I.
O not unsung, not unrenowned,
Ere brave Saint Clair to his reward had gone,
Or yet from yond the ample bound
Of green Ohio's hunting ground
Tecumseh faced the Anglo-Saxon dawn,
My City Beautiful was throned and crowned;
Then all Hesperia confest,
With jubilant acclaim,
Her sovereign and inviolable name,
Queen of the West!

II.
Upon the proud young bosom she was nursed,
Of the Republic, in the wild
Security of God's primeval wood:
Illustrious Child!
By Liberty begotten, first
Of all that august civic sisterhood
Born since the grand Ordain of Eighty-Seven
Promulged its mandatory plevin,
Which fain had reconciled
Human decretals and the voice of Heaven.

III.
Baptismal sponsors gave
Her virtuous patronymical and brave,
From hoary chronicle and legend caught,
And blazon of that laureled son of Mars,
Whose purple heraldry of scars,
(From fields of valorous duty brought,)
Enriched patrician Rome with dower
Of ancient honorable power.
The half-tradition old
Of Cincinnatus told,
Who cast aside the victor's brand and took
In peaceful grasp the whetted pruning-hook,
And drave the plowshare through the furrowed mold,
Was golden legend unto Washington
And his compeers in patriotic arms,
Who flung the sword and musket down,
(Their martial fields of glory won,)
Shouldered the ax and spade,
To wage a conquering crusade
Against brute forces and insensate foes:
Beseiged the stubborn shade,
Subdued their savage farms,
Builded the busy town,
And bade the desert blossom as the rose.

IV.
Upgrew a fair Emporium beside
Ohio's amber flood, as by the yellow tide
Of storied Tiber sprung, of yore,
On lowland and acropolis,
The elder world's metropolis,
Along the imperial shore!

V.
Yet not of Latian swarm were they
Who hived the early honey of the West;
They boasted Borean sires of strenuous clay;
Long-striding men of soldierly broad breast,
Of dauntless brain and all-achieving hands,
Fetched out of British and Teutonic lands,
Schooled for command by knowing to obey,
Inured to fight and disciplined to pray,
Columbian leaders of potential sway,
Survivors of the European Best!

VI.
With brand desire and purpose vast,
To purge from dross the metal true,
And pour the seven-times-molten Past
In perfect patterns of the New,
They led the migratory van;
And every hero carried in his heart
The constitution and politic chart,
The code, the creed, the high-imagined plan
Of that Ideal State whereunto wend
The hopeful dreams of universal man,
And whither all the ages tend.

VII.
Such the stock adventure brought
Over Allegheny ranges,
By the Revolution taught
War and Fortune's bitter changes:
They hewed the forest jungle, broke
The wild, reluctant plain;
With rhythmic sinews, stroke on stroke,
They cradled in the grain;
The masted barge on gliding keel
Rich bales of traffic bore;
The laden steamer's cataract wheel
Befoamed the River shore;
Anon, as rolls the thunder-peal,
As glares the lightning flame,
O'er trammeled miles of outspun steel
The Locomotive came!-
Electron's viewless messengers, more fleet
Than herald Mercury of winged feet,
Far-flashing, multiplied the thrilling word,
Freedom! and Freedom !-Freedom, evermore!-
Which all the Appalachian echoes heard
And broad Atlantic's rumorous billows bore
Persuasive to his utmost peopled shore,
Tempting shrewd Mammon, and with louder voice
Bidding courageous Poverty rejoice:
Then Westward ho! the Movers found their goal,
Ohio, thine auspicious Metropole!-
Nor landmark-trees blazed by his hatchet blade,
Nor scanty bounds by Filson's chain surveyed,
Might longer then suffice as border-line;
Not Eastern Row nor Western, could confine
Emption of homestead, or sequestered hold
Salubrious Mohawk's northward-spreading wold:
A century's growth, down crashed the 'builder Oak,'
The quarry from Silurian slumber woke,
The town, advancing, saw the farms retreat,
The turnpike rumbled, now a paven street:-
With bold and eager Emulation rode
Young Enterprise; keen Industry and Wealth
Sought new employ and prosperous abode
With blithe Success and robust Hope and Health,
In verdant vale where through Dameta flowed,
Or high upon the crofts and bowery hills,
Above the gardens and the rural mills
Of Mahketewa's brook and affluent rills:
Their palaces adorned each rampart green,
Their cottages in every dell were seen,
O'er which the well-beloved Queen
Holds chartered reign
And eminent domain!

