like melted snows The rocks and chasms of forbidden mountains, And make more land for freemen! Clear-eyed, hard-muscled, dauntless hunters, Choppers of forests and tillers of fields Meet at last in a field of snow-white clover To make wise laws for states, And to teach their sons of the new West That suffrage is the right of freemen. Until the lion of Tennessee, Who crushes king-craft near the gulf. Where La Salle proclaimed the crown, And the cross, Is made the ruler of the republic By freeman suffragans, And winners of the West!  

  

  

      Father of Waters! Ever recurring symbol of wider freedom, Even to the ocean girdled earth, The out-worn rule of Florida rots your domain. But the lion of Tennessee asks: Would you take from Spain The land she has lost but in name? It shall be done in a month if you loose my sword. It was done as he said. And the sick and drunken power of Spain that clung, And sucked at the life of Chile, Peru, Argentina, Loosened under the blows of San Martin and Bolivar, Breathing the lightning thrown by Napoleon the Great On the thrones of Europe. Father of Waters! 'twas you who made us say:      No kings this side of the earth forever! One-half of the earth shall be free By our word and the might that is back of our word!  

  

  

      The falls of St. Anthony tumble the waters In laughter and tumult and roaring of voices! And the river moves in its winding channel toward the gulf, Over the breast of De Soto, By the swamp grave of La Salle! The old days sleep, the lion of Tennessee sleeps With Daniel Boone and the hunters, The rifle men, the revelers, The laughers and dancers and choppers Who climbed the crests of the Alleghenies, And poured themselves into Tennessee, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, the bountiful West. But the river never sleeps, the river flows forever, Making land forever, reclaiming the wastes of the sea. And the race never sleeps, the race moves on forever. And wars must come, as the waters must sweep away Drift-wood, dead wood, choking the strength of the river—      For Liberty never sleeps!  

  

  

      The lion of Tennessee sleeps! And over the graves of the 

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