I carry the brave and bold—­
The one who works for the nation’s bread,
The one whose past is a thing that’s dead,
The one who battles and beats ahead,
    And the one who goes for gold.

    I swing to the “Land to Be,”
I am the power that laid its floors,
I am the guide to its western stores,
I am the key to its golden doors,
    That open alone to me.

C.P.R.  “NO. 2,” EASTBOUND

    I swing to the land of morn;
The grey old east with its grey old seas,
The land of leisure, the land of ease,
The land of flowers and fruits and trees,
    And the place where we were born.

    Freighted with wealth I come;
For he who many a moon has spent
Far out west on adventure bent,
With well-worn pick and a folded tent,
    Is bringing his bullion home.

    I never will be renowned,
As my twin that swings to the western marts,
For I am she of the humbler parts,
But I am the joy of the waiting hearts;
    For I am the Homeward-bound.

GOLDEN—­OF THE SELKIRKS

A trail upwinds from Golden;
It leads to a land God only knows,
To the land of eternal frozen snows,
That trail unknown and olden.

And they tell a tale that is strange and wild—­
Of a lovely and lonely mountain child
That went up the trail from Golden.

A child in the sweet of her womanhood,
Beautiful, tender, grave and good
As the saints in time long olden.

And the days count not, nor the weeks avail;
For the child that went up the mountain trail
Came never again to Golden.

And the watchers wept in the midnight gloom,
Where the canyons yawn and the Selkirks loom,
For the love that they knew of olden.

And April dawned, with its suns aflame,
And the eagles wheeled and the vultures came
And poised o’er the town of Golden.

God of the white eternal peaks,
Guard the dead while the vulture seeks!—­
God of the days so olden.

For only God in His greatness knows
Where the mountain holly above her grows,
On the trail that leads from Golden.

THE SONGSTER

Music, music with throb and swing,
  Of a plaintive note, and long;
’Tis a note no human throat could sing,
No harp with its dulcet golden string,—­
Nor lute, nor lyre with liquid ring,
  Is sweet as the robin’s song.

He sings for love of the season
  When the days grow warm and long,
For the beautiful God-sent reason
  That his breast was born for song.

Calling, calling so fresh and clear,
  Through the song-sweet days of May;
Warbling there, and whistling here,
He swells his voice on the drinking ear,
On the great, wide, pulsing atmosphere
  Till his music drowns the day.