'_There are no ghosts in America._' <br /> <br /> <br />There are no ghosts, you say, <br />To haunt her blaze of light; <br />No shadows in her day, <br />No phantoms in her night. <br />Columbus' tattered sail <br />Has passed beyond our hail. <br /> <br />What? On that magic coast, <br />Where Raleigh fought with fate, <br />Or where that Devon ghost <br />Unbarred the Golden Gate, <br />No dark, strange, ear-ringed men <br />Beat in from sea again? <br /> <br />No ghosts in Salem town <br />With silver buckled shoon? <br />No lovely witch to drown <br />Or burn beneath the moon? <br />Not even a whiff of tea, <br />On Boston's glimmering quay. <br /> <br />O, ghostly Spanish walls, <br />Where brown Franciscans glide, <br />Is there no voice that calls <br />Across the Great Divide, <br />To pilgrims on their way <br />Along the Santa Fe? <br /> <br />Then let your Pullman cars <br />Go roaring to the West, <br />Till, watched by lonelier stars, <br />The cactus lifts its crest. <br />There, on that painted plain, <br />One ghost will rise again. <br /> <br />Majestic and forlorn, <br />Wreck of a dying race, <br />The Red Man, half in scorn, <br />Shall raise his haughty face, <br />Inscrutable as the sky, <br />To watch our ghosts go by. <br /> <br />What? Is earth dreaming still? <br />Shall not the night disgorge <br />The ghosts of Bunker Hill <br />The ghosts of Valley Forge, <br />Or, England's mightiest son, <br />The ghost of Washington? <br /> <br />No ghosts where Lincoln fell? <br />No ghosts for seeing eyes? <br />I know an old cracked bell <br />Shall make ten million rise <br />When one immortal ghost <br />Calls to the slumbering host.<br /><br />Alfred Noyes<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-ghost-of-the-new-world/
