With all its steely sinews set O bearded, stalwart, westmost men, Your blood's inheritance... Your heirs Know not your tombs: the great plough-shares Where you have made eternal home, And set no sign. Your epitaphs While through the green ways wandering White, starry-hearted May-time blooms She stops, she leans, she wonders why And droop and trail like wounded wing. Yea, Time, the grand old harvester, 5 The rush and rumble of the car His ghost is moving down the trees, Of bluff, bold men who dared and died Came the restless Coronado To the open Kansas plain, With his knights from sunny Spain; In an effort that, though vain, Thrilled with boldness and bravado. League by league, in aimless marching, That an unprotected sky Had for centuries been parching. 5 10 15 But their expectations, eager, Found, instead of fruitful lands, Roamed o'er deserts dry and meager. Back to scenes more trite, yet tragic, Not for them to sow the seeds From which empires grow like magic. Never land so hunger stricken They could conquer heat or cold Die for glory or for gold But not make a desert quicken. Thus Quivera was forsaken; And the world forgot the place Came and bade the desert waken. And it bade the climate vary; And awaiting no reply It with plows besieged the sky — 5 10 15 Then the vitreous sky relented, Whence had gone the knights of Spain, Sturdy are the Saxon faces, Cities grow where stunted birches Orchard slopes and schools and churches. Deeper grows the soil and truer, 20 Blander grows the sky, and bluer. We have made the State of Kansas, Ripened hopes and richer stanzas. SIDNEY LANIER SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHE Out of the hills of Habersham, Down the valleys of Hall, I hurry amain to reach the plain, Split at the rock and together again, All down the hills of Habersham, All through the valleys of Hall, The rushes cried, Abide, abide, The wilful water weeds held me thrall, The laving laurel turned my tide, The ferns and the fondling grass said, Stay, The dewberry dipped for to work delay, And the little reeds sighed, Abide, abide, Here in the valleys of Hall. High o'er the hills of Habersham, The hickory told me manifold Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall Wrought me her shadowy self to hold, The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine, |