,,; 
 
 Sunfi 
 
 A BooH c 
 
 Kansas 
 Po*
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 SUNFLOWERS
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 A Book 
 
 of 
 
 KANSAS 
 POEMS 
 
 Selected 
 
 by 
 
 WILLARD 
 WATTLES 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 A. C. McCLURG
 
 Copyright 
 
 A. C. McClurg & Co. 
 1916 
 
 Published November, 1916 
 
 *' ' ' ' \ "','''< '<',", '-'/'; r ' 
 
 W. . HALL ntlNTINS COMPANY, CHICAGO
 
 Acknowledgments 
 
 I am indebted to Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, and 
 <;. to Mitchell Kennerley of New York City for per- 
 < mission to use Lindsay's Kansas from The Forum 
 , and from Adventures While Preaching the Gospel 
 of Beauty. To Smart Set for Harry Kemp's Kan- 
 \sas and London, and for my poem, Manhood. To 
 ^Harper's Weekly for my Sunflowers. To The In 
 dependent for my Carrie Nation. 
 J> To Mr. A. G. Allerton of Hamlin, Kansas, I owe 
 -^permission to use the poems of Ellen P. Allerton. 
 r>Mr. Charles H. Manley of Junction City, Kansas, 
 ^has allowed the use of the poems of Amanda T. 
 <^ Jones, all four of which originally appeared in the 
 -^ Century Magazine. 
 
 " i I use Funston by James J. Montague as it origi- 
 
 i^nally appeared in the New York American. To C. L. 
 
 Edson I am indebted for sixteen poems from The 
 
 ^Kansas City Star and The New York Evening Mail; 
 
 $0 the American Magazine for Edson's The Prom- 
 
 yse of Bread. My own Kansas verse has appeared 
 
 in The University Kansan, The Graduate Magazine, 
 
 The Journal-World, The Topeka Capital, and The 
 
 Springfield Republican. 
 
 W. W. 
 
 155696
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Preface to First Edition 
 
 To the people of Kansas I dedicate the labor of 
 five years; not mine alone, but that of a group of 
 friends who have equally given of their time to this 
 little volume. At first, my only intention was to 
 collect the lyric verse of living Kansas writers; but 
 as the conception grew, it seemed possible to include 
 the work of earlier men and women who had sensed 
 the significance of our state and the relatives of 
 those early authors have added their assistance to 
 that of my other friends. 
 
 Yet, in no way is this collection to be regarded as a 
 complete anthology of Kansas verse. My earlier 
 intention has restricted my choice to such poems as 
 seem to be especially interpretative of the state, in 
 the way Miss Esther M. Clark's Call of Kansas is 
 interpretative. I have for that reason omitted some 
 of our finest Kansas poetry, such as Eugene F. 
 Ware's famous Washerwoman's Song* for others 
 of his poems which are especially local in their ap 
 peal. Believing that provincialism is as much of an 
 essential in literature as it is a bane in morality, I 
 have chosen those poems that smack unmistakably of 
 our Kansas soil and are close to the grass-roots. It 
 will be the task of some other laborer, when our lit 
 erature shall have been more completely written, to 
 
 * Included in the new edition. 
 
 VI
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 garner in future harvest-fields the richest of our 
 grain. 
 
 That day I believe will come. Much more has al 
 ready been done than many of us realize. A host of 
 devoted men and women, among them Richard Realf , 
 Ellen Allerton, and Amanda T. Jones, not forgetting 
 that New England champion of our early liberties, 
 John G. Whittier, has already set the name of Kansas 
 in " song and oratory." I need not mention the 
 names of Paine, Ingalls, Mason, Ware, White, Howe, 
 Morgan, Harger, McCarter, and Carruth. 
 
 Are these all ? There is even now a younger group, 
 and among them Harry Kemp, Esther M. Clark, 
 Margaret Lynn, and C. L. Edson, now of the New 
 York Evening Mail. What they are doing is known 
 beyond the barb wire fences of our state. Another 
 westerner, though not a native, has interpreted the 
 message and significance of Kansas, and is already 
 acknowledged as a vital minister of the Gospel of 
 Beauty and Democracy. To Mr. Nicholas Vachel 
 Lindsay are due the thanks of the State of Kansas 
 as well as the thanks of America for his even broader 
 service. After Walt Whitman, Harry Kemp, Lind 
 say, and Witter Bynner, may be looked to as the 
 staunchest servants of an Ideal Commonwealth 
 among the poets of America, It has been my priv 
 ilege to know the three now living, and through John 
 Burroughs to know the master of them all. Except 
 for the encouragement of such men, and of William 
 
 vu
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Herbert Carruth and William Hayes Ward, veteran 
 editor of The Independent, I doubt if this collection 
 would have been possible. 
 
 To three friends I owe a special debt. In 1911, 
 Harry Kemp was one of a group of six at the Uni 
 versity of Kansas to publish a volume called Songs 
 from the Hill. At that time, in our pardonable en 
 thusiasm, we argued that, since the centers of Amer 
 ican literature had moved in the past from New York 
 in the days of Irving and Cooper to New England in 
 the days of Hawthorne and Emerson; thence in a 
 later day to Indiana and Chicago; overlooking the 
 fact that California has developed a literature of her 
 own, that the next logical camping place of the muses 
 should be on the banks of the " Kaw," as we eupho 
 niously christen our muddy Kansas river. After Hy 
 ing for three years in New England, I am not so 
 certain that we were entirely wrong. " If that be 
 treason, make the most of it." Certainly, I shall feel 
 that this little book is in some way the fulfillment of 
 that enthusiastic vision of Harry Kemp. 
 
 Two years ago, while Kemp was at Helmetta, New 
 Jersey, he wrote at my request a poem Kansas which 
 I print in thife volume as the feature poem. The 
 poem is already known to the state through the 
 newspapers, but I have the privilege of giving it the 
 first permanent publication. I received yesterday 
 from New York the following telegram from Kemp 
 in regard to the poem : " Yes, I wrote it for you." 
 
 VIll
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Without the aid of Miss Esther M. Clark this book 
 could not have been prepared. She has written let 
 ters, prepared my copy, and helped to read my proof. 
 I cannot sufficiently thank her. I can do it best in 
 verse. 
 
 To Ivan Shuler, my friend and schoolmate, I am 
 indebted for the drawings * on which he spent three 
 years of patient labor. He, like myself, was reared 
 on a Kansas farm, and is peculiarly fitted by that 
 inheritance as well as by his training in the art insti 
 tutes of Chicago and New York, to interpret the 
 spirit of Kansas. It is my highest hope that this book 
 will bring him the recognition he deserves. Julian 
 Street has said in Colliers Weekly that Kansas has 
 little or no original Kansas art and Julian Street 
 is more or less right. Julian Street is a journalist 
 and his business is to report facts as he finds them. 
 But if I may play the prophet as he the reporter, I 
 would answer all critics of a raw and crude civiliza 
 tion such as is unquestionably ours in aesthetic 
 matters, in the words of Harry Kemp: 
 
 " Let other countries glory in their Past, 
 But Kansas glories in her days to be." 
 
 But now to the people of Kansas I must say, " That 
 depends on us " on every Kansan whose duty it is 
 to support the cultural and educative institutions of 
 
 * Omitted from second edition on account of change of format. 
 
 IX
 
 his state, to bring to the consideration of public ques 
 tions a mind unswayed by provincialism or fanati 
 cism, with the simultaneous obligation of not forget 
 ting, when that culture shall have been attained, that 
 the source of strength and beauty alike is in the soil 
 from which we spring. Whenever a culture goes 
 to seed at the top, it becomes a menace to society; 
 and if the choice were given me of seeing in Kansas 
 what I have seen of culture in another section of 
 America and I do not mean New England I 
 should say, " Culture be hanged give me the 
 prairie-dogs." 
 
 And here I wish to explain that whatever I have 
 said in my own verse in contrasting the East with the 
 West is not leveled at the people of the East ; for my 
 three years in Amherst, Massachusetts, were three 
 of the happiest and most valuable of my life. In 
 many ways the East is kinder than the West What 
 I do object to in the East is the mental provincialism * 
 of her people, which is as marked as the aesthetic 
 provincialism of the West that sort of attitude on 
 the part of the average easterner which makes him 
 
 * August 19, 1916. A good friend of mine from Massachusetts 
 who has just returned with me from two months of harvesting, 
 haying, and ranching in Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and 
 Nebraska, objects to my saying that easterners are "mentally 
 provincial." I think we all believe, for that matter, that every 
 where "folks is folks," that when we know a people well enough, 
 differences disappear. 
 
 Let East come West, and West go East: 
 There is room for both at the wedding feast.
 
 look upon the Hudson river as the western boundary 
 of the habitable globe. Fortunately, that attitude is 
 even now changing toward a broader Americanism. 
 There is none of us who need not be reminded that 
 " there is neither East nor West," and that men are 
 not citizens of Kansas or of Manhattan only, but cit 
 izens of America, and after that citizens of the 
 world. Not in one generation alone has the query 
 risen, " Can any good come out of Nazareth? " 
 
 This book goes from me to the people of Kansas. 
 It is no longer my property. There is on it no copy 
 right, f I shall feel fortunate if I sell enough of 
 these copies to pay my printer, and he is a very good 
 printer, an editor and my friend Mr. W. C. Simons 
 and Mr. J. L. Brady, for there are two of "him." 
 They, too, have made this collection possible, because 
 they believe in me and in the people of Kansas. 
 These are your poets and your poems. What will 
 ydu do with them? 
 
 WILLARD WATTLES. 
 Lawrence, Kansas, 
 October 18, 1914. 
 
 t Second edition copyrighted by A. C. McClurg & Co. 
 
 XI
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Dedication to Second Edition 
 
 Kansas, queen of the golden prairies, 
 Central heart of the glowing West, 
 Steadfast love that never varies, 
 Mother of the ample breast, 
 
 We, thy sons and daughters raise thee 
 Glory and thanksgiving song 
 
 Not on our lips the power to praise thee ; 
 To deeds alone does the right belong. 
 
 Born in the faith our fathers cherished, 
 Circled in girdling walls of fire; 
 
 One by one our mothers perished, 
 Lifting thee nearer the heart's desire. 
 
 Queen and mother, now renewing 
 All the pledge of that nobler race, 
 
 Strengthen us for the daily doing 
 Homely things with a cheerful face. 
 
 xn
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Not in pride of the wealth you gave t*5, 
 Not in boasting of easy tongue; 
 
 Only love and labor save us, 
 Set us high in the stars among. 
 
 WiUard Wattles 
 
 Xlll
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Preface to Second Edition 
 
 That this collection of Kansas poems is entering 
 its second edition is due to the kindness of many 
 Kansans, not the last of whom are the Kansas edi 
 tors. To W. C. Simons and to William Allen White 
 I am especially indebted for unwavering assistance. 
 
 This edition contains a number of additions and 
 corrections. Through permission of The Smart Set 
 I use Harry Kemp's poem, The Harvest Hand. Mr. 
 C. 'L. Edson's poem, Corn, here receives its first 
 printing in completed form. Mr. Edson's contribu 
 tions have, to my mind, particular historical value in 
 their local color. I am adding other poems by Rose 
 Morgan, Anne Reece Pugh, and Walt Mason; also 
 four poems by Dorothy Statton, a poet new to the 
 Kansas public and deserving of recognition. The 
 most important single addition is Eugene Ware's 
 Washerwoman's Song, about which there have been 
 many inquiries as to why it did not appear in the 
 first edition. 
 
 The interest of this book has been local ; only those 
 who know our state intimately can know what is in 
 these pages. John Burroughs has told me that our 
 straight roads depress him; "they are laid out like 
 a checker-board." I gave him my Prairie Wind and 
 he said, " Perhaps there is some beauty there, after 
 all." The lyric delicacy of our prairie life is some- 
 
 XJV
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 times overwhelmed in the epic sweep of our plains 
 and our horizons ; but it is not lost, only waiting for 
 the wise discoverer. Those who have lived here will 
 know .what we have found. 
 
 WILLARD WATTLES. 
 June 8, 1916. 
 
 XV
 
 Kansas 
 
 Not for what she hath done for me, 
 
 Though it be great, 
 For what she is, her majesty, 
 
 I love my State. 
 
 Thomas Emmet Dewey 
 
 xvi
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Surfeited here with beauty, and the sensuous-sweet 
 
 perfume, 
 Borne in from a thousand gardens and orchards of 
 
 orange-bloom ; 
 Awed by the silent mountains, stunned by the 
 
 breakers' roar 
 The restless ocean pounding and tugging away at 
 
 the shore 
 I lie on the warm sand-beach and hear, above the 
 
 cry of the sea, 
 The voice of the prairie calling, 
 
 Calling me. 
 
 Sweeter to me than the salt sea spray, the fragrance 
 
 of summer rains ; 
 Nearer my heart than these mighty hills are the 
 
 windswept Kansas plains; 
 Dearer the sight of a shy, wild rose, by the 
 
 roadside's dusty way, 
 Than all the splendor of poppy-fields, ablaze in the 
 
 sun of May.
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Gay as the bold poinsettia is, and the burden of 
 
 pepper trees, 
 The sunflower, tawny and gold and brown, is richer, 
 
 to me, than these. 
 And rising ever above the song of the hoarse, 
 
 insistent sea, 
 The voice of the prairie calling, 
 
 Calling me. 
 
