Locked by the law, the land wore fetters then
Though strong men raged and women knelt to pray.
Brave questors beat the barriers, but in vain!
They storm the portals, bend the iron bars,
But swords of flame imprison all the plain
And sere the Fair God's empire with new sears --
The last great fragment from old banners slain
To be young Freedom's pathway to the stars.
The tribes long herded from ancestral fields
Their ancient hatreds tame as slow they rear
Their roof-trees in strange forests, and their shields
Around new homes in walls of love appear;
No more the swift Tombigbee's streams are dear,
The Chattachooche dimmest memory yields;
New Everglades where Peace her scepters wields
Safe refuge give from wrongs the sachems fear.
No more for slaughter do the fierce clans rove
And wage wild battle on their wilder foes;
Creek, Chickasaw, and Cherokee in love
Join Seminole and Choctaw for repose;
And where the pipes of peace in council strove
The Cadmic temples of Sequoyah rose.

III.
Behold! The marshaled legions wait
The turning of the desert gate,
That men of might may enter in
And freedom newer trophies win!
Lo, where these thousands make assail
The lonely barrens long shall fail,
And proud advancement find her way
Where savage commonwealths decay!

The morning hours haste hurried by;
Behold, the noon, the noon, is nigh!
Now hope exultant wildly rolls
Through all the brave adventurous souls
Who here in one tumultuous band
Would take and keep the Promised Land!
Upon the trampled grasses beat
Impatient steeds with fretting feet;
The clamors of discordant cries
Above the restless thousands rise;
Shrilly the fretful children call
And soft the words of women fall,
While men with voices hushed and weak
Their harsh commands impulsive speak,
Till suddenly a mighty cry,
A shout of warning, smites the sky:

"Attention! Ho,
Attention here!
Attention! Lo,
The noon is near!"

O'er hill and brake
Resounds the cry;
The moment great is nigh;
The hosts awake;
Awake to strive in mad delight,
Awake to wage the friendly fight!
Legions gather on the plain,
Chaos and confusion reign!
Haste and hurry breathless come
From encampments stricken dumb!
Steeds unruly seek a place
For the running of the race;
Oxen stripped of every load
Amble down the crowded road --

Wagon, buggy, carriage, cart
Forward, forward, forward dart
Into line!
Ah, there's life
In the strife
Of the tournament divine!
"Line up! Ho, there!
Line up! Line up!"
And o'er the boundless prairies fair
The hands of Progress shake the cup
Filled to the brim with magic seeds
That harvests hold for human needs!
Misgivings master beasts and men;
Saddle-girths are tightened o'er,
Stirrups lengthened out once more.
Till silence softly falls again;
Then man and horse in chosen place
Is ready for the mighty race!

Behold! A waving hand
Signals aloft the great command
That sight and senses understand,
And open swings the Promised Land!
A shot! A hundred, thousand more
The grassy oceans echo o'er --
A shout! From countless throats a shout
On rolling winds leaps madly out --
A yell, a raging roar, that flies
On bounding wings o'er hill and glen.
And 'round the land electrifies
A thousand living miles of men!

A move, a dash!
Swift whip and spur together clash
And wheels on wheels that totter crash!
Away! Away!
No stop nor stay!
The race for homes they ride today,
Is on! Is on! Is on! Is on!
The hot is gone,
Like shadows thrust
Through clouds of dust
To answer elfin calls that spill
Their echoes over vale and hill!
Madly the scattering centaurs ride
In fierce assail
With hurried pace unsatisfied
Where none dare fail,
By broken path and lonely trail!
Ah! one by one, afar, anear,
The racing thousands disappear,
Till only shadows dimly blent
Tell where the mounted visions went,
Like shifting phantoms faint and dim
Or ghostly specters gaunt and grim
Across the far horizon's rim!
Behold! Beyond the valley bright
The last lone straggler fades from sight,
And only hasty hoof-beats say
In echoes from the startled hills
What heroes rode the race today
With hopeful hearts and fearless wills --
What hosts with dreams that build and bless
Found homes amid the wilderness!

