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Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  Written in Athens

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

Written in Athens

By Joaquin (Cincinnatus Hiner) Miller (1837–1913)

SIERRAS, and eternal tents

Of snow that flash o’er battlements

Of mountains! My land of the sun,

Am I not true? have I not done

All things for thine, for thee alone,

O sun-land, sea-land, thou mine own?

From other loves and other lands,

As true, perhaps, as strong of hands,

Have I not turned to thee and thine,

O sun-land of the palm and pine,

And sung thy scenes, surpassing skies,

Till Europe lifted up her face

And marvelled at thy matchless grace,

With eager and inquiring eyes?

Be my reward some little place

To pitch my tent, some tree and vine

Where I may sit above the sea,

And drink the sun as drinking wine,

And dream, or sing some songs of thee;

Or days to climb to Shasta’s dome

Again, and be with gods at home,

Salute my mountains—clouded Hood,

Saint Helen’s in its sea of wood—

Where sweeps the Oregon, and where

White storms are in the feathered fir.