VIII.
Today wouldst thou behold
What ensigns of magnificence and might
Her spacious realms of urban grandeur show?
Choose for thy belvedere some foreland bold,
Auburn, or Echo, or aerial height
Of Sun-clad Edens' blossomy plateau:-
There bid thy wildered gaze
Explore the checquered maze,
Unending street, innumerable square,
Park, courtyard, terrace, fountain, esplanade,
Gay boulevard and thronging thoroughfare,
Far villas peering out from bosky shade,
Cliff-clambering roads and shimmering waterways:
Lo, Architecture here and Sculpture vie
With rival works of carven wonder shown
In sumptuous granite and marmorean stone;
Behold stupendous where proud citadels
Of legionary Trade aspire the sky,
And where Religion's sanctuaries raise
Their domed and steepled votive splendors high:
(Upon the hush of Sabbath morning swells
How sweet their chime of tolerant bells!)

IX.
Seen dimly over many a roofy mile,
Where hills obscure environ vales remote,
Rise colonnaded stacks of chimney pile,
Above whose dusky summits float
Pennons of smoke, like signal flags unfurled
Atop their truce-proclaiming towers,
By the allied triumphal powers
Of Science, Labor and mechanic Skill,
Subduing nature to man's godlike will;
Forth yonder myriad( factories are whirled,
By steam and lightning's aid,
Invention's yield perpetual, conveyed
Beyond strange seas to buy the bartered world!-
Hark, the hoarse whistle, and dull, distant roar
Of rumbling freight-trains, ponderous and slow,
Monsters of iron joint, which come and go
Obedient to the watchful semaphore
That curbs their guided course along the shore.
Edged by the margin of the southern River
Now golden gleam, now silvern flash and quiver
The molten mirrors of its burnished tide
Whereover costly argosies of Commerce ride!

X.
Thrice-happy City, dearest to my heart,
Who, showering benizon upon her own,
Endows her opulent material mart
With lavish purchase from each ransacked zone,
Yet ne'er forgot exchange of rarer kind,
By trade-winds from all ports of Wisdom blown-
Imperishable merchandise of Mind:
Man may not live by bread alone,
But every word of God shall be made known!-
Thy voyagers of Argonaut,
Enriched with dazzling ransom of their toil
In ravaged Colchis, costlier guerdon brought
As trophy home than prize of golden spoil:
Gems from the trove of Truth, for ages sought,
Precious beyond appraise in sordid fee;
Audit of Culture, treasury of Art:
Whate'er the Daughters of Mnemosyne
In templed grove of Academe impart:
Heroic Song, Philosophy divine,
Precept oracular, Narration old,
Or aught by sage Antiquity extolled,
Or murmured at Apollo's lucent shrine.
Here Education rounds a cosmic plan,
Enough omnipotent aye to create
From nebulous childhood, ordered worlds of man,
Evolving Scholar, Citizen, and State.
Each liberal science, every craft austere,
All sedulous joys of book and pen are here,
Delights that charm the reason or engage
Imagination's quickened eye or ear:-
Pencil of limner, sculptor's cunning steel,
And whirling marvel of Palissy's wheel;-
Drama, in pomp of gorgeous equipage,
Ostends upon the applauded stage
Phantasmagoria of the living Age;
And, by celestial votaries attended,
Impassioned Music, from the spheres descended,
Abiding here in the tutelar control,
Commands orchestral diapasons pour
Exalted figue and symphony along
Resounding aisle and bannered corridor;
Or, while the organ's mellow thunders roll,
She bids enraptured voices thrill the soul
With heaven-born harmony of choral song!

XI.
O Cincinnati! whom the Pioneers,
How many weary lustrums long ago,
With orisons and dedicated tears,
Blest, kneeling when the pure December snow
Melted, for pity, into drops of Spring,
My heart renews their throbbing fervor now,
Their toil, their love, their hope, remembering,
I breathe their patriotic ardor and their vow,
Their exultation and prophetic faith I sing!-
For they were Freedom's vanguard, and they bore
Her starry flag and led her empire West,
Ere yet the wounds of sacrificial war
Had healed upon thy Mother-Country's breast;
Courageous they and loyal! evermore
Bold for The people! valorous and strong
Against embattled Myrmidons of Wrong:
Forever honorable, true, and just!
Historial years above their crumbling Just,
On wings of peace and wings of war have flown.
Returning Aprils green and grateful sod
There where with hands that knew the ax to wield
They pledged a log-hewn temple unto God
Or ere they thrice had husked the ripened field
Or promised harvest o'er the tilth had sown:
Seers, Legislators, Politicians, these,
From ancestors indomitable sprung!
Who, as with brawn of sinewy grip they swung
Their polished helves and launcht the steely edge,
Invading so the monarchy of trees,
Or smote with ponderous maul the iron wedge-
Labored meanwhile within the spacious Mind,
Planning and building, for their fellow-kind,
Futurity colossal, on the vast
Foundations of immemorial past.