 Kansas, beloved Mother, today in an alien 
 
 land, 
 Yours is the name I have idly traced with a bit of 
 
 wood in the sand, 
 The name that flung from a scornful lip will make 
 
 the hot blood start ; 
 The name that is graven, hard and deep, on the core 
 
 of my loyal heart 
 O, higher, clearer and stronger yet, than the boom 
 
 of the savage sea, 
 The voice of the prairie calling, 
 
 Calling me. 
 
 Esther M. Clark
 
 Kansas 
 
 Let other countries glory in their Past, 
 But Kansas glories in her days to be, 
 In her horizons limitless and vast, 
 Her plains that storm the senses like the sea; 
 She has no ruins gray that men revere 
 Her Time is "Now," Her Heritage is "Here." 
 
 Harry Kemp 
 
 Morning in Kansas 
 
 There are lands beyond the ocean which are gray 
 beneath their years, where a hundred generations 
 learned to sow and reap and spin; where the sons 
 of Shem and Japhet wet the furrow with their 
 tears and the noontide is departed, and the night 
 is closing in. 
 
 Long ago the shadows lengthened in the lands 
 across the sea, and the dusk is now enshrouding 
 regions nearer home,' alas ! There are long de 
 serted homesteads in this country of the free but 
 it's morning here in Kansas, and the dew is on the 
 grass. 
 
 It is morning here in Kansas, and the break 
 fast bell is rung! We are not yet fairly started
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 on the work we mean to do; we have all day be 
 fore us, for the morning is but young, and there's 
 hope in every zephyr, and the skies are bright and 
 blue. 
 
 It is morning here in Kansas, and the dew is 
 on the sod; as the builders of an empire it is ours 
 to do our best; with our hands at work in Kan 
 sas, and our faith and trust in God, we shall not 
 be counted idle when the sun sinks in the West. 
 
 Walt Mason 
 
 Three States 
 
 Of all the states, but three will live in story; 
 Old Massachusetts with her Plymouth Rock, 
 And old Virginia with her noble stock, 
 And Sunny Kansas with her woes and glory; 
 These three will live in song and oratory, 
 While all the others, with their idle claims, 
 Will only be remembered as mere names. 
 
 Eugene F. Ware
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Kansas and London 
 
 crow 
 
 I sat upon a hill all alone long ago, .... 
 But I never felt so lonely and so out of God's way 
 As here, where I brush elbows with a thousand 
 
 every day. 
 
 Harry Kemp 
 
 Opportunity 
 
 Master of human destinies am II 
 
 Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait 
 Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate 
 
 Deserts and seas remote, and passing by 
 Hovel and mart and palace, soon or late 
 I knock unbidden once at every gate ! 
 
 If sleeping, wake; if feasting, rise before 
 I turn away. It is the hour of fate, 
 And they who follow me reach every state 
 
 Mortals desire, and conquer every foe 
 
 Save death ; but those who doubt or hesitate, 
 Condemned to failure, penury, and woe, 
 
 Seek me in vain and uselessly implore; 
 I answer not, and I return no more. 
 
 John J. IngaUs
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Each in His Own Tongue 
 
 A fire-mist and a planet, 
 
 A crystal and a cell, 
 A jellyfish and a saurian, 
 
 And caves where the cavemen dwell; 
 Then a sense of law and beauty 
 
 And a face turned from the clod 
 Some call it Evolution, 
 
 And others call it God. 
 
 A haze on the far horizon, 
 
 The infinite, tender sky, 
 The ripe, rich tints of the cornfields, 
 
 And the wild geese sailing high; 
 And all over upland and lowland, 
 
 The charm of the goldenrod 
 Some of us call it Autumn, 
 
 And others call it God. 
 
 Like tides on a crescent sea-beach, 
 
 When the moon is new and thin, 
 Into our hearts high yearnings 
 
 Come welling and surging in: 
 Come from the mystic ocean 
 
 Whose rim no foot has trod 
 Some of us call it Longing, 
 
 And others call it God.
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 A picket frozen on duty, 
 
 A mother starved for her brood, 
 Socrates drinking the hemlock, 
 
 And Jesus on the rood; 
 And millions who, humble and nameless, 
 
 The straight, hard pathway plod 
 Some call it Consecration, 
 
 And others call it God. 
 
 William Herbert Carruth 
 
 Kansas 
 
 O, I have walked in Kansas 
 Through many a harvest field 
 And piled the sheaves of glory there 
 And down the wild rows reeled: 
 
 Each sheaf a little yellow sun, 
 A heap of hot-rayed gold; 
 Each binder like Creation's hand 
 To mould suns, as of old. 
 
 Straight overhead the orb of noon 
 Beat down with brimstone breath; 
 The desert wind from south and west 
 Was blistering flame and death.
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Yet it was gay in Kansas, 
 A-fighting that strong sun; 
 And I and many a fellow-tramp 
 Defied that wind and won. 
 
 And we felt free in Kansas 
 From any sort of fear, 
 For thirty thousand tramps like us 
 There harvest every year. 
 
 She stretches arms for them to come, 
 
 She roars for helpers then, 
 
 And so it is in Kansas 
 
 That tramps, one month, are men. 
 
 We sang in burning Kansas 
 
 The songs of Sabbath-school, 
 
 The " Day-Star " flashing in the East, 
 
 The " Vale of Eden " cool. 
 
 We sang in splendid Kansas 
 " The flag that set us free " 
 That march of fifty thousand men 
 With Sherman -to the sea. 
 
 We feasted high in Kansas 
 And had much milk and meat. 
 The tables 'groaned to give us power 
 Wherewith to save the wheat.
 
 Our beds were sweet alfalfa hay 
 Within the barn-loft wide. 
 The loft-doors opened out upon 
 The endless wheat-field tide. 
 
 I loved to watch the wind-mills spin 
 And watch that big moon rise. 
 I dreamed and dreamed with lids half-shut, 
 The moonlight in my eyes. 
 
 For all men dream in Kansas, 
 By noonday and by night, 
 By sunrise yellow, red and wild, 
 And moonrise wild and white. 
 
 The wind would drive the glittering clouds, 
 The cottonwoods would croon, 
 And past the sheaves and through the leaves 
 Came whispers from the moon. 
 
 Nicholas Vachel Lindsay
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 When the Sunflowers Bloom 
 
 I've been off on a journey; I jes' got home today; 
 I traveled east, an' north, an' south, an' every other 
 
 way; 
 
 I seen a heap of country, an' cities on the boom, 
 But I want to be in Kansas when the 
 Sun*- 
 
 Flowers 
 Bloom. 
 
 You may talk about yer lilies, yer vi'lets and yer 
 
 roses, 
 Yer asters, an* yer jassymins, an' all the other 
 
 posies ; 
 I'll allow they all air beauties an' full 'er sweet 
 
 perfume, 
 
 But there's none of them a patchin' to the 
 Sun- 
 Flower's 
 Bloom. 
 
 Oh, it's nice among the mount'ins, but I sorter felt 
 
 shet in ; 
 T'ud be nice upon the seashore ef it wasn't for the 
 
 din; 
 While the prairies air so quiet, an' there's allers 
 
 lots o' room, 
 
 JO
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Oh, it's nicer still in Kansas when the 
 Sun- 
 Flowers 
 Bloom. 
 
 When all the sky above is jest ez blue ez blue 
 
 kin be, 
 An' the prairies air a wavin' like a yaller driftin' 
 
 sea, 
 Oh, it's there my soul goes sailin' an' my heart is 
 
 on the boom 
 
 In the golden fields of Kansas when the 
 Sun- 
 Flowers 
 Bloom. 
 
 Albert Bigelow Paine 
 
 We'll Be Going on Again 
 
 We've footed it so far today across the pathless 
 
 plain, 
 And down the hills, across the vales, and up the 
 
 hills again, 
 
 And through a forest green and dark, where turtle 
 doves were mourning 
 So we are glad to stay, tonight, 
 And share your food and your lamplight ; 
 But we'll be going on again in the morning, 
 We'll be going on in the morning. 
 
 II
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 We've watched the morning, on the plain, rise, robed 
 
 in floating gold, 
 
 And in the hills we've seen the twilight, purple- 
 mantled, starry, coid; 
 And in the forest oft at night we've heard the skies 
 
 a-storming 
 
 And we are glad to rest our heads 
 Sometime, somewhere, upon your beds; 
 But we'll be going on again in the morning, 
 We'll be going on in the morning. 
 
 We've seen the winter cross the land, its veils of 
 
 white a-trailing, 
 We've seen the pink buds all awake when pearly 
 
 clouds were sailing; 
 We've seen the wide fields parched and dead, when 
 
 glowed the August noon, 
 And purple grapes, and scarlet leaves, beneath the 
 
 harvest moon 
 
 We've seen them many times before 
 We hope t6 see them many more; 
 And we'll be going on again in the morning, 
 We'll be going on in the morning. 
 
 Dorothy Station 
 
 12
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 It Will Be a Kansas Year 
 
 O, the Lord's come back to Kansas and will start 
 
 the brooklets flowing, 
 Put new life in the people, keep the vegetation 
 
 growing. 
 So just keep the hoe a-shining, put your muscles 
 
 into gear, 
 For the Lord's come back to Kansas and 'twill be 
 
 a Kansas year. 
 
 Yes, the Lord's come back to Kansas, to give music 
 
 to the birds ; 
 Sent the silver dews to moisten early grazing for 
 
 the herds; 
 So just plant and keep on planting; every stalk 
 
 will bear an ear; 
 For the Lord's come back to Kansas, and 'twill be 
 
 a Kansas year. 
 
 Yes, the Lord's come back to Kansas; 'twill put 
 
 blue stem in the sod; 
 And the humming bird will flutter midst the 
 
 autumn's goldenrod; 
 So get out the scythe and whet it, haying season's 
 
 almost here; 
 For the Lord's come back to Kansas and 'twill be 
 
 a Kansas year. 
 
 /. B. Edson
 
 Joy in the Corn Belt 
 
 The seed is in the clover, 
 
 The ear is in the shuck, 
 The melons shout, " Come, out, come out, 
 
 And eat this garden-truck." 
 
 The yellow ears are for the steers, 
 The white are for the swine ; 
 
 Their hair and hides and bacon sides 
 Are all for me and mine. 
 
 The cider mug is by its jug, 
 
 The sweet potatoes fry; 
 And ma is shovin' in the oven 
 
 Pumpkin custard pie ! 
 
 C. L. Edson
 
 Walls of Corn 
 
 Smiling and beautiful, heaven's dome, 
 Bends softly over our prairie home. 
 
 But the wide, wide lands that stretched away 
 Before my eyes in the days of May, 
 
 The rolling prairies'- billowy swell, 
 Breezy upland and timbered dell, 
 
 Stately mansion and hut forlorn, 
 All are hidden by walls of corn. 
 
 All wide the world is narrowed down, 
 To the walls of corn, now sere and brown. 
 
 What do they hold these walls of corn, 
 Whose banners toss on the breeze of morn? 
 
 He who questions may soon be told; 
 
 A great state's wealth these walls enfold. 
 
 No sentinels guard these walls of corn, 
 Never is sounded the warder's horn. 
 
 Yet the pillars are hung with gleaming gold, 
 Left all unbarred, though thieves are bold. 
 
 Clothes and food for the toiling poor, 
 Wealth to heap at the rich man's door;
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Meat for the healthy and balm, for him 
 Who moans and tosses in chamber dim ; 
 
 Shoes for the barefooted, pearls to twine 
 In the scented tresses of ladies fine; 
 
 Things of use for the lowly cot, 
 
 Where (bless the corn!) want cometh not; 
 
 Luxuries rare for the mansion grand, 
 Gifts of a rich and fertile land 
 
 All these things and so many more 
 It would fill a book to name them o'er, 
 
 Are hid and held in these walls of corn, 
 Whose banners toss in the breeze of morn. 
 
 Open the atlas, conned by rule, 
 
 In the olden days of the district school. 
 
 Point to the rich and bounteous land, 
 That yields such fruit to the toiler's hand. 
 
 " Treeless desert," they called it then, 
 Haunted by beasts, forsaken by men. 
 
 Little they knew what wealth untold, 
 Lay hid where the desolate prairies rolled. 
 
 Who would have dared, with brush or pen, 
 As this land is now, to paint it then? 
 
 16
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 And how would the wise ones have laughed dn 
 
 scorn, 
 
 Had prophet foretold these walls of corn, 
 Whose banners toss in the breeze of morn ! 
 
 Ellen P. Allerton 
 
 Ah! Sunflower! 
 
 Ah ! Sunflower, weary of time, 
 
 Who cottntest the steps of the sun, 
 Seeking after that sweet golden clime 
 
 Where the traveler's journey is done ; 
 Where the youth pined away with desire, 
 
 And the pale virgin shrouded in snow, 
 Arise from their graves, and aspire 
 
 Where my sunflower wishes to go ! 
 
 William Blake 

 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Winds of Delphic Kansas 
 
 Half-west, half-east; half-north, half-south; 
 
 As in Grecian Delphi in days of old, 
 
 The center of the world as men then told 
 
 The winds blow ever and through a god's mouth. 
 
 O, the snow-footed, ice-armored winds, of the prairie, 
 
 Rushing out mightily 
 From cosmic caves of the north, 
 From glacier forces of earth and air, 
 
 The winter winds of the prairie ! 
 They drive dark clouds from morn to morn, 
 They shake the light o'er stubbles of corn, 
 They whistle through woods of leaves all shorn, 
 With never a hint of the spring to be born, 
 
 The flesh- freezing winds of the prairie! 
 
