And in their trail they drew a chain
Of steel across the virgin land,
Uniting with this slender band
The eastern and the western main.

Where once the bison roamed, and woke
The heavens with his thunderous tread,
The tireless engine speeds instead,
And tosses high its plumes of smoke.

Like spider in a web, it creeps
On filmy bridge, o'er sparkling streams,
Or chasms where the sunlight gleams
Part-way, and dies amid the deeps.

It scales the rugged, snow-clad peaks,
And looks afar on East and West,
Then, like an eagle from its nest,
Darts down, and through the valley shrieks.

It was not formed by Nature's hand,
This sun-ward highway to Japan;
O'er mountain-range and prairie, man
Has forced the path his genius planned.

And Commerce, universal king,
Has followed with unnumbered needs,
And scatters everywhere the seeds
Of towns that in a night upspring.