Poems (Hoffman)/California
For works with similar titles, see California.
CALIFORNIA
A land with peace and plenty crowned,Where luxury and wealth abound;A land where Freedom's goddess reignsUnfettered by Oppression's chains.A land where every clime is found,Where different races till the ground.Here tropic fruits and flowers growAnd Summer's softest breezes blow.Here too, tall mountain-columns glowIn regions of perpetual snow;While various climates lie betweenHills clad in robes of living green,And vales with golden harvests blest,By sunbeams and soft winds caressed.The great Pacific's broad expanseSpreads out before the traveler's glance,And in her ceaseless song, he hearsThe memories of forgotten years;Ere man beheld her peaceful shoreOr listened to the breaker's roar.Yosemite lifts her domes and spiresAnd tunes to Heaven her native lyres,Her cataracts in torrents fall,Her mountains form a mighty wall;And all their princely peaks combineTo guard proud Grandeur's loftiest shrine.The mammoth trees, like giants stand,Stationed to guard their native land.Kings of the forest's leafy throneBy countless angry tempests blown;Resisting ruin and decay,They live, while nations pass away.The tall Sierras, towering high,Print the pale arches of the sky; And like proud, princely monarchs, throwTheir shadows in the lakes below;And o'er the flowery bowers of green,Where Calliope dwells unseen,The grandeur of their lofty domesFalls softly o'er the peaceful homes;Where man can undisturbed abideFar from the gilded pomp of Pride.The birds, their flight through tree-tops wingAnd sing at eve their vesper hymn,And when the sunlight hails the morn,Chant through the woods their native song.The rivers, flowing from the hills,The flowers, low-bending o'er the rills,—All help to make the land more fair,And scatter beauty everywhere.Long years ago, our fathers cameTo seek a land, whose wide-spread fameHad echoed through the world abroad,And sounded o'er the eastern sod;'Till hundreds with bright hopes, elate,Journeyed to find the golden State.O'er wastes of land, through trials untold,They came to dig the precious gold.At night they made their lonely bedBeside some winding, silvery thread.At morn the trackless plain they pressedAnd faced again the sunlit west.O'er mountain paths, their way they wound;"Till on fair California's ground,They stood beneath her stately pinesAnd viewed at last her famous mines.Some chose no more abroad to roamAnd made the western State their home;Some, who had come for gain and gold,Went back to find their homes of old;But all unsatisfied were they From such a golden realm to stay,So crossed the wilderness againTo find the land of gold and grain.The dark-browed natives gazed in aweAnd with fierce, war-like anger sawTheir loved and cherished hunting-groundChanged into farms and peopled towns;What wonder that in rage they roseFor vengeance on their pale-faced foes?What wonder that each swarthy braveStrove his Elysian home to save?But all in vain, there soon shall beNone left to tell their history;And even now, earth can but traceA remnant of that mighty race.********Fair California, land of gold!My hopes for thee are yet untold,But ere I lay my pen asideThese wishes I would here inscribe:That vice should haunt thy hills no moreNor crime infest Pacific's shore,But right and loyal truth increase,And all the votaries of peaceShould enter at thy Golden Gate;My childhood's home, my native State!