 Half-north, half-south; half-east, half-west; 
 The airs pour ever; the winds never rest: 
 
 O, the sun-lifted, cotton-soft winds of the prairie, 
 
 Cheering right merrily 
 From tillage lands of the south, 
 From warmth of breeding southern seas, 
 
 The June-sweet winds of the prairie ! 
 They drive silver clouds all day to its close, 
 And shake glowing light on young corn in rows, 
 
 18
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 They rock the trees till the small birds drowse, 
 They swirl the fragrance of wild-grape and rose, 
 The seminal winds of the prairie! 
 
 Half-south, half-north; half-west, half-east: 
 A people intoxicate; and winds do not cease; 
 
 O, the free-state, Puritan-spirited winds of the 
 prairie, 
 
 Singing right heartily 
 That gods were but folk who were free, 
 That folk who are free are as gods, 
 
 The human-voiced winds of the prairie. 
 They call Brown of bloody-blade from Osawatomie, 
 They smite swift the shackles the slave is free ; 
 To all the world they say in their humanity 
 " Come here and build a home loyal to me," 
 
 The primal-souled winds of the prairie! 
 
 Half-east, half-west; half-south, half-north; 
 
 All forces here meet, but the free alone are worth; 
 
 O, the self-reliant, right-seeking winds of the prairie, 
 Blowing out lustily 
 
 From the race-brood of New England 
 
 In this western New England. 
 The altruistic, rainbow-future winds of the prairie ! 
 They strive ever after the ideal Better! Better! 
 Till today they sing " Melior ! Brook no fetter !
 
 
 Of freedom the spirit seek ye ; not the letter ! 
 Melior ! Melior ! Better ! Better ! " 
 
 The cloud-dispelling, star-climbing winds of the 
 
 prairie 
 
 So, prophetic in zeal, through hot winds and cold, 
 As in Grecian Delphi in days of old, 
 The center of the world as men then told 
 Half -west, half-east; half-north, half -south 
 The spirit speaks ever and through a god's mouth. 
 
 Kate Stephens 
 
 Wind in the Treetops 
 
 Treetops, and wind in the 'treetops, 
 
 And a cloud-dappled bit of blue sky 
 With a bird swift across it flight winging, 
 
 Are all I can see, as I lie 
 In my narrow white bed but the wonder, 
 
 The glory, the beauty are there, 
 And I feel like a bird in its aerie, 
 
 A prince of the kingdom of air. 
 
 Treetops, and wind in the treetops, 
 And moonshine, so mystic and pale, 
 
 That the eye of some star far above it 
 Peers soft through a gossamer veil ;
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 And far down the shadowy distance 
 
 A sleepy bird chirps in its dream 
 'Til out 'neath the star-powdered heavens 
 
 Afloat on swift pinions I seem. 
 
 Out, out in the mist and the moonshine, 
 
 Out, out o'er the slumbering world, 
 On, on to the end of the darkness 
 
 Where the banners of dawn are unfurled; 
 'Til I see, gleaming forth from night's window 
 
 One great red-gold lamp of the sky, - 
 While along the gray east, serried cloud banks 
 
 Wind-routed, tumultuously fly. 
 
 " Treetops, and wind in the treetops ! " 
 
 You say and you pity me so 
 Pity me before whom such a pageant 
 
 E'er passes so grandly and slow. 
 'Til I smile in my pain, and forgetting 
 
 The poor ailing body's control, ' 
 See treetops, and wind in the treetops 
 
 And myself an emancipate soul ! 
 
 Louisa Cooke Don-Carlos 
 
 21
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Le Marais Du Cygne 
 
 A blush as of roses 
 
 Where rose never grew ! 
 Great drops on the bunch-grass, 
 
 But not of the dew ! 
 A taint in the sweet air 
 
 For wild bees to shun, 
 A stain that shall never 
 
 Bleach out in the sun! 
 
 Back, steed of the prairies ! 
 
 Sweet song-bird, fly back ! 
 Wheel hither, bald vulture. 
 
 Gray wolf, call thy pack ! 
 The foul human vultures 
 
 Have feasted and fled; 
 The wolves of the Border 
 
 Have crept from the dead. 
 
 In the homes of their rearing, 
 
 Yet warm with their lives, 
 Ye wait the dead only, 
 
 Poor children and wives! 
 Put out the red forge-fire, 
 
 The smith shall not come; 
 Unyoke the brown oxen, 
 
 The plowman lies dumb. 
 
 22
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Wind slow from the Swan's Marsh, 
 
 O dreary death-train, 
 With pressed lips as bloodless 
 
 As lips of the slain! 
 Kiss down the young eyelids, 
 
 Smooth down the gray hairs: 
 Let tears quench the curses 
 
 That burn through your prayers. 
 
 From the hearths of their cabins, 
 
 The fields of their corn, 
 Unwarned and unweaponed, 
 
 The victims were torn 
 By the whirlwind of murder 
 
 Swooped up and swept on 
 To the low, reedy fen-lands, 
 
 The Marsh of the Swan. 
 
 With a vain plea for mercy 
 
 No stout knee was crooked; 
 In the mouths of their rifles 
 
 Right manly they looked. 
 How pale the May sunshine, 
 
 Green Marais du Cygne, 
 When the death-smoke blew over 
 
 Thy lonely ravine ! 
 
 Strong man of the prairies, 
 Mourn bitter and wild !
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Wail, desolate woman ! 
 
 Weep, fatherless child! 
 But the grain of God springs up 
 
 From ashes beneath, 
 And the crown of His harvest 
 
 Is life out of death. 
 
 Not in vain on the dial 
 
 The shade moves along 
 To point the great contrasts 
 
 Of right and of wrong: 
 Free prairie and flood 
 
 And fields of ripe food ; 
 The reeds of the Swan's Marsh 
 
 Where bloom is of blood. 
 
 On the lintels of Kansas 
 
 That blood shall not dry; 
 Henceforth the Bad Angel 
 
 Shall harmless go by; 
 Henceforth to the sunset 
 
 Unchecked on her way, 
 Shall Liberty follow . 
 
 The march of the day. 
 
 John G. Whittier t
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The Prairie Pioneers 
 
 He builded a house of sod on the slope of a prairie 
 knoll ; 
 
 He builded in praise of God, content with the scanty 
 dole. 
 
 He had builded a nest in the grass, as the ground- 
 squirrels burrow low ; 
 
 And hither he led a laughing lass in the days of 
 
 long ago. 
 
 He was a lad and she was a maid; 
 Their hearts were glad ; they were unafraid 
 Of the world and its waiting woe. 
 
 The prairie wind in her face tumbled her tresses 
 
 down, 
 The sensitive rose, in its grace, "clung to her cotton 
 
 gown. 
 The prairie dog beat a retreat and watched them 
 
 mournful-eyed, 
 And the buffalo-grass beneath her feet said, " Woe 
 
 to the prairie bride ! " 
 He was a husband she was a wife; 
 Afoot in the daisy fields of life; 
 
 They would not be denied. 
 
 Who did the law ordain, who wrote the dread 
 decree
 
 That into the desert plain the children of men 
 
 should flee? 
 
 Into a treeless land, the land of little rain, 
 Pressed and driven by penury's hand, shackled with 
 
 poverty's chain; 
 
 Youth to sicken and love to die, 
 Beauty blasted and hope gone dry, 
 And grief in a maddened brain. 
 
 Ever the hot wind blew, sapping the famished corn ; 
 The night, unblessed by dew, fevered the breath of 
 
 morn. 
 
 A man agape at the skies where no cloud fleeces go ; 
 Weeping, the broken woman lies in the dugout's 
 
 furnace glow. 
 
 His hope, like the sod corn, curls and wilts ; 
 She writhes on a bed of cotton quilts 
 In a mother's nameless woe. 
 
 O, wind, you are hellish hot; death is the song you 
 
 sing; 
 The eggs in the quail's nest rot under her tortured 
 
 wing. 
 
 Dust in a choking cloud wavers and sifts and flies; 
 Dust is the dead babe's pauper shroud; on her sick 
 
 breast it lies. 
 
 The sod corn crumbles and blows away, 
 Chaff in the clouds of smoking clay, 
 
 Surging against the skies; 
 
 26
 
 , 
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 He builded a house of sod on the slope of a prairie 
 
 knoll ; 
 He builded in praise of God, content with the scanty 
 
 dole. 
 
 He had builded a nest in the grass, as the ground- 
 squirrels burrow low; 
 And hither he led a laughing lass in the days of long 
 
 ago. 
 
 He was a lad and she was a maid ; 
 Their hearts were glad ; they were unafraid , 
 Of the world and its waiting woe. 
 
 C. L. Edson 
 
 27
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Chewink 
 
 Sing me another solo, sweet 
 
 I have learnt this one by rote; 
 The endless merry-go-round repeat 
 
 Of the tuneful, tender, teasing note: 
 " Che-wink, che-wink ! 
 
 Che-wink, che-wink ! " 
 A moment's rest for the tired throat 
 (Just long enough for a heart to beat), 
 And at it again : " Che-wink, che-wink." 
 
 O bird, dear bird, with the outspread wings 
 
 And little to chant about ! 
 When death reaches over the wreck of things 
 To stifle the soft, delighted shout : 
 " Che-wink, che-wink ! 
 
 Che-wink, che-wink ! " 
 And, all unruffled by dread or doubt, 
 Your musical mite of a soul upsprings, 
 Will you still go crying: " Che-wink, che-wink? " 
 
 Little I know, but this I hold: 
 
 If the rushing stars should meet 
 Their crystal spheres into chaos rolled 
 Let only this one pure voice entreat : 
 " Che-wink, che-wink ! 
 Che-wink che-wink ! " 
 Great Love would answer the summons sweet, 
 
 28
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 And a universe fresh as the rose unfold. 
 
 So at it again. " Che-wink, che-wihk ! " 
 
 Amanda T. Jones 
 
 Spring in Kansas 
 
 Make glad, make glad, 
 
 The Lord of growth has come, 
 
 The sun has half his northward journey done, 
 
 And in deep-buried roots moves the Spirit! 
 
 Upon the dark-earthed field 
 
 Fires of last year's husks the farmer kindles 
 
 Sacrifices to the Lord of growth ; 
 
 Smoke rises to the bluer heavens, 
 
 While hawk and solemn crow cut with long wing the 
 
 sparkling air, 
 
 And little birds do sing " Rejoice ! 
 Rejoice ! the springing life is here ! " 
 
 For the sun, .O brothers, shines upon our landl 
 And winds, O sisters, blow over all our land ! 
 Mounting sap now brightens trunk and tree and vine, 
 And every tip-most twig swells out its Jeaf-buds : 
 
 The peach puts forth her bitter-tinted p^nk, 
 Red-bud empurples far each wooded stretch. 
 And, by the magic of the lord of spring,
 
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Stand orchards, very ghosts of winter snows, white- 
 cloaked in blossom. 
 
 And wheat, O sisters, greens in our rolling glebe, 
 And corn, O brothers, springs from its golden seed ! 
 For sun-warmth and wind-strength and praise-God 
 
 rain are abroad in our land, 
 Three builders of worlds with the Spirit go forth 
 
 hand in hand. 
 
 Make glad, make glad. 
 The Lord of growth has come, 
 The sun has near his northward journey run, 
 And in deep-buried roots moves Life ever-living! 
 
 K ate Stephens 
 
 Shri Krishna's Flute 
 
 " The notes of his wondrous flute are heard in all 
 the groves, and over all the plains." Avataras. 
 
 Not along the dusty highways, 
 But in green and leaf-walled byways, 
 Sometimes in the early dawning 
 I have heard his silv'ry flute. 
 Or when evening's purple's falling, 
 And the village bullock's calling; 
 'Mid the noises of the jungle 
 Monkey's cry and owl's hoot.
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Where the lotus buds are sleeping 
 In the depth of Gunga's keeping. 
 And the trunked Ganesh's shadow 
 Looms across the temple door. 
 Carved with gods and smoked with incense, 
 E'er the morning's mantrams commence, 
 And the people bring their offerings, 
 I have heard it once before. 
 
 Faint and clear and low and pleading, 
 Full of laughter, full of tears, 
 Full of lust of woman's beauty, 
 Strength of days and length of years. 
 In it whispers all the brooding 
 Of the nesting birds in June, 
 All the mystery of the jungle 
 Rustling 'neath the great orbed moon. 
 
 Full of plaint of bearing mother, 
 Full of sigh of trembling bride. 
 Chants in incense dimmed temples 
 Love songs 'neath the night-skies wide. 
 In it thrills the cry of mourners 
 'Round the ghats at waterside, 
 And the talk of village elders 
 'Neath the palm at eventide. 
 
 " Naught is thee or me," it whispers, 
 " A U M from form set free.
 
 Back the water-drops go slipping, 
 Thankfully into the sea." 
 " Naught is high or low," it murmurs, 
 " Man or Deva, bound or free. 
 Each but strand of that great Cordon 
 Stretching through eternity." 
 
 Not along the dusty highways, 
 But in green and leaf-walled byways, 
 Sometimes have I glimpsed Lord Krishna 
 While the listening birds sat mute. 
 With his eyes like stars a-shining, 
 Leafy girdle 'round him twining; 
 And with pouting lips of scarlet 
 Prest against his wondrous flute. 
 
 Louisa Cooke Don-Carlos 
 
 The Prairie Schooner 
 
 Slow was the weary, toilsome way 
 
 Where creaked the heavy-laden wain 
 Quaint follower of the speeding day 
 Across the plain. 
 
