THE EMPIRE BUILDER

This is the song of the Empire Builder, Who out of the ends of the earth, Thro’ travail of war and of carnage Brings strange, new realms to birth. This is the boast of the Empire Builder: Give heed to the deeds of his hands And scorn thou not the glory he hath In his gold and his wasted lands. He hath counted his neighbors’ cattle With the cold, gray eye of greed: He hath marked for his own the fields of wheat Where he never had sown the seed: The vine-clad cot by the hillside, Where the farmer’s children play,— “This shall fit in my plan,” he said; “What use for such as they?” And so, in the dusk of evening, He brought his arméd men, And where had shone the clustering grapes There stretched a waste again. Homeless, the children wandered Thro’ the fields their father won: No more shall they feel his clasp and kiss— Aye, never beneath the sun. Vex, vex not the Empire Builder, Nor babble of Mercy’s shield; Hath he not his vaster issue— The linking of field to field? Hath he not noted the boundary That lies ’twixt “mine and thine”? Hath he not said, “’Twere better for thee If thine henceforth be mine”? And so doth the Empire Builder, From out of the ends of the earth, Thro’ travail of war and of carnage Bring strange, new realms to birth— Realms builded on broken hearthstones, The triumph of Rapine’s hour— That one may boast in the halls of Fame And sit in the seats of Power!

This is the song of the Empire Builder, Who built not of wasted lands, But who builded a kingdom of golden deeds And of things not made by hands! The fields of the spirit were his to roam, The paths where the love-flowers grew: He felt the breath of the spirits’ spring In every wind that blew:

It came not laden with dying groans And homeless orphans’ cries: It blew from the mountains of the Lord And the fields of Paradise. This is the boast of the Empire Builder Who built not of mouldering clay: That the kingdom He built, not made by hands, Shall never pass away! The mind cannot measure its boundaries, All Space is its outer gate: It is broader than ever a man conceived And more durable than Fate. This is the Empire our brother built, In His little hour of Earth, Thro’ the spirit’s travail of righteous deeds And the spirit’s glad rebirth. He had silenced the boast of the Empire Builder, With his gold and wasted lands, By his deathless kingdom of golden deeds And of things not made by hands. This is the kingdom our brother built: It is good: it hath sufficed;— For who can measure the glory he keeps With our Elder Brother, Christ?