IV.
Here through the ages old the desert slept
In solitudes unbroken, save when passed
The bison herds and savage hunters swept
In thundering chaos down the valleys vast;
But Lo! Across the broken shackles stepped
The free man's mighty children, and one blast
From his transforming trumpet filled the last
Lone covert where affrighted wildness crept!
Full armed, full armored, at her wondrous birth,
Her shining temples wreathed with richest dower,
She sits among the princes of the earth;
her great achievements o'er the nations tower
Won by her peoples with the matchless worth
Of lofty culture, wisdom, wealth and power!

Her fields were deserts once, but like the sea
The tides of life with leaping currents warm
Swept in the countless thousands swarm on swarm
To frame the roof and plant the homely tree;
The wilderness throbbed with visions of the free,
And man's firm hand tamed smooth the savage storm,
Till slow and sure came rounding into form
The giant limbs of commonwealths to be!

Her prairies laugh with plenty; her wide streams
Roll rich, unmeasured lengths of waters down,
And cities rise beside them whose fair dreams
With stately splendors all her longings crown;
A rose blooms by the doorway and love waits
With laughing lips beside her open gates!

All things of worth her clever hands have wrought!
She stripped the serpent's den, the eagle's nest
And from the world's vast wisdom chose the best
To fashion thrones for Freedom's latest thought;
The perished prophets to her childhood taught
And learned she large from farthest East and West;
Then to the stars she climbed in daring quest
And dauntless for the gifts of empire fought!
Her fields are fertile with unwakened power;
Within her bosom lavish Midas poured
The golden streams of opulence at flood;
But these she boasts not! There's a richer dower
Of church and school her miser passions hoard,
Of law and justice, and the world's clean blood!

V.
She stand here with her sisters by the sea
Where nations play and continents rejoice
To rear majestic temples of their pride --
The music of the tempest in her face.
The vastness of the prairies in her eyes;
She sips old waters that Balboa saw,
Beholds the skies of ancient Argonauts,
And views the white sails of forgotten ships
That clove the harbors of the Farthest East
Till Farthest East was only Farthest West;
She sees the masters of the mountains move
Their shapes leviathan till oceans join
Across the wallows where the monsters lay --
And yet she marvels not! She from her birth
Has walked with miracles; Pillar and Cloud
Have kept her night and ay; her children came
From earth's far ends, within their mighty hearts
Whatever men on tiresome fields have wrought,
Whatever men beneath the stars have dreamed,
Whatever men before dim shrines have heard,
And brought their gifts to rear the walls of home,
To slay the hoary hags of prejudice,
To level down the battlements of pride
And shake established thrones of precedent.

She has no envy for the gorgeous piles,
The pillared domes that borrow of the sun,
The endless aisles that strut with lace and pearl,
And all the pompous trophies man has seized;
For these are but the playthings of his quest,
The laughters and the antics of his dream,
The tossing heaps of monumental dust
he piles about him on the sands till time
With careless feet shall scatter them again.
She loves the greater things: the one who toils
That Life may blossom into greater Life
While singing to the stars; the heart that loves
With tenderness supremely, till it lifts
The wayward up to heaven; the law that saves
From want and weakness and with gentle hand
Rewards the righteous and corrects the wrong;
The freedom that protects enlarging souls
And crowns each freeman's labor with large fruits --
The happiness that sits at each man's gate
And tells the passer-by. "Here dwells a king!"
Such royal children are the sons she breeds!

VI.
Oklahoma! Oklahoma!
Romance of the ages thou!
Now unknown; a moment later
Crowns of glory on they brow!
Morning saw a captive sleeping
In the wards of long distress;
Night beheld an empire keeping
Watch above the wilderness!
Flags of many nations claimed thee,
Hearts of many people named thee!
But above thy lonely valleys
Progress swung her torch of light.
And they leaped with instant vigor
Shaking out their locks of might!
O, the Fair God wreathes his roses
Into garlands for thy brow;
Oklahoma! Oklahoma!
Romance of the ages thou!

Stillwater, Oklahoma, July 12, 1915.
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