 White canvas covers, bulging, fair, 
 
 Enclosed fond hearts athrob with joy; 
 The builders of an empire there 
 Found safe convoy. 
 
 3-2
 
 Along its course child-voices sweet 
 
 Marked all the strangeness of each scene ; 
 While parents sought new homes to greet 
 With vision keen. 
 
 No luxury or ease was there 
 
 To lap the traveler into rest, 
 But staunch it bore the pioneer 
 On toward the West. 
 
 Deserted now, its ragged sails 
 
 Are furled the port has long been won. 
 Sport of the boisterous, hurrying gales, 
 Through cloud and sun. 
 
 Unused, forlorn, and gray, it stands, 
 A faded wreck cast far ashore, 
 The Mayflower of the prairie lands, 
 Its journey o'er. 
 
 Charles Moreau Harger 
 
 33
 
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Good-bye to the Cottonwood 
 
 On the cottonwood tree rests the shadow of doom, 
 The useless old tree with its feathery bloom 
 Blowing widely adrift like the scattering snow, 
 Falling mutely in heaps, wind-swept to and fro, 
 
 The hardy old tree, 
 
 The pioneer tree, 
 Through years that are gone 
 
 It waited a hand 
 
 To conquer the land, 
 And its people in triumph lead on, ever on. 
 
 When the tender young elm and the maple tree gay, 
 When the poplar and oak withered down in dismay 
 At the hot brazen heavens of sweltering June, 
 And the breath of July like the desert simoon. 
 
 Then alkali soil, 
 
 Then dry barren soil, 
 It felt the firm grasp 
 
 Of roots that were strong 
 
 Seeking waters among 
 The low hidden deeps that the cool fountains clasp. 
 
 On the young settler's "homestead" first planted 
 
 with grain 
 
 From the hard skies it courted the life-giving rain. 
 O'er the first little dugout its soft shadows crept, 
 
 34
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 To its murmuring music the wee babies slept, 
 
 And there to its shade, 
 
 Its sheltering shade, 
 Fond lovers would come, 
 
 In strange prairie lands 
 
 It reached out warm hands 
 To the hearts that were aching and longing for home. 
 
 'Gainst the drouth, and the cyclone, the plague and 
 
 the heat 
 
 The old cottonwood tree planted firmly its feet. 
 But at last it must bow. Are my eyes getting dim? 
 'Tis but sentiment surely, a woman's soft whim 
 That would keep to the last 
 This old tree of the past, 
 As the memories we keep 
 
 Of the men who stood firm 
 In the early day storm, 
 
 The strong " builders of empire " whose labors we 
 reap. 
 
 Margaret HillMcCarter 
 
 35
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Where "A Lovely Time Was Had' 
 
 Bill Hucks, the item-chaser on the Wilier Creek 
 
 Gaysette, 
 Was the likeliestest hustler that old man McCray 
 
 could get. 
 
 As a writer-up of runaways, an' funerals, an' shows, 
 Bill never had an equal, nor a rival, goodness knows. 
 So we sent him up a t'nvite to a doin's Susie give, 
 And he writ a piece about it that was fine, as sure's 
 
 you live. 
 
 But all I kin remember is, " We hardly need to add 
 The guests agreed at leaving that a lovely time was 
 
 had." 
 
 O, yes come now to think of it her maw cooked 
 
 up some cake, 
 And pies and floatin' island truck that Susie helped 
 
 to make, 
 And they was pickle-lilly, too, and beets and jell 
 
 and jam, 
 And slaw, and chicken-salad, and some sanwiches 
 
 of ham. 
 And them Bill said 'was " viands," which, in writin'- 
 
 p he owned 
 " Made a tempting feast of good things, and the 
 
 table fairly groaned. 
 And when the wee sma' hours were come, we hardly 
 
 need to add,
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The guests agreed at leaving that a lovely time 
 was had." 
 
 Old Bill has gone from Wilier Crick; the Gaysette 
 
 is no more; 
 For Old McCray has stole away to find the Golden 
 
 Shore. : ; r 'J. 
 
 And Susie has been married off for lo! these many 
 
 years, 
 And some of them that come that night have quit 
 
 this vale of tears ; 
 But maw has in her scrap-book 'long with little 
 
 Laury's death, 
 And the pome about the baby and the accident to 
 
 Seth 
 The piece about the doin's, and today it makes us 
 
 glad. 
 To read at Susie's party "that a lovely time was 
 
 had." 
 
 William Allen White 
 
 37
 
 Pawpaws Ripe 
 
 The sunny plains of Kansas dozed 
 
 In soft October haze; 
 The wayside leaves and grass disclosed 
 
 Scarce signs of autumn days. 
 The cornstalks bent their ears of gold, 
 
 To list the cricket's din ; 
 And fields of sprouting wheat foretold 
 
 The farmer's laden bin. 
 
 Many a mover's caravan 
 
 Stretched westward far away, 
 As they had moved, since spring began, 
 
 To where the homesteads lay. 
 Their wagon-sheets were snowy white, 
 
 Their cattle sleek and stout; 
 Their children's merry faces bright 
 
 With blooming health shone out. 
 
 But ho.! what apparition queer 
 
 Is this that looms in sight? 
 Has Rip Van Winkle wandered here 
 
 Just from his waking plight? 
 Has one of the Lost Tribes come back 
 
 With remnant of his band, 
 And eastward turned once more his track, 
 
 To seek the Promised Land?
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Beneath yon shade I'll sit me there, 
 
 Upon that bank of grass, 
 And inventory, as it were, 
 
 These nomads, as they pass. 
 There may be reason wise and strong, 
 
 Unknown to us, why they, 
 Of all the steady, moving throng, 
 
 Are on the backward way. 
 
 A wagon of past ages, built 
 
 On model lost to art; 
 A dirty, ragged, faded quilt 
 
 Supplied a cover's part. 
 Wheels of four sizes, tireless now, 
 
 With many a missing spoke; 
 A three-legged mule, a one-horned cow, 
 
 Tugged slowly in the yoke. 
 
 A man of five-and-forty years, 
 
 With beard of grizzled brown ; 
 A brimless hat sat on h : s ears, 
 
 His hair strayed through the crown; 
 His pants of dingy butternut, 
 
 His coat of tarnished blue, 
 His feet with no incumbrance but 
 
 Mismated boot and shoe. 
 
 Six hungry curs of low degree 
 Sneaked at their master's heels, 
 
 39
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Or, underneath the axle-tree, 
 
 Kept measure with the wheels. 
 
 Packed in the feeding-box behind, 
 A time-worn jug is spied, 
 
 Whose corn-cob stopper hints the kind 
 Of nourishment inside. 
 
 Nine boys and girls with rheumy eyes, 
 
 Stowed in with beds and tins, 
 Were all so nearly of a size 
 
 They might have well been twins. 
 The mother, as a penance sore 
 
 For loss of youth and hope, 
 Seemed to have vowed, long years before 
 
 To fast from comb and soap. 
 
 " Halloo, my friend ; a brood like that 
 
 Should head the other way; 
 The land is broad and free, and fat 
 
 Go take it while you may." 
 Raising his glazed and dirty sleeve, 
 
 He gave his mouth a wipe, 
 And answered, with a sighing heave, 
 
 " Stranger, pawpaws is ripe ! 
 
 " Don't tell me of your corn and wheat 
 
 What do I care for sich? 
 Don't say your schools is hard to beat, 
 
 And Kansas soil is rich. 
 
 40
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Stranger, a year's been lost by me, 
 
 Searchin' your Kansas siles, 
 And not a pawpaw did I see, 
 
 For miles, and miles, and miles! 
 
 " Missouri's good enough for me ; 
 
 The bottom timber's wide ; 
 The best of livin' there is free, 
 
 And spread on every side. 
 In course, the health ain't good for some, 
 
 But we're not of that stripe, 
 Hey ! Bet and Tobe ! We're gwien home ! 
 
 Git up ! Pawpaws is ripe ! " 
 
 He cracked his whip, and off they went, 
 
 The mule, and cow, and dogs. 
 I watched them till they all were blent 
 
 With distant haze and fogs; 
 And as the blue smoke heavenward curled 
 
 Up from his corncob pipe, 
 He dreamed not of that better world, 
 
 For here pawpaws were ripe! 
 
 Sol Miller
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Kansas 
 
 From the surge of the western ocean and the roaring 
 
 of the sea, 
 From the Land of the Orange Blossom, thy daughter 
 
 cried to thee, 
 " Kansas, beloved Mother ; " so I with a heart as 
 
 sore . 
 
 Turn from the wooded hillside and vast Atlantic's 
 
 shore 
 To the wind-swept Kansas prairies and golden seas 
 
 of grain, 
 With as desperate a longing and hands that stretch 
 
 as vain. 
 
 Not I with the crowded palette of genius-given 
 
 art 
 Crystallize into perfection the yearning of my 
 
 heart ; 
 Her's is the sun-kissed rapture, her's is the gift 
 
 divine, 
 Only the blundering phrases of awkwardness are 
 
 mine ; 
 And yet from the hills of longing thru severing 
 
 leagues between 
 I cry with the bitter aching of loneliness as keen. 
 
 * Dedicated to Esther M. Clark, author of " The Call of 
 Kansas."
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Manhattan's walls reecho with a million clamoring 
 
 cries, 
 The stars grow wan above her in the glory of her 
 
 eyes, 
 The sea falls down before her like a lover at her 
 
 knees, 
 
 And rich is she in raiment of his purple argosies 
 A queen upon a dais at the gateway of the world, 
 She is not half so lovely as the Prairie, dewdrop 
 
 pearled. 
 
 The elms of Boston murmur, with ghostly memories, 
 
 And haunting echoes of the past speak still in cul 
 tured ease; 
 
 . But at her heart a grave-yard has festered with 
 its dead, 
 
 A white skull glistens underneath the garlands of 
 her head ; 
 
 Across the Kansas prairies, with brown and dusty 
 feet, 
 
 The wind-blown sweetheart of the Sun has gone 
 her lord to greet. 
 
 Not in the crowded cities of money-maddened men, 
 Not in the shaded cloister where Learning trims 
 
 her pen, 
 But out on the Kansas prairies, in the purity of the 
 
 Sun, 
 There are the great thoughts builded* visions of 
 
 empires .begun ; 
 
 43
 
 Here on the wooded hillside I sicken in heart and 
 
 brain, 
 But some day, beloved Mother, I'm coming home 
 
 again. 
 
 Willard Wattles 
 
 Carrie Nation 
 
 A poor, bewildered, half-crazed crone, 
 She died, forgotten and alone; 
 And some there were who stopped to scoff 
 When the good old dame was taken off, 
 While the busy world went wheeling on, 
 Scarce knowing even she was gone. 
 
 Of course, she may have done some good, 
 But then, most any woman could 
 Who had the muscle and a hatchet, 
 With Irish wit as keen to match it; 
 Yet smashing windows so erratic 
 Soon proved her just a plain fanatic. 
 
 A sort of Jezebel crusader, 
 Like Don Quixote, nothing stayed her 
 No wonder people shied eggs at her, 
 She seemed to like to watch 'em splatter, 
 And stood like wild things when at bay, 
 So sort of fearless, old and gray. 
 
 44
 
 And then to die so, after all, 
 
 Insane and in a hospital; 
 
 Good God, suppose she had been sane, 
 
 And we who had the rotten brain; 
 
 I'd hate to stand on Judgment Day 
 
 Beside that woman old and gray. 
 
 I'd hate to face those flashing eyes 
 That scanned a state's hypocrisies, 
 And woke a commonwealth to shame 
 Wifh crashing axe and words of flame, 
 Until men dare to carry out 
 The laws they made and lied about. 
 
 Willard Wattles 
 
 John Brown 
 
 States are not great 
 Except as men may make them ; 
 Men are not great except they do and dare. 
 
 But States, like men, 
 Have destinies that take them 
 That bear them on, not knowing why or where. 
 
 The WHY repels 
 The philosophic searcher 
 The WHY and WHERE all questionings defy, 
 
 45
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Until we find, 
 
 Far back in youthful nurture, 
 Prophetic facts that constitute the WHY. 
 
 All merit comes 
 From braving the unequal; 
 All glory comes from daring to begin. 
 
 Fame loves the State 
 That, reckless of the sequel, 
 Fights long and well, whether it lose or win. 
 
 Than in our State 
 No illustration apter 
 Is seen or found of faith and hope and will. 
 
 Take up her story ; 
 Every leaf and chapter 
 Contains a record that conveys a thrill. 
 
 And there is one 
 
 Whose faith, whose fight, whose failing, 
 Fame shall placard upon the walls of time. 
 
 He dared begin 
 Despite the unvailing,- 
 He dared begin, when failure was a crime. 
 
 When over Africa 
 Some future cycle 
 Shall sweep the lake-gemmed upland with its surge ;
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 When, as with trumpet 
 Of Archangel Michael, 
 Culture shall bid a colored race emerge; 
 
 When busy cities 
 There, in constellations, 
 Shall gleam with spires and palaces and domes, 
 
 With marts wherein 
 Is heard the noise of nations ; 
 With summer groves surrounding stately homes - 
 
 There, future orators 
 To cultured freemen 
 Shall tell of valor, and recount with praise 
 
 Stories of Kansas, 
 And of Lacedaemon 
 Cradles of freedom then of ancient days. 
 
 From boulevards 
 O'erlooking both Nyanzas, 
 The statured bronze shall glitter in the sun, 
 With rugged lettering, 
 " JOHN BROWN OF KANSAS : 
 He dared begin, 
 
 He lost, 
 But, losing, won." 
 
