THE PRODIGALS

Knee-deep our prairies link the seas,

Flood-full our voiceless rivers wend;

We hold unturned the larder keys

On which the future years depend:

And shall we suffer alien throngs

Usurp the land to us belongs?

What though we are to fortune born

And all our paths are paved with gold?

We flaunt our folly up to scorn,

Because we keep not what we hold:

Why should we rob our right of birth

To foster all the breeds of earth?

We picture with unfeigned dismay

Man-glutted lands of other flags,

They multiply but to decay,

And rot in pestilence and rags;

Why hasten we to emulate

These helpless tragedies of Fate?

The land our children's sons will need,

That land we have wide open thrown

To heathen knaves of other breed

And paunchy pirates of our own:

We give away earth's greatest prize,

And pat ourselves, and call us wise.

No father he who to the slums

For husband to his child would send,

And no one worthy of her comes

She lives a maiden to the end:

Yet we have placed our virgin trust

In spawn of Continental lust.

If dumb we be to Reason's cries —

Our children's cause she pleads in vain —

Our outraged sons at length will rise

And seize their heritage again;

And fools, who prate of vested right,

Will either cease to prate — or fight.

The land is ours, the land will keep,

And Time is nowise near its end;

We hold our birthright all too cheap

Its sacredness to comprehend;

In after years our sons will say,

“Why frittered ye the land away?”