EMPIRE BUILDING
She heard you beg: “Oh, Father, let me go;
I'll teach her how to make the white flowers grow.”
And always since I hear the same old cry:
“There's none so good, so fine, so brave as I.
Ay, even when I roam to some far spot
'Neath Eastern skies, by world and time forgot,”
I see the dusky people creeping by,
Alarmed to hear your shout of “I, I, I.”
II I'll show them how, I'll tell them what, and why;
I'll bid them how to live, and how to die.“
And when I, yawning, seek some further shore,
Some Indian strand, I hear your voice once more:
”I'll teach them how to work, and how to pray.“
Oh, John, you never think before your day
Rome was, Greece was—can one believe it true?—
Great Egypt died, and never heard of you!
How all the small folk hated you, big John!
As you grew fat their little pastures on;
And yet they quailed before you, or your state,
And walked behind you—all save little Kate!
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