 Eugene F. Ware 
 
 47
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 John Brown 
 
 John Brown that's all; a serious-purposed man, 
 Hard-handed, tender-hearted ; God's great plan 
 Through his gnarled, knotty nature pulsing ran. 
 
 " Fanatic ! " hissed the mob, with loud acclaim : 
 They, unremembered ; he, close-clasped by fame, 
 While fades away the gallows' dreadful shame. 
 
 Each cause its Christ, its sacrifice to might ! 
 Scorn soon is done, and Freedom's piercing light 
 Dispels the mists 'round Calvary's awful height ! 
 
 W. H. Simpson 
 
 A Tribute to John Brown 
 
 Against this crime of crimes he fought and fell ; 
 He freed a race and found a prison-cell; 
 In mid-air hung upon the gibbet's tree, 
 But lived and died, thank God, to make men free. 
 
 And dusky men the ages down will tell. 
 For what he fought, and how he bravely fell ; 
 And dim the jewels in each earthly crown, 
 Beside the luster of thy name, John Brown. 
 
 /. G. Waters 
 
 48
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 John Brown 
 
 Had he been made of such poor day as we, 
 
 Who, when we feel a little fire aglow 
 
 'Gainst wrong within us, dare not let it grow, 
 But crouch and hide it, lest the scorner see 
 And sneer, yet bask our self-complacency 
 
 In that faint warmth had he been fashioned 
 so, 
 
 The nation ne'er had come to that birth-throe 
 That gave the world a new humanity. 
 He was no vain professor of the word 
 
 His life a mockery of the creed he made 
 No discount on the Golden Rule, but heard 
 
 Above the Senate's brawls and din of trade 
 Ever the clank of chains, until he stirred 
 
 The nation's heart on that immortal raid. 
 
 William Herbert Carruth 
 
 49
 
 In Idol-Smashing Land 
 
 From boulevards o'erlooking both Nyanzas 
 
 The shaft of bronze shall glitter in the sun 
 
 With rugged lettering, " John Brown of Kansas: 
 He dared begin, he lost, but losing won!" 
 
 Eugene F. Ware 
 
 Over there in Kansas they have torn their idols down, 
 They are standing up and jumping on the grave of 
 
 Old John Brown; 
 They say he was a murderer, a cut-throat and a 
 
 " red," 
 He started Kansas bleeding, and no more it should 
 
 be " bled " 
 
 For markers and for monuments and cash-consum 
 ing things, 
 To mark the bloody border where the raider had his 
 
 flings. 
 The state has put the money up to save Brown's 
 
 cabin shack 
 
 His home at Osawatomie, surrounded by a park 
 So when his soul, that's marching on, shall come a- 
 
 marching back, 
 
 'Twill have a place to huddle in and hover after dark. 
 " John Brown of Osawatomie, he made our soil so 
 
 free," 
 This poem in the school books was the stuff we used 
 
 to see;
 
 
 But now they 've built a bonfire underneath the soul 
 
 of John, 
 So hot he couldn't light there, but must keep marchin' 
 
 on. 
 
 For when the legislature passed the John Brown 
 cabin bill, 
 
 The opposition kicked and said he was a bad old pill ; 
 
 They voted not to honor thus the early Kansas saint, 
 
 And painted John Brown's body just as black as they 
 could paint. 
 
 The " Brown of Osawatomie " the muses sing about, 
 
 They said was Mr. O. C. Brown, who laid the town- 
 site out ; 
 
 The old John Brown who loafed there was a horse- 
 thief and a bum, 
 
 They'd never vote to honor him, they said, till king 
 dom come. 
 
 "Old John Brown was an anarchist of the assassin 
 
 breed, 
 He brought no wealth to Kansas, and he only made 
 
 her bleed ; 
 His only work in Kansas was for lawlessness and 
 
 crime, 
 He was the Booth, the Guiteau and the Czolgosz of 
 
 his time. 
 
 He is the only lurid blot upon our Kansas fame, 
 And I, for one, could never vote to keep alive his 
 
 name."
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 They blackened thus the name of Brown, the Kan 
 sas demigod, 
 
 Who with the blood of freedom dewed the glisten 
 ing prairie sod. 
 
 Insurgent Kansas would insurge against insurgents 
 dead ; > 
 
 Did Old John Brown turn over in his tomb at what 
 they said? 
 
 His " body lies a-mouldering in the grave " we used 
 to sing ; 
 
 It doubtless then is mouldering on the other side this 
 spring. 
 
 We sang " The Stars of heaven are a-looking kindly 
 down," 
 
 But the stars upon the Kansas stage are blistering 
 John Brown. 
 
 Another instance of the way the cards of fate will 
 stack, 
 
 His " soul it went a-marching on," and now it can't 
 come back. 
 
 No name is safe in Kansas where the idol-smasher 
 knocks. 
 
 They 've proved that Sockless Jerry really wore the 
 best of socks ; 
 
 No reputation over there is ever made to last - 
 
 Why, even William Allen White has heard the thun 
 der blast; 
 
 That " What's-the-matter " article in '96 he wrote,
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 It made his reputation as a world-wide man of note, 
 And now the Kansas rebels who give every man a 
 
 fall, 
 
 Declare it wasn't written by Bill Allen White at all. 
 He took it almost bodily, the smashing ones declare, 
 From a letter that was written by the Kansas poe'., 
 
 Ware. 
 
 'Twas thus they dealt with William, and we '1! hear 
 
 'fore very long, 
 
 That Ware, himself a faker, cribbed his " Washer 
 woman's Song." 
 For they're on the move in Kansas, and the idol of 
 
 today 
 Is tomorrow smashed in fragments 'mid its broken 
 
 feet of clay. 
 " It is morning here in Kansas," as Walt Mason 
 
 aptly said, 
 It is always dawn in Kansas and the morning sky 
 
 is red. 
 There they make no creed their jailer, never in their 
 
 slow decay 
 From the tomb of the old prophets steal the funeral 
 
 lamps away 
 To light up the martyr fagots 'round the Prophets of 
 
 Today. 
 But the prophets of the present, when the funeral 
 
 lamps are out, 
 Take the dust of the old prophets and scatter it 
 
 about, 
 
 53
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 And the soil is thus kept fertile so that new ideas 
 
 can spring, 
 
 For over there in Kansas still the intellect is king. 
 
 C. L. Edson 
 
 A Wheat-Field Fantasy 
 
 As I sat on a Kansas hilltop, 
 While, far away from my feet, 
 
 Rippled the lights and shadows 
 Dancing across acres of wheat, 
 
 The sound of the grain as it murmured 
 Wrought a wonder with me 
 
 It turned from the voice of the Prairie 
 Into the roar of the sea. 
 
 And I saw, not the running wind-waves, 
 But an ocean that washed below 
 
 In ridging and crumbling breakers 
 And ceaseless motion and flow; 
 
 Then, as a valley is flooded 
 
 With opaline mists at morn 
 Which momently flow asunder 
 
 And leave green spaces of corn 
 
 54
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 There burst the strangest vision 
 
 Up from that ancient sea. 
 'Twas not the pearl-white Venus 
 
 Anadyomene, ' 
 
 'Twas the bobbing ears of horses 
 And a head with a great hat crowned 
 
 And a binder that burst upon me 
 Sudden, as from the ground 
 
 And the waves gave place to the wheatlands 
 
 Myriad-touched with gold 
 Then my soul felt century-weary 
 
 And untold aeons old ; 
 
 For a rock-ledge sloped beside me 
 And the lime-traced shells it bore 
 
 Had plied that ancient ocean 
 Each with a sentient oar. 
 
 Harry Kemp 
 
 The Promise of Bread 
 
 Out on the frozen uplands, underneath the snow 
 
 and sleet, 
 In the bosom of the plowland sleeps the Promise 
 
 of the Wheat; 
 With the ice for head-and-footstone, and a snowy 
 
 shroud outspread f 
 
 55
 
 In the frost-locked tomb of winter sleeps the Miracle 
 
 of Bread. 
 With its hundred thousand reapers and its hundred 
 
 thousand men, 
 And the click of guard and sickle and the flails that 
 
 turn again, 
 And drover's shout, and snap of whips and creak of 
 
 horses' tugs, 
 And a thin red line o' gingham girls that carry water 
 
 jugs; 
 And yellow stalks and dagger beards that stab thro' 
 
 cotton clothes, 
 And farmer boys a-shocking wheat in long and 
 
 crooked rows, 
 And dust-veiled men on mountain stacks, whose 
 
 pitchforks flash and gleam ; 
 And threshing engines shrieking songs in syllables 
 
 of steam, 
 
 And elevators painted red that lift their giant arms 
 And beckon to the Harvest God above the brooding 
 
 farms, 
 And loaded trains that hasten forth, a hungry world 
 
 to fill 
 All sleeping just beneath the snow, out yonder on the 
 
 hill. 
 
 C. L. Edson
 
 A Wilier Crick Incident 
 
 Long ago before the Choppers an' the drouth of sev 
 enty-four, 
 
 Long before we talked of boomin', long before the 
 first Grange store. 
 
 Long before they was a city on the banks of Wilier 
 Crick, 
 
 Come a woman doin' washin' an' a little boy named 
 Dick: 
 
 Kinder weakly like an' sick: 
 Wasn't even common quick ; 
 
 An' the folks said that his daddy used to be a loonytic. 
 
 He was undersized an' ugly an' was tongue-tied in i 
 
 his talk ; 
 He was awkward an' near-sighted an' he couldn't 
 
 tnore'n walk; 
 An' the other boys all teased him ; no one knowed 
 
 the reason why, 
 'Cept to hear his mother pet him ; " There, ma's 
 
 angul, there, don't cry." 
 
 When they was nobody nigh 
 She would set by him an' sigh ; 
 An' she'd comb his hair an' kiss him : " Ma's boy 
 
 'nil be well, bye'm bye." 
 
 But instead of gettin' stronger Dick grew thinner 
 every year ; 
 
 57
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 An' although his legs got longer, his pore brain 
 
 ketched in the gear. 
 But he always loved the crick so, an' 'twas there 'at 
 
 he Vd play; 
 Killin' lucky bugs an' buildin' dams 'at always broke 
 
 away. 
 
 But his mother used to pray : 
 " God make Dickie strong, some day ! " 
 God Vd make him strong an' happy, her " pore 
 
 angul " she Vd say. 
 
 They was not a long procession when he died, an* 
 
 all I mind 
 Was a little green farm wagon with two churs set 
 
 in behind. 
 
 But it held a lonely mother sobbin' wildly for her own 
 An' the sorrow et in deeper for she knew she grieved 
 alone. 
 
 'Mid the sunflowers lightly blown, 
 Where the sticker weeds are sown, 
 No one knows the hopes an' heart-aches buried 'neath 
 that rough-cut stone. 
 
 William Allen White
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 A Border of Memory 
 
 We had moved up to Palymra, 
 
 In the year of sixty-one, 
 From our claim on the Neosho 
 
 When our harvesting was done. 
 
 Then my husband had enlisted, 
 
 All his heart divinely stirred, 
 And I lived but for the children, 
 
 And to hear the scanty word 
 
 That came slowly back to Kansas 
 
 From his precious company, 
 As the crimson tide of battle 
 
 Bore it onward to the sea. 
 
 Twelve months passed, and the next springtime 
 Came with clouds of denser gloom 
 
 And the passion on the prairies 
 Broke into more deadly bloom ; 
 
 And the summer brought the terror 
 Close upon the shuddering town, 
 
 Of the bloody-handed Quantrell 
 On the country sweeping down. 
 
 Day by day, the awful menace 
 
 Weighted every lingering hour, 
 
 59
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 And we slept in trouble dreaming 
 Of the fierce marauder's power. 
 
 Night by night, I made me ready 
 For whatever blow might fall, 
 
 With the children all about me, 
 Trained to waken at my call. 
 
 And I gathered' strength and courage 
 From the spirit of my son, 
 
 Such a bright, intrepid stripling 
 Ne'er a danger he would shun. 
 
 He had played so much at soldier, 
 Marching ever in the van, 
 
 He had taken on the feeling 
 And the valor of a man. 
 
 So I listened, sad and shrinking, 
 When upon a weary day 
 
 He came in all flushed and eager 
 With the words he had to say : 
 
 " All the men are clean done over. 
 Watching so by day and night, 
 
 And we boys are going on duty 
 We're just spoiling for a fight. 
 
 " But they say there is no danger 
 Quantrell's clear across the line, 
 
 60
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 And we've but to give the signal 
 If we see the slightest sign. 
 
 " Jed and I for we're the oldest 
 Take our stand at Curran's farm. 
 
 You don't care much, do you, mother? 
 We'll be safe enough from harm." 
 
 So I stifled my foreboding, 
 
 Kissed him twice and let him go 
 
 Out into the somber twilight 
 
 In the pride that mothers know. 
 
 Such a night! all torn and tortured 
 By a host of nameless fears, 
 
 I was certain every minute 
 
 There would fall upon my ears 
 
 The abrupt, determined ringing 
 
 Of the heavy college bell 
 Which in preconcerted clamor 
 
 Any peril was to tell. 
 
 And I seemed to hear the echoes 
 Of the warfare far away : 
 
 All its horror, doubly dreadful, 
 Pressed upon me where I lay. 
 
 But at length I slumbered briefly, 
 And the dawn in sweet surprise
 
 % 
 
 Filtered through my eastern window, 
 Falling gently on my eyes. 
 
