And the light of her eyes is steady, and her onward march is free,
For it knows no rest, but is like the quest of her rivers that seek the sea.
Upward and on she presses with a zeal no check may rein,
With a strength no shock may shatter while her seasons wake and wane;
Nerved of her stirring stories of the deeds and the deaths of men,
She wins for greater glories till the lapse of human ken.
Her breath is sweet of the southland and the fragile jasmine blows,
On her brow is the excellent whiteness of still Sierra snows,
And her feet are shod with the mosses of the murmurous woodland ways,
And her head is crowned and her temples bound by fillets of slender maize:
As the wild Atlantic fearless, as the hushed Pacific calm,
She rules her rugged hilltops and her breathless groves of palm;
And, whether in waste or city, with freedom her shining shield,
