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With all its steely sinews set
Against the living forests. Hear
The shouts, the shots of pioneer,
The rended forests, rolling wheels,
As if some half-checked army reels,
Recoils, redoubles, comes again,
Loud-sounding like a hurricane.

O bearded, stalwart, westmost men,
So tower-like, so Gothic built!
A kingdom won without the guilt
Of studied battle, that hath been

Your blood's inheritance... Your heirs

Know not your tombs: the great plough-shares
Cleave softly through the mellow loam

Where you have made eternal home,

And set no sign. Your epitaphs
Are writ in furrows. Beauty laughs

While through the green ways wandering
Beside her love, slow gathering

White, starry-hearted May-time blooms
Above your lowly levelled tombs;
And then below the spotted sky

She stops, she leans, she wonders why
The ground is heaved and broken so,
And why the grasses darker grow

And droop and trail like wounded wing.

Yea, Time, the grand old harvester,
Has gathered you from wood and plain.
We call to you again, again;

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The rush and rumble of the car
Comes back in answer. Deep and wide
The wheels of progress have passed on;
The silent pioneer is gone.

His ghost is moving down the trees,
And now we push the memories

Of bluff, bold men who dared and died
In foremost battle, quite aside.

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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,
Knowing scarcely where or why,
Crossed they uplands drear and dry,

That an unprotected sky

Had for centuries been parching.

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But their expectations, eager,

Found, instead of fruitful lands,
Shallow streams and shifting sands,
Where the buffalo in bands

Roamed o'er deserts dry and meager.

Back to scenes more trite, yet tragic,
Marched the knights with armor'd steeds;
Not for them the quiet deeds;

Not for them to sow the seeds

From which empires grow like magic.

Never land so hunger stricken
Could a Latin race re-mold;

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
Through the lapse of time and space.
Then the blue-eyed Saxon race

Came and bade the desert waken.

And it bade the climate vary;

And awaiting no reply
From the elements on high,

It with plows besieged the sky —
Vexed the heavens with the prairie.

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Then the vitreous sky relented,
And the unacquainted rain
Fell upon the thirsty plain

Whence had gone the knights of Spain,
Disappointed, discontented.

Sturdy are the Saxon faces,
As they move along in line;
Bright the rolling cutters shine,
Charging up the State's incline,
As an army storms a glacis.

Cities grow where stunted birches
Hugged the shallow water line;
And the deepening rivers twine
Past the factory and mine,

Orchard slopes and schools and churches.

Deeper grows the soil and truer,
More and more the prairie teems
With a fruitage as of dreams;
Clearer, deeper, flow the streams,

20 Blander grows the sky, and bluer.

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We have made the State of Kansas,
And to-day she stands complete —
First in freedom, first in wheat;
And her future years will meet

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,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,

Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a lover's pain to attain the plain
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the valleys of Hall.

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 hills of Habersham,

Here in the valleys of Hall.

High o'er the hills of Habersham,
And oft in the valleys of Hall,

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,

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