O to lie in long grasses!
O to dream of the plain!
Where the west wind sings as it passes
A weird and unceasing refrain;
Where the rank grass wallows and tosses,
And the plains’ ring dazzles the eye;
Where hardly a silver cloud bosses
The flashing steel arch of the sky.
To watch the gay gulls as they flutter
Like...
A brave little bird that fears not God,
A voice that breaks from the snow-wet clod
With prophecy of sunny sod,
Set thick with wind-waved goldenrod.
From the first bare clod in the raw, cold spring,
From the last bare clod, when fall winds sting,
The farm-boys hears his brave song ring,
And work for the time is a pleasant thing.
A cold coiled line of mottled lead,
He lies where grazing cattle tread,
And lifts a fanged and spiteful head.
His touch is deadly, and his eyes
Are hot with hatred and surprise—
Death waits and watches where he lies!
His hate is turned toward everything!
He is the undisputed king
Of every path and woodland spring.
...
Serene, vast head, with silver cloud of hair
Lined on the purple dusk of death,
A stern medallion, velvet set—
Old Norseman, throned, not chained upon thy chair,
Thy grasp of hand, thy hearty breath
Of welcome thrills me yet
As when I faced thee there!
Loving my plain as thou thy sea,
Facing the East as thou the West,...
All day and many days I rode,
My horse’s head set toward the sea;
And as I rode a longing came to me
That I might keep the sunset road,
Riding my horse right on and on,
O’ertake the day still lagging at the west,
And so reach boyhood from the dawn,
And be with all the days at rest.
For then the odor of the growing wheat,...
“is water nigh?”
The plainsmen cry,
As they meet and pass in the desert grass.
With finger tip
Across the lip
I ask the sombre Navajo.
The brown man smiles and answers “Sho!”
With fingers high, he signs the miles
To the desert spring,
And so we pass in the dry dead grass,...
Beneath the burning brazen sky,
The yellowed tepees stand.
Not far away a singing river
Sets through the sand.
Within the shadow of a lonely elm tree
The tired ponies keep.
The wild land, throbbing with the sun’s hot magic,
Is rapt as sleep.
From out a clump of scanty willows
A low wail floats,—
The endless...
Do you fear the force of the wind,
The slash of the rain?
Go face them and fight them,
Be savage again.
Go hungry and cold like the wolf,
Go wade like the crane:
The palms of your hands will thicken,
The skin of your cheek will tan,
You ’ll grow ragged and weary and swarthy,
But you ’ll walk like a man!
I saw these dreamers of dreams go by,
I trod in their footsteps a space;
Each marched with his eyes on the sky,
Each passed with a light on his face.
They came from the hopeless and sad,
They faced the future and gold;
Some the tooth of want’s wolf had made mad,
And some at the forge had grown old.
Behind them these serfs of...
We had been long in mountain snow,
In valleys bleak, and broad, and bare,
Where only moss and willows grow,
And no bird wings the silent air.
And so, when on our downward way
Wild roses met us, we were glad:
They were so girlish fair, so gay,
It seemed the sun had made them mad.
