BLOW, LONG TRADE WINDS of American speech,
Over this land where we can rise, unfurl
Our new and untried sails, and drive with you
Westward forever to eternity—

Land of the mountain-kindled Utah sun
Where the grey lizards flow like liquid stone,
Land of the Indian months, desirous moon
Of rutting elk, the proud head lifting and bugling,
Moon of the grass-consuming heat, chill moon
When the south-flung arrows of the wild geese fly,
Land of the Iowa cornfields endlessly rising
Out of the new-split prairie sod like reeds
Yellowly climbing from an inland ocean
That has no deep but is forever edge,
Land of Missouri hills where every man
Plows the deep furrows of his heart alone,
O land of the live machines, the ever-moving
Tireless body with dark skin of oil.

Here, in our land, we will not look back
Eastward across the old ancestral ocean
To any country by our blood abandoned
Years ago, but like our fathers turn
Again our backs on the sunrise end of earth
And march with a shrill whistling and our hands
Slouched in our pockets, where the light of the falling
Sun is a fever in our eyes, to find
The great west country of our destiny,
Carrying the whole world with us in our arms
As Clark's men carried the drummer boys in the flooded
Ohio valley before Kaskaskia.

Nations of Europe, we leave you now to drag
Your worn-out bellies on the sun-warmed rock
And huddle by the ashes of old fires
That warmed you once, swaying your shrunken bodies
And keening your thin, sad wail. The flame of life
Leaps now in us, and we will make our own
Songs of living fire from it with hands
That burn in writing them. For us the breath
That made you mighty and that gave you eyes
To see into the simple heart of the world,
That once blew strength to us through the peopled road
By which we fled away from you, is but
A blind wind staring from an empty door.

You have lived with time until it has become
Only the long hair of a lovely woman
Shaken out softly, darkly over your eyes.
For us time is a stronger, harder thing
That cannot be clenched in the sharp teeth of a word—
Time is a gleaming broad-axe, with the helve
Shaped in our hands, and we swing it from towering
Shoulders with a shout—it is a trail
That we must follow inescapably,
And yet we build it our ourselves through tangled
Underbrush, blazing the trees with white
Signs under the grey bark, for those
Who are the generations after us,
Poor men, and humble, who cannot help but follow
Down an old road they have not carved, to an end
So pitifully not of their own making—
Time, for us, is a bright ball to be thrown
Into the air until it takes the light
Of the sun and comes down radiant, to be caught.
For all our days are rip tides cutting through
The inexorable flow of history
In which you all have drowned.
Spirit of song,
Flying out westward from the time-tired lands,
You surf-beleaguered bird, beating to shore
On wind that has an ocean width behind it,
Light on our fresh and friendly beaches, there
Are the wave-scattered sticks for you to build
High in the lofty tree of our new life
Your re-creative nest.
Here we live
The full and reckless life, nothing declared
Too hard but we will give it our endeavor—
Climb to the highest hill and snare a string
Over the wind for a great kite and fly it—
Beat the wild sunlight with a brazen hammer
Into bracelets more supple than thin gold,
Shape of the tough steel moonlight, boldly bent.
An Archimedes lever to lift the world
And throw it over a shoulder for good luck—
Shatter one mountain range upon another
Because we like the clamor and the dust—
Raise the highest building in the world
To sanctify a gamble, not a god.

We have built our cities—O Manhattan towers,
Born from the arrogance of energy
That cannot stop but musty forever lunge
Higher and higher, and when its strength is gone
Feed pelican-like on the bare force of its nerves—
Chicago where the stockyards and the lake
Have not the beauty of a land across
An ocean centuries-wide, but have their own
Fierce and wilder harmony, the bastard
Child of elemental strength that thumbs
Its nose at all the smug and timid pride
Of ancient towns—Frisco where the sun
Clangs a brief moment at the Golden Gate
Before it strides away to the Orient—
New Orleans of the delta-tongued, deep mouths
That feed the hungry Mississippi throat
With the ships of seven oceans.
We have found
The machine not god or devil, but a bull
With the piston's double-chambered heart pumping
The live steam of his blood, the mighty muscles
Bunched at the shoulders and the twisted horns
Goring the trodden steel, and a ring in his nose
For the trained hand to lead him.
Out of machines,
The leaping force that springs alive and dies
Beneath the subtle fingers of a man,
And all the clamorous nervousness of cities
Where the dishevelled human spirit roams
Dark alleys with the bitter wind of pain
Blowing a burning marrow through its bones,
And life in the bodies of despairing men
Is a strange ghost haunting the flesh (O sick-for-earth
Geranium in the old tomato can
Blooming the sullen window), we shall make
A newer vision of communal man
Whose shining spade in the nation's fertile fields
will dig out and destroy the money-soured
Exhausted soil, and leave the sweet clean earth
For the plow of a newer way that will be part
Of the old American dream from which we waken
To find we are a portion of that dream.
And with the exuberance that is our blood
We shall with eager fingers grip the long
Bull whip of our faith and crack it over
The tossing, dust-parched cattle of the land,
Stampede, if it must be, to get them moving,
And drive them lowing northward on a later
Chisholm Trail, and in the long night, ride
Slowly around the sleeping herd, and sing,
To soothe the restless, a loping, high-pitched song
Intrinsic to the singer and the place.

America, turn in and find yourself.
Not a continent, but eternity, is ahead,
Over the far prairie and the hills
Where no trail leads, out to an end unknown.
Now the huge pendulum swing of history
Begins to return upon you, it is time
To leave this wandering always on the earth
And take from the hawk his flying wisdom, soar
On the keen edge of the world's wind, veer and hover
Until you take the very stars for eyes
And see below you, moving on the land
Like a gopher homeless in a new-plowed field,
The living object of your flight, the running
Spirit of the country—fold your wings
And plunge through the air to snatch it in your claws,
Swing up, and hang it on the highest peak
Where it can be a sign to every man
Like a scratched hand on a hard Sierra rock
Pointing the tortuous, faint path beyond
Tree line, into the snows, over the ridge,
And down into the dared and dreamed-of valley.

America, great glowing open hearth,
In you we will heat the cold steel of our speech,
Rolling it molten out into a mold,
Polish it to a shining length, and straddling
The continent, with hands that have been fashioned,
One from the prairie, one from the ocean, winds,
Draw back a brawny arm with a shout and hurl
The fiery spear-shaft of American song
Against the dark destruction of our doom
To burn the long, black wind of the years with flame.