260 MY LIFE [Chap. 



by Henry Russell, and are often thought to have been 

 composed by him. These songs have a charm and a music 

 in the sentiments and the rhythm, which owe nothing to the 

 music. What can be more inspiring than the last lines of 

 u Cheer, Boys ! Cheer ! "— 



u Here we had toil and little to reward it, 

 But there shall plenty smile upon our pain, 

 And ours shall be the mountain and the forest, 

 And boundless prairies ripe with golden grain." 



Or the first verse of " To the West "— 



" To the West ! to the West ! to the land of the free, 

 Where mighty Missouri rolls down to the sea, 

 Where a man is a man if he's willing to toil, 

 And the humblest may gather the fruits of the soil. 

 Where children are blessings, and he who hath most, 

 Hath aid for his fortune and riches to boast ; 

 Where the young may exult, and the aged may rest, 

 Away, far away, to the Land of the West ! " 



Every fact, every hope in these songs were literally true 

 when they were written, as contemporary American literature 

 clearly shows, but the growth of capitalism and land 

 monopoly during the last thirty years has rendered them 

 almost a mockery. 



Mackay had not the magic of words and phrases, or the 

 deep idealism which characterize the highest poetry, and 

 could not therefore rank with Tennyson, William Watson, 

 Lowell, or Edwin Markham ; but he was the equal of Long- 

 fellow or Scott, and perhaps superior to both in the infinitely 

 varied matter of his verse. His ballads and stories were 

 unsurpassed for vigour and originality of treatment — such as 

 his " Invasion of Scotland by the Northmen," his " Thor's 

 Hammer," and his " Lament of Cona for the Unpeopling of 

 the Highlands ; " while ■ The Man in the Dead Sea," " The 

 Interview," " The Building of the House," " We are Wiser 

 than we Know," and ■ Eternal Justice " deal with some of 

 those grand problems in the elucidation of which the poet 

 is so often the seer. At my request he wrote for us some 



