California's Capital Region: The Sacramento Valley

A CITY OF C ALIFORNIA
O, city of a poet’s dream! By mountains girt about, with valleys full of glossy gleam or orange trees,
That often seem to raise their arms with offerings of sweet and golden profferings, too fair for gods
To doubt.
Grand mountains rise on either side, snow-capped in summer days and far away to distant tide,
Throbbing, passionate, like virgin bride, billowy mists of green and blue rise and fall with every hue
That artist sees in blended rays.
And where on heights Diana drove now man hath wrought in nature’s ways, fair gardens, fit for gods
To rove, through airy aisles and lemon grove to smell the balm like that which blows from Thessaly.
Man here forgets his shadowy woes, and dreams with love of coming days.
And looking off where vision ends, on rolling depths the eye alights, while azure blue of heaven
Bends, down, down, and then with ocean blends, until the sight of man is dim, and mystic thoughts
Steal over him and raise him up to awful heights.
O, city of a favored land! O, virgin ne’er to mate! Thy mountains ‘round thee grimly stand, thy
Fairness is on every hand, while Star of Empire, westward bent, unto thy name acclaim has lent, thy
Future shall be great.
—Benjamin Franklin Field (1868)
CALIFORNIA’S CAPITAL REGION - THE SACRAMENTO VALLEY
36