 Then deploring all my weakness, 
 Since no evil chance had come, 
 
 I rejoiced in the glad morning 
 
 That would bring my darling home; 
 
 So to give him instant welcome 
 I flung wide the outer door 
 
 And I found him 'neath the trellis 
 Lying straight upon the floor. 
 
 He but slept, I thought in wonder : 
 It was death, instead of sleep ! 
 
 Shot down by a passing ruffian 
 He had still the power to creep 
 
 Toward the town so gladly guarded 
 In the strength he loved to try, 
 
 And but reached the dear home-shelter, 
 Spent with effort, there to die. 
 
 That same day devoted Lawrence 
 
 Was destroyed by Quantrell's band; 
 
 I was only one of many 
 
 Smitten by a murderous hand, 
 
 And I tell my story calmly, 
 
 Now so many years have passed,
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 But whoever gives such life-blood 
 Feels the anguish to the last. 
 
 Yet the sorrow has its glory, 
 
 Shining steady like a star 
 All the world had need of Kansas, 
 
 Consecrated by the war. 
 
 And the God who guides our battles 
 Shaped the purpose of the State; 
 
 We have bought her for His uses 
 And the price has made us great. 
 
 Florence L. Snow
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The Defense of Lawrence 
 
 All night upon the guarded hill, 
 
 Until the stars were low, 
 Wrapped round as with Jehovah's will 
 
 We waited for the foe ; 
 All night the silent sentinels 
 
 Moved by like gliding ghosts; 
 All night the fancied warning bells 
 
 Held all men to their poMs. 
 
 We heard the sleeping prairies' breath, 
 
 The forest's human moans, 
 The hungry gnashing of the teeth 
 
 Of wolves on bleaching bones; 
 We marked the roar of rushing fires, 
 
 The neigh of frightened steeds, 
 The voices as of far-off lyres 
 
 Among the river reeds. 
 
 We were but thirty-nine who lay 
 
 Beside our rifles then; 
 We were but thirty-nine, and they 
 
 Were twenty hundred men. 
 Our lean limbs shook and reeled about, 
 
 Our feet were gashed and bare, 
 And all the breezes shredded out 
 
 Our garments in the air.
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Sick, sick of all the woes which spring 
 
 Where falls the Southron's rod, 
 Our very souls had learned to cling 
 
 To freedom as to God; 
 And so we never thought of fear 
 
 In all those stormy hours, 
 For every mother's son stood near 
 
 The awful, unseen powers. 
 
 And twenty hundred men had met 
 
 And sworn an oath of hell, 
 That ere the morrow's sun might set, 
 
 Our smoking homes should tell 
 A tale of ruin and of wrath 
 
 And damning hate in store, 
 To bar the freeman's western path 
 
 Against him evermore. 
 
 And when three hundred of the foe 
 
 Rode up in scorn and pride, 
 Whoso had watched us then might know 
 
 That God was on our side, 
 For all at once a mighty thrill 
 
 Of grandeur through us swept, 
 And strong and swiftly down the hill 
 
 Like Gideons we leapt. 
 
 All, all throughout that Sabbath day 
 A wall of fire we stood,
 
 And held the baffled foe at bay, 
 
 And streaked the ground with blood. 
 
 And when the sun was very low 
 
 They wheeled their stricken flanks, 
 And passed wearily and slow 
 Beyond the river banks. 
 
 Beneath the everlasting stars 
 
 We bended childlike knees, 
 And thanked God for the shining scars 
 
 Of His large victories ; 
 And some, who lingered, said they heard 
 
 Such wondrous music pass 
 As though a seraph's voice had stirred 
 The pulses of the grass. 
 
 Richard Realf 
 
 66
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The Choice 
 
 They hunted the thundering, flying herds over the 
 
 range all day; 
 At evening they drove them through a gate and 
 
 closed it and rode away. 
 At dawn they came with branding-irons, and they 
 
 made the place a hell, 
 Curving queer snake lariats in the dust of the high 
 
 corral. 
 Terror-eyed, the horses shied, and when the day was 
 
 done, 
 With streaming mane to the open plain they dashed 
 
 away save one. 
 
 All night long in her narrow cage, a white mare 
 fretted and foamed, 
 
 And shrilly called to her vanished mates on the shad 
 owed range they roamed. 
 
 The pride of the herd, she was wise and strong, 
 glossy, supple and fleet, 
 
 Never before had there been such eyes, such ears, 
 such dainty feet. 
 
 Through the wooden bars she watched the stars, as 
 they burned the whole night through, 
 
 Then faded away. Through the morning gray she 
 saw them come and knew
 
 They caught her again with their leaping ropes, and 
 
 blinded her gleaming eyes ; 
 With bands of leather as strong as steel they bound 
 
 her head and thighs; 
 They ripped her hide from shoulder to flank with 
 
 heels of constant fire, 
 And her tongue grew dark with blood and foam, and 
 
 dust, 'neath the jagged wire; 
 On the distant side of the high divide, her mates 
 
 roamed free again, 
 Must she submit to an iron bit, a pair of spurs, and 
 
 Pain? 
 
 With a mad disdain she gathered up for a last and 
 
 mighty spring, 
 And left her rider beside the trail, a crumpled, broken 
 
 thing, ... 
 They brought her to bay at the close of day, on the 
 
 brink of a steep coulee ; 
 She looked around, then plunged down down , 
 
 and that night she was free. 
 
 Dorothy Station 
 
 68
 
 Funston 
 
 Never any style about him, not imposing on parade ; 
 Couldn't make him look heroic with no end of golden 
 
 braid. 
 Figure sort o' stout and dumpy, hair an' whiskers 
 
 kind o' red; 
 But he's always movin' forward when there's trouble 
 
 on ahead. 
 Five foot five o' nerve an' darin', eyes pale blue an' 
 
 steely bright, 
 Not afraid of men or devils that is Funston in a 
 
 fight. 
 
 Fighter since he learned to toddle, soldier since he 
 got his growth; 
 
 Knows the Spaniard and the savage for he's 
 fought and licked 'em both. 
 
 Not much figure in the ballroom, not much hand at 
 breakin' hearts, 
 
 Rotten ringer for Apollo, but right there when some 
 thing starts. 
 
 Just a bunch of brain and muscle, but you always 
 feel, somehow, 
 
 That he'll get what he goes after when he mixes 
 in a row. 
 
 Weyler found out all about him, set a price upon 
 his head ; 
 
 69
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Aguinaldo's crafty warriors filled him nearly full o' 
 
 lead. 
 Yellow men and yellow fever tried to cut off his 
 
 career, 
 But since first he hit the war-trail it has never 
 
 slipped a gear. 
 And the heart of all the nation gives a patriotic 
 
 throb 
 At the news that Kansas Funston has again gone on 
 
 his job. 
 
 James J. Montague 
 
 Kansas: Where we've torn the shackles 
 
 From the farmer's leg; 
 Kansas : Where the hen that cackles, 
 
 Always lays an egg ; 
 Where the cows are fairly achin' 
 To go on record breakin', 
 And the hogs are raising bacon 
 By the keg ! 
 
 Walt Mason
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 My Sage-Brush Girl 
 
 Under a cross in a rainless land my Sage-brush Girl 
 
 is sleeping, 
 Her beautiful eyes shine out no more; her cheeks 
 
 have shed their bloom. 
 The cactus pierces her dreamless heart and I have 
 
 ceased from weeping. 
 
 My eyes are dry as the stunted sage that parches 
 o'er her tomb. 
 
 The years have withered my flesh like grass, and 
 
 filled my heart with knowing; 
 I, who was desert born and reared, have won to 
 
 the garden lands, 
 Where the earth is robed in a rug of green and 
 
 the barley blooms are blowing, 
 And the dewdrops blaze where the stalks of maize 
 hold up their heavenly hands. 
 
 Deep in the dust of a desert waste my Sage-brush 
 
 Girl reposes; 
 Her beautiful eyes shine out no more; her lips have 
 
 bloomed and died ; 
 A gypsum bed in the desert dead has won her cheeks' 
 
 red roses; 
 
 And the day of our dream is a sinking sun dipped 
 under the Great Divide.
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 I know who wielded the flaming sword that drove 
 
 my tribe before me 
 Into the dusty desert wide, where all the flowers 
 
 are dead; 
 Know why we met in a rainless land when the dream 
 
 of dreams came o'er me ; 
 
 We were the disinherited kin of the lords of meat 
 and bread. 
 
 We were the poor outside the door of the Garden 
 
 of Singing Water; 
 The poor who scurry like hunted things to the arid 
 
 wastes to hide. 
 So I was born to the desert sands and she was the 
 
 desert's daughter 
 
 But I have won to the garden lands, while she in 
 the desert died. 
 
 Those yearning days were a drama dear that the drop 
 
 of the curtain closes. 
 Her beautiful eyes shine out no more, her lips have 
 
 ceased to glow. 
 A gypsum bed in the desert dead has won her cheeks' 
 
 red roses, 
 
 But I have seen from a hillside green the black 
 hawk drifting slow. 
 
 C. L. Edson
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 May on Oread 
 
 "Oh, to be in England 
 Now that April's there." 
 
 So plained the Poet from a land of fire, 
 Forgetful of the gaudy melon-bloom, 
 Heart-hungry for his English daffodils 
 And for the elm tree's tiny crinkled green. 
 He did not know the land of my desire, 
 The wild bees on the lilac's purple plume, 
 The sun-transfigured glory of the hills, 
 And May on Oread, glad and sweet and clean. 
 
 Willard Wattles 
 
 The Man Behind the Gun 
 
 There are many to sing of the noble deeds of Kan 
 sas' favorite sons 
 
 The men who stood in the early days so manfully 
 by their guns, 
 
 Who shed their blood at the Nation's call for the 
 martyr-state's release, 
 
 And led her out of the depths of war and into the 
 ways of peace 
 
 I honor them all ; but I honor, too, the Infinite Wis 
 dom's plan 
 
 73
 
 Of putting a man behind the gun, and a woman 
 behind the man ! 
 
 The men of the days of Old John Brown Lord 
 
 love them, every one ! 
 Each is a hero in Kansas' eyes, and each is a favorite 
 
 son. 
 But I venture to say that you'd find if you got right 
 
 down to the truth of things 
 They were mostly held to their duty's post by a couple 
 
 of apron strings ! 
 For who could waver, or who could fail in that 
 
 struggle in Freedom's name 
 When woman's courage and woman's faith were 
 
 backing him in the game? 
 
 Our dear fore-mothers ! who lived and loved in the 
 
 days when the State was young, 
 (And many have gone to their last long rest, un- 
 
 honored, unknown, unsung) 
 For Woman rose to the needs of the hour when the 
 
 dear-bought peace was won, 
 And backed up the man at the plough as well as she'd 
 
 backed lip the man at the gun ! 
 He gave his strength for the land's increase, his 
 
 voice to the new State's good, 
 But back of his every word and deed some valiant 
 
 woman stood. 
 
 74
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 There are men at the front in our State today, and 
 
 back of each one stands 
 Some dauntless woman with loving heart and ready 
 
 and willing hands. 
 I do not ask for her Equal Rights, nor a voice at 
 
 your polls as yet, 
 (For Heaven knows I am anything but a rampant 
 
 suffragette ! ) 
 But give her a place in your Halls of Fame, along 
 
 with your honored ones ; 
 Let Kansas' favorite daughters rank as high as her 
 
 favorite sons. 
 I pledge you loyally, heart and hand, as only a 
 
 Kansan can 
 A toast: 
 
 To the Man who is at the front and the 
 Woman behind the Man ! 
 
 Esther M. Clark 
 
 75
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 My Dear 
 
 If I hadn't had you, my dear, 
 
 My Dear, 
 
 In the years that we've been together, 
 With your happy tongue and your jest and song, 
 
 No matter how gray the weather; 
 If I hadn't had you when my hope was low, 
 
 To comfort and tease and love me, 
 I'd have seen no green in the grass below, 
 
 No blue in the sky above me. 
 And the world had been empty and sad and drear, 
 
 If I hadn't had you, my dear, 
 My Dear. 
 
 If I hadn't had you, my dear, 
 
 My Dear, 
 
 With the glamour of youth about you, 
 When the day's work drags and my courage flags, 
 
 Why, what should I do without you ? 
 If I didn't have you when the day is long, 
 And the long, long night comes after ; 
 If I didn't have you when the world goes wrong, 
 
 To set it right with laughter, 
 There'd be small need of my tarrying here, 
 If I didn't have you, my dear, 
 My Dear. 
 
 Esther M. Clark 
 
 76
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The Hands That Cling 
 
 The hands that cling, and will not let you go 
 
 Your sweet, untroubled way ; 
 The hands that cling, because they love you so, 
 
 And bid you stay; 
 Sometimes that press upon your eyes to hide 
 
 From you the blessed Vision of your King ; 
 Sometimes that stay your lips lest you should chide 
 The hands that cling. 
 
 Such weak, frail hands for helping! Yet how near 
 
 Their duty lies, forgot! 
 It is their very weakness holds you, dear, 
 
 As strength could not. 
 The hands that would their last crust give, not share, 
 
 And every treasure to your feet would bring ; 
 The hands that should be strong to lift and bear, 
 Yet only cling. 
 
 The hands that cling, yet will not be denied 
 
 Some service for love's sake, 
 And in its doing are as glorified ; 
 
 The hands that take 
 No weight from your sad cross. Oh, lighter far 
 
 It were but for the burdens that they Sring ! 
 God only knows what hind'ring things they are 
 The hands that cling. 
 
 77
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The hands that cling today and hold you fast 
 
 Because they love you so, 
 I know, my sweet, must loose their hold at last, 
 
 And let you go. 
 
 Then, bruised and bleeding, lifted pleading toward 
 The Heaven that bends above them, pitying, 
 Oh, take them, hold them fast in Thine, Christ 
 
 Lord 
 The hands that cling ! 
 
 Esther M. Clark 
 
 The Mother 
 
 Dear Lord, there is so much to do in one brief, busy 
 
 day: 
 The little clothes to wash and iron, and mend and 
 
 put away; 
 The littered toys to gather up, the little beds to 
 
 make ; 
 And little griefs to soothe away from little hearts 
 
 that ache. 
 The little bodies to be kept, for Thy sake, clean and 
 
 sweet, 
 As temples for the dwelling of the Christly spirit 
 
 meet. 
 And Mary Mother one time knew the blessedness 
 
 of this: 
 The little feet to wash at night, the little lips to 
 
 kiss.
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Forgive me, Lord, if that I seem neglectful of Thy 
 
 work. 
 
 It is not that my heart is hard, it is not that I shirk. 
 But that my heart and hands are full with these, 
 
 my little ones, 
 My little daughters, fair and sweet, my sturdy little 
 
 sons. 
 Once I rejoiced in serving Thee, and only Thee 
 
 alway ; 
 And now sometimes I am so tired I cannot even 
 
 pray. 
 But I draw near at night to Him whose mother knew 
 
 the bliss 
 
 Of tender, little feet to wash, and little lips to kiss. 
 
 Esther M. Clark 
 
 April on Half Moon Mountain 
 
 Seed time and weed time and cattle out to grass, 
 Women- folk a-settin' hens and plantin' garden sass. 
 Gee, I'm tired of pickled pork and home baked 
 
 beans 
 
 Mother, pass the sassafras and sour dock greens. 
 Peach bloom and mint perfume and me a-diggin' bait, 
 I ought to be a-plowin' but the fish won't wait. 
 
 C. L. Edson 
 
 79
 
 Meadow Lark and Prairie Wind 
 
 An airy flutter of slender, brown wings, 
 Arid hark ! is it joy or sorrow that sings 
 In the one swelling note, 
 
 That trembles and thrills through the long-lifted 
 throat? 
 
 A rush o'er the prairies, a sorrowful cry, 
 And the quivering grasses bow down with a sigh, 
 Stirred deep by emotion 
 
 That the wind sings and cries o'er the wide grassy 
 ocean. 
 
 A thrill of the heart, a tremble of grasses, 
 
 And wind-sound and bird-song a melody passes. 
 
 We puzzle long, but we may not know 
 
 If wind or lark first sang this song, 
 
 With its burden of exquisite woe. 
 
 'Anne Reece Pugh
 
 Clover and Sky 
 
 O blest is he whose sorrow 
 
 Hath lasted but a night! 
 Thrice blest he whose tomorrow 
 
 Dawns ever fair and bright ! 
 Yet who, the wide world over, 
 
 Could choose to sit and sigh? 
 With underneath, the clover, 
 
 And overhead, the sky. 
 
 Then make no friends with trouble, 
 
 And have no peace with gloom; 
 For surely Joy is double 
 
 When all the Earth's a-bloom ! 
 Look up ! There bends above you 
 
 The tender, shelt'ring sky. 
 Look down! And there, to love you, 
 
 The clover, sweet and shy. 
 
 Last night the wind fell sobbing 
 
 Against my window pane, 
 And like my heart's dull throbbing 
 
 There beat the mournful rain. 
 But now the storm is over 
 
 There's none so blithe as I, 
 With underneath, the clover, 
 
 And overhead, the sky. 
 
 Esther M. Clark 
 
 81
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 A Ridge of Corn 
 
 With heart grown weary of the heat, 
 
 And hungry for the breath 
 Of field and farm, with eager feet 
 
 I trod the pavement dry as death 
 Through city streets where vice is born 
 And sudden, lo ! a ridge of corn. 
 
 Above the dingy roof it stood, 
 
 A dome of tossing, tangled spears, 
 
 Dark, cool and sweet as any wood, 
 Its silken gleam and plumed ears 
 
 Laughed on me through the haze of morn, 
 
 The tranquil presence of the corn. 
 
 Upon the salt wind from the sea, 
 Borne westward swift as dreams 
 
 Of boyhood are, I seemed to be 
 
 Once more a part of sounds and gleams 
 
 Thrown on me by the winds of morn 
 
 Amid the rustling rows of corn. 
 
 I bared my head, and on me fell 
 
 The old wild wizardy again 
 Of leaf and sky, the moving spell 
 
 Of boyhood's easy joy or pain, 
 When pumpkin trump was Siegfried's horn 
 Echoing down the walls of corn. 
 
 82
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 I saw the field (as trackless then 
 
 As wood to Daniel Boone) 
 Wherein we hunted wolves and men, 
 
 And ranged and twanged the green bassoon. 
 Not blither Robin Hood's merry horn 
 Than pumpkin vine amid the corn. 
 
 In central deeps the melons lay, 
 Slow swelling in the August sun. 
 I traced again the narrow way, ( 
 
 And joined again the stealthy run. 
 The jack-o'-lantern race was born 
 Within the shadows of the corn. 
 
 O wide, west wilderness of leaves ! 
 
 O playmates far away! O'er thee 
 The slow wind like a mourner grieves, 
 
 And stirs the plumed ears like a sea. 
 Would we could sound again the horn 
 In vast sweet presence of the corn ! 
 
 Hamlin Garland
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Plowing Corn in Kansas 
 
 They're plowing corn in Kansas upon the old home 
 farm, 
 
 The slender shoots are up a foot, the morning sun 
 is warm, 
 
 The dew is fading from the grass, I see the yellow 
 breast 
 
 Of Father Meadow-lark come home to that low- 
 hidden nest; 
 
 He's had his morning whistle while the meadow- 
 lands were dark, 
 
 And he's brought a squirming breakfast back to 
 Mrs. Meadow-lark. 
 
 So hurry up them horses,. boys, and watch old Jim 
 
 and Kate; 
 Hop down and leave the water- jug beside the open 
 
 gate. 
 I've got my red bandanner on and opened up my 
 
 shirt, 
 And the cultivator-shovels are a-gouging through 
 
 the dirt. 
 It's half a mile before we turn and take another 
 
 row, 
 For it's plowing-time in Kansas and the morning 
 
 sun is low.
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Hi, Tommy, there's a gopher. Can't you hit him 
 
 with a clod? 
 Get a hard one, that's the ticket, or a sun-caked 
 
 lump of sod. 
 I heard another chipper over yonder Gosh, I'm 
 
 hot, 
 And old Kate has nipped her breakfast over half 
 
 a city lot. 
 But you can't be minding horses and a-chasing 
 
 gophers, too, 
 And the boss won't go plumb busted 'cause old Katie 
 
 had a chew. 
 
 Say, you're crowding pretty close there; can't you 
 hold 'em in a spell? 
 
 You must think a horse's sneezing suits my shirt- 
 tail pretty well. 
 
 Never knowed a mare like that 'un, when she creeps 
 up close behind 
 
 She is sure to swaller something and to snort herself 
 plumb blind; 
 
 Blamed if I'd a rode so near you, if I didn't think 
 that you 
 
 Knowed enough to keep them horses back the way 
 you ought to do. 
 
 That rabbit's mighty impident a-browsin' round so 
 
 brash, 
 Just reach me that 'ere black-snake and I'll g-ive his 
 
 legs a lash;
 
 And that crow will lose his tail-piece if he gets so 
 
 near the wheel ; 
 Serve him right, the greedy beggar worms must 
 
 make a messy meal. 
 Don't see why the prairie critters act so sort of 
 
 confident 
 Thar ! I said ye'd git in trouble wisht I had some 
 
 liniment. 
 
 I think I see the gate-post, Tom, and there's the 
 
 water- jug. 
 I'll beat ye there. Oh, drat the luck, old Pete has 
 
 dropped a tug. 
 Look out, you're tearin' up the corn; that ain't the 
 
 way to do, 
 
 I'd give you walking-papers if I was hirin' you. 
 You've drunk up half a gallon but I guess there 
 
 ain't no harm ; 
 We'll both drive back to fetch some more. I feel 
 
 uncommon warm. 
 
 They're plowing corn in Kansas, the morning sun 
 is high, 
 
 You'll hear a cow-bell ringing through the silence 
 by and by; 
 
 And then an apron waving nearly half a mile away, 
 
 It's dinner time, I think there'll be some rhubarb- 
 pie today. 
 
 86
 
 But I'm in Massachusetts, and we've had a tardy 
 
 spring, 
 And 'twas only just this morning that I heard a 
 
 robin sing. 
 
 WUlard Wattles 
 
 Bouncing-Bet* 
 
 When that I see thee by the dusty road, 
 Or where some kindly householder has spared 
 The sprawling matted growth that thou hast dared 
 To trail along the skirts of his abode, 
 When that I see thee thus, chance-sprung, wind- 
 sowed, 
 
 A wildling waif for whom no one has cared, 
 My eyes do fill, to think that thou hast fared 
 As other prophets to whom much is owed. 
 For when the winged scourge swept o'er our land, 
 Leaving all black, laying all green things low, 
 Thy pale sweet blossoms scatheless it passed by 
 Through thee God let our fathers understand 
 Unloved and useless, thine it was to show 
 The bow of promise in thy nether sky. 
 
 Rose Morgan 
 
 * In meraoriam; Kansas, 1874.
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Sunflowers in the Corn 
 
 There's a certain day in summer that I always 
 
 recognize, 
 
 Though I'm far away from prairie land and sun, 
 By the pulling at my heart-strings and the aching in 
 
 my eyes, 
 
 And I know that back in Kansas, harvest's done. 
 The mellow sun is gleaming on the stacks of ripened 
 
 wheat, 
 
 The stubble-field is empty and forlorn ; 
 With a hoe across my shoulder and bare-footed in 
 
 the heat, 
 I am off to cut the sunflowers in the corn. 
 
 Qh, what mystery of magic down the green and 
 
 gracious aisles, 
 
 Lures me on and on forever to the end ; 
 The flapping corn is whispering while summer bends 
 
 and smiles ; 
 The warm wind scampers, shouting, " Follow, 
 
 friend." 
 He is all about me tugging, with his shoulder pressed 
 
 to mine, 
 " Come and catch me, don't you feel my circling 
 
 arm? 
 
 Oh, there never was a farmer boy with comrade such 
 as thine; 
 
 88
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 See, I flush thy cheek with kisses, what's the 
 harm?" , 
 
 The corn is waving o'er me and the swelling ears 
 
 are sweet 
 
 Where the silver floss is pushing from the white. 
 What a wealth of scarlet mallow bloom is crimsoning 
 
 my feet; 
 
 There's a turtle watch him scramble out of sight. 
 Why, there's every prairie creature here a dove 
 
 upon her nest ; 
 
 Two white eggs beneath a friendly cockle-bur ; 
 Lucky thing for you, old cocky. You're a most out 
 rageous pest, 
 But I'll pass you by because you shelter her. 
 
 Here's a sunflower watch him nodding with his 
 
 saucy, swarthy face, 
 
 Golden ear-ringed, don't you see the gypsy king? 
 Amber beads bedangled o'er him with a frankly, 
 
 flaunting grace ; 
 
 How he jostles Mr. Cornstalk, poor old thing. 
 Here, you'll have to stop it, Tony, for you quite 
 
 forget that you 
 
 Are a tramp, for all gaudy, gilded crown ; 
 You're a vagrant, and a dead-beat; you're a non- 
 producer, too, 
 And I've come to chop you, Tony tumble down.
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 What a revelation dawning, what a wonder over 
 head, 
 
 All the tender, over-arching azure dome. 
 With the sun ablaze above me, is it prairie paths I 
 
 tread? 
 
 No, 'tis fairyland, 'tis fairyland I roam. 
 Titania is swinging in a silken hammock hung 
 
 From burly thistle-top to goldenrod; 
 There's a Puck on every jimson-weed where once a 
 
 spider swung, 
 While milk-weeds chamber Pixies in each pod. 
 
 Oh, 'tis fairyland, 'tis fairyland, and I a warrior 
 
 stout, 
 
 With saber-steel a-flashing in the sun. 
 How I charge the crazy gypsy kings and put them 
 
 all to rout; 
 
 Watch the long battalions waver, break, and run. 
 Hark, I hear a bugle calling me, the battle-pennons 
 
 gleam. 
 
 Forward once again the supper-horn, 
 And I wander home at twilight (Can it be I only 
 
 dream?) 
 From a day of awful carnage in the corn. 
 
 Willard Wattles 
 
 90
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Cutting the Corn 
 
 The morning glows on marching rows 
 
 Of weary, tattered corn; 
 The landscape looms with draggled plumes 
 And garments frayed and torn. 
 
 The day of doom is rising high 
 When all the cornfield soldiers die. 
 
 Scream, ravens, scream, the summer dream 
 
 Shall crumble in the breeze; 
 Stare, red-eyed day, with sickly ray, 
 
 Above the dogwood trees. 
 
 The cringing nymphs are terror dumb, 
 
 The harvest of the corn has come. 
 
 
 
 Trail tangled silken sheen no more ; 
 
 Blue velvet blossoms bleed and die ; 
 For, crashing through your bosom's core, 
 The doom shall smite you, hip and thigh. 
 A tear or two of sweetened dew 
 The mourning year shall weep for you. 
 
