United States

The United States is wondrous land,
Within its mighty borders grand,
They are a world unto themselves,
In South the Negro plows and delves.

Raising tobacco, sugar, cotton,
Grapes and rice too may be gotten,
The west for corn, cattle and swine,
On which millions o’er the world dine.

The silver hills of Colorado,
Equaled only by Nevada,
And o’er the world you can’t behold
Aught like California’s mines of gold.

To vast extent her exports reaches,
Of grapes and oranges and peaches,
And Florida the land of flowers
Is famous for its orange bowers.

Pennsylvania’s hills environ
Wondrous mines of coal and iron,
Great marvel of these modern days,
All you require yourselves could raise.

But still Canadians are content
With their own half of continent,
Though Uncle Sam is most wealthy,
Canada’s content and healthy.

Sam and her are blood relation,
Sprung alike from British nation,
May peaceful odes alone be sung
’Tween people of one race and tongue.

When Canada’s ten million strong,
Then none will dare to do her wrong,
Either as a youthful nation
Or in Imperial Federation.

Where this text comes from

First published in Poems of James McIntyre (1889). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/james-mcintyre_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (3)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L32.

Cite this poem

James McIntyre (1828?–1906). “United States.” First published in Poems of James McIntyre (1889). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/james-mcintyre/united-states/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

More by James McIntyre