“Up along the hostile mountains where the hair-poised snowslide shivers—
Down and through the big fat marshes that the virgin ore bed stains,
Till I heard the mile-wide muttering of unimagined rivers
And beyond the nameless timber saw illimitable plains.
Plotted sites of future cities, traced the easy grades between ’em;
Watched unharnessed rapids wasting fifty thousand head an hour;
Counted leagues of water frontage through the axe-ripe woods that screen ’em—
Saw the plant to feed a people—up and waiting for the power!”