 The farm boy stands with eager hands, 
 
 That clasp the bluish blade; 
 Then right and left the stacks are cleft, 
 And now a wigwam's made. 
 
 And like an Indian village rise 
 The yellow tents before our eyes.
 
 Each blade stroke stirs the cockle-burs 
 
 And crab-grass growing by, 
 While echoes shout, " Come out, come out ! 
 And see the cornfields die ! " 
 
 And unseen nymphs go skipping past 
 Unhoused, unheveled, doomed at last. 
 
 Stampeded hosts of Indian ghosts, 
 
 And many a vanished chief, 
 Ride racing by with battle cry 
 But never stir a leaf! 
 
 And brooding dreams of other days 
 Drift down like dust upon the maize. 
 
 In gold and green the country scene 
 
 Is decked in harvest trim; 
 
 The sunshine sifts in bluish drifts 
 
 Across the landscape dim. 
 
 And thronging through the autumn air 
 Are gossamers of dryad's hair. 
 
 The fodder shocks will feed the flocks 
 
 And herds of grunting swine; 
 But now they stand a ghostly band 
 Of tepees in a line. 
 
 The ancient moon creeps up the hill 
 To listen to the whippoorwill. 
 
 C. L. Edson 
 
 92
 
 Farm Machinery 
 
 We have things with cogs and pulleys that will 
 stack and bale the hay, we have scarecrows auto 
 matic that will drive the crows away ; we have riding 
 cultivators, so we may recline at ease, as we travel 
 up the corn rows, to the tune of " haws " and 
 " gees ; " we have engines pumping water, running 
 churns and grinding corn, and one farmer that I 
 know of has a big steam dinner horn; all of which 
 is very pleasant to reflect upon, I think, but we need 
 a good contrivance that will teach the calves to drink. 
 
 Now, as in the days of Noah, man must take a 
 massive pail, loaded up with milk denatured, with 
 a dash of Adam's ale, and go down among the calf- 
 kins as the lion tamer goes 'mong the monarchs of 
 the jungle, at the famous three-ring shows; and the 
 calves are fierce and hungry, and they haven't sense 
 to wait, till he gets a good position and has got his 
 bucket straight; and they act as though they hadn't 
 e'en a glimmering of sense, for they climb upon his 
 shoulders ere he is inside the fence, and they butt 
 him in the stomach, and they kick him everywhere, 
 till he thinks he'd give a nickel for a decent chance 
 to swear ; then they all get underneath him and cap 
 size him in the mud, and the milk runs down his 
 whiskers and his garments in a flood, and you really 
 ought to see him when he goes back to his home quot 
 ing divers pagan authors and the bards of ancient 
 
 93
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Rome. And he murmurs while he's washing mud 
 off at the kitchen sink: "What we need is a con 
 traption that will teach the calves to drink ! " 
 
 We've machinery for planting, we've machines 
 to reap and thrash, and the housewife has an engine 
 that will grind up meat for hash; we've machines 
 to do our washing and to wring the laundered duds, 
 we've machines for making cider and to dig the 
 Eurbank spuds ; all about the modern farmstead you 
 may hear the levers clink, but we're shy of a con 
 trivance that will teach the calves to drink ! 
 
 Walt Mason 
 
 94
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Before the Robin Dares 
 
 In the dark of dawn at the verge of spring 
 I heard the red bird caroling. 
 
 When snow patches lie on the links' soft folds, 
 Or ever the willow a catkin holds, 
 
 When the pines stand dark in the darkling west, 
 While the east flushes soft as his shy mate's breast, 
 
 The red bird warm from the heart of spring 
 Sets bare branches a blossoming; 
 
 And from out the dark rings his challenge clear, 
 What cheer among mortals? What cheer? What 
 cheer? 
 
 At the sound of his clarion sweet and high 
 My heart forgets the springs gone by, 
 
 And answers him back in the dawn of the year, 
 All cheer, fellow mortal! What cheer? All cheer! 
 
 In the dark of dawn at the verge of spring 
 I heard the red bird caroling. 
 
 Rose Morgan 
 
 95
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The Land That God Forgot 
 
 Oh, the land that God forgot 
 
 Where the sand and cactus ruled, 
 
 Paradise of rattlesnakes, 
 
 Bald and arid, brackish-pooled ; 
 
 Hither Coronado came 
 
 Lusting after precious stones, 
 And the fiery desert waste 
 
 Whitened everywhere with bones. 
 
 Then the Forty-niners passed 
 
 With their oxen gaunt and thin 
 
 And they only knew the land 
 As a place to perish, in ; 
 
 But at last the mind of Man 
 
 With a vision fired and thrilled 
 
 Saw how empires lay asleep, 
 
 Dreamed of homes with comfort filled, 
 
 So the tawny sand was trenched 
 
 With a thousand fluid bars 
 Which revived the ancient plain 
 
 Like the waterways of Mars 
 
 Now the tender grass springs up, 
 And the sleek kine lay them down, 
 
 96
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 And the freights toil in and out, 
 
 Fat with wares from many a town; 
 
 And the wheat rolls, billowy-vast, 
 
 And the ancient ocean bed 
 Sends up miles of tasseled corn 
 
 Nodding many a silken head. 
 
 Schools are builded, churches rise, 
 Children to the clime are born, 
 
 And they learn to love the land 
 Once a hissing and a scorn. 
 
 The land that God forgot, 
 
 Cactus-haunted, desert-wild, 
 Where the wide, bare bluffs and plains ' 
 
 Never with a harvest smiled, 
 
 The land that God forgot, 
 
 Barren with Oblivion's curse ! 
 
 Nay, it held a wealth, like gold 
 In a miser's wretched purse. 
 
 God forget? Through all the years, 
 
 As a father 'neath a vow, 
 He preserved its virgin worth 
 
 For its marriage with the Plow. 
 
 Harry Kemp 
 
 97
 
 The Thrush 
 
 Through half a June day's flight, 
 Upon the prairie, thirsting for the showers , 
 
 The cactus-blooms and prickly poppies white, 
 The fox-gloves and the pink-tinged thimble-flowers 
 
 Drooped in the Lord's great light. 
 
 Now suddenly, straight to the topmost spray 
 Of a wild-plum tree (I thereunder lying) 
 
 Darted a. thrush and fifed his roundelay 
 Whimsey on whimsey, not a stave denying. 
 
 Quoth I : " From regions measureless miles away, 
 He hears the soughing winds and rain-clouds flying ; 
 
 And gathering sounds my duller ears refuse, 
 He sets the rills a-rush 
 
 This way and that to ripple me the news 
 (Right proud to have his little singing say!) 
 And brings the joy to pass with prophesying." 
 
 So gladly trilled the thmsh ! 
 
 Soon was I made aware 
 Of his small mate that from the Judas-tree 
 
 Dropped softly, flitting here and flitting there, 
 And would not seem to hear or seem to see. 
 
 He, in that upper air, 
 All mindful of her wayward wandering, 
 
 (Primrose and creamy-petaled larkspur bending 
 And yellow blossomed nettle, prone to sting!) 
 
 Shook out his red-brown wings as for descending
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 But lightly settled back, the more to sing. 
 " O bird ! " I sighed, " thy heedless love befriending 
 With that celestial song-burst whirling swift 
 
 As Phaeton's chariot-rush ! 
 Should my dear angel's voice so downward drift 
 Quick would my music-lifted soul take wing ! " 
 Now had earth's happiest song a heavenly ending 
 Sped, with his mate, the thrush. 
 
 Amanda T. Jones 
 
 Requiem 
 
 I am rambling with the rivers, 
 I am falling with the rain, 
 
 I am waving in the woodland, 
 I am growing in the grain. 
 
 I am marching in the zephyr, 
 
 I am rimpling in the rill, 
 I am blooming on the prairie 
 
 But I live in Kansas still. 
 
 Eugene F. Ware 
 
 99
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Sunflowers 
 
 I saw a field of sunflowers 
 
 When all their bloom was shed, 
 A field of Kansas sunflowers 
 
 All standing brown and dead, 
 They hovered there upon the hill; 
 And like a phantom crew, 
 The ghost of all the sunflowers 
 
 The prairies ever grew 
 Came trooping toward me in a crowd, 
 Each shining through a misty shroud, 
 And flashed like fireflies thro' my brain 
 As once they lit the Kansas plain. 
 
 For I have known the sunflowers 
 
 As well as mortals know ; 
 They leaned to me, the sunflowers 
 
 And whispered, long ago 
 The things the sunflowers told me then, 
 Some day I'll tell the world again, 
 Some day when all their fairy band 
 Is banished out of Kansas land. 
 
 For they are of the sprite world, 
 
 They are a fairy band, 
 They speak in mystic meanings 
 
 We scarcely understand. 
 They sprang in shining lanes of gold 
 Across the prairies where of old 
 
 loo
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The " Forty-Miners' " creaking wains 
 Went rutting through the grassy plains 
 
 And so were born the sunflowers, 
 The nymphs of earth and air; 
 
 They reached their arms imploring, 
 They tossed their golden hair; 
 
 They were a fairy band that cried, 
 
 " The gold is here on every side," 
 
 And yet the argonauts went by 
 
 To vanish in the sunset sky. 
 
 My playmates were the sunflowers 
 Besides the sod house door, 
 
 They spread a sweet enchantment 
 That lured me evermore; 
 
 Their army queen, with shields ablaze 
 
 Went marching down the summer ways 
 
 Across the mystic prairie land 
 
 Where Youth and I walked hand in hand. 
 
 The land grew full of cornstalks 
 That flapped against the sky, 
 The summer sun went running 
 Across the wheat and rye, 
 And nestling in the sunflower's shade 
 The wild canary's nest was made ; 
 And every dream within me born 
 Was of the sunflowers and the corn. 
 
 101
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The sound of splashing raindrops, 
 
 The whistle of the quail, 
 The roar of men and reapers, 
 
 The night hawk in the vale, 
 The crooning of the cradle song, 
 Out in the west where I belong, 
 A day that nevermore may be 
 Is what the sunflowers say to me. 
 
 C. L. Edson 
 
 When She Was Born Upon That 
 Kansas Hill 
 
 When she was born upon that Kansas Hill 
 
 Soft April tiptoed through the prairie grass, 
 Bidding the early meadow-larks be still 
 
 And listen for the coming soul to pass. 
 It came with soundless music from the deep, 
 
 Fulfilled with superhuman harmony 
 That charmed the waiting Easter-bells to sleep 
 
 And made them dream of mornings yet to be, 
 When she should romp that hill and greet the sun 
 
 With her clear treble and drink the spicy air 
 And pulse in time with all the life begun 
 
 In that soft season of what is sweet and fair. 
 Oh, there was joy enough that April morn 
 Over the Kansas Hill where she was born ! 
 
 William Herbert Carruth 
 
 103
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Pine Trees in Kansas 
 
 " We go to rear a wall of men 
 On Freedom's Southern line, 
 
 And plant beside the cotton tree 
 The rugged Northern pine" 
 
 Whittier 
 
 The cottonwood, own child of radiant spring, 
 Stands all aflutter in its shimmering green, 
 As not of Earth but of some realm serene 
 Where Winter never comes, and Light is king, 
 Whither its leafy pinions quivering, 
 Its upflung boughs in their soft silver sheen, 
 Seem ready to transport it when the keen 
 Arctural blasts stop its brief bourgeoning. 
 Behind it rise the pines in dull array, 
 Dark wintry aliens in a sunbright land ; 
 Yet winter's strength their level boughs display, 
 Strength fitted winter's tempests to withstand; 
 And on them rests a glory past compare 
 The fulfilled hope of those who set them there. 
 
 Rose Morgan 
 
 103
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The Little Old Sod Shanty 
 On the Claim 
 
 A FRONTIER SONG 
 Tune " The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane." 
 
 I am looking rather seedy now, while holding down 
 my claim, 
 
 And my victuals are not always served the best, 
 And the mice ply slyly 'round me in my shanty on 
 the claim 
 
 As I lay me down alone at night to rest ; 
 Yet I rather like the novelty of living in this way 
 
 Though my bill-of-fare is always rather tame 
 For I'm happy as a clam, on this land of Uncle Sam 
 
 In my little old sod shanty on the claim. 
 
 CHORUS 
 
 The hinges are of leather, and the windows have no 
 
 glass, 
 
 While the roof it lets the howling blizzards in; 
 And I hear the hungry coyote, as he sneaks tip thro' 
 
 the grass, 
 Round my little old sod shanty on the claim. 
 
 But when I left my Eastern home, so happy and so 
 
 gay, 
 To try and win my way to wealth and fame, 
 
 104
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 I little thought that I'd come down to burning twisted 
 
 hay 
 
 In my little old sod shanty on the claim. 
 My clothes are plastered o'er with dough, I'm look 
 ing like a fright, 
 
 And everything is scattered 'round the room; 
 And I fear if P. T. Barnum's man of me should get 
 
 a sight, 
 He would take me from my little cabin home. 
 
 I wish that some kind-hearted miss would pity on 
 
 me take, 
 
 In this mess, and extricate me from the same; 
 The angel ! how I'd bless her, if this her home she'd 
 
 make 
 
 In my little old sod shanty on the claim; 
 And when we'd made our fortune on the prairies of 
 
 the West, 
 
 Just as happy as two bed-bugs we'd remain; 
 And we'd forget our trials and our troubles while 
 
 we'd rest 
 In our little old sod shanty on the claim. 
 
 If now and then a little heir to bless our lives was 
 
 sent, 
 
 Our hearts with honest pