Come, my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready;
Have you your pistols?
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready;
Have you your pistols?
Whitman
Rise up! for you the flag is flung, for you the bugle trills:
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths; for you the shores a-crowding:
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning.
O Captain! dear father!
This arm I push beneath you.
It is some dream that on the deck
You've fallen cold and dead!
3.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still:
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will.
But the ship, the ship is anchored safe, its voyage closed and done:
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won!
Exult, O shores! and ring, O bells!
But I, with silent tread,
Walk the spot my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
_PIONEERS! O PIONEERS! _
1.
Come, my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready;
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!
2.
For we cannot tarry here,
We must march, my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend.
Pioneers! O pioneers!
3.
O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you, Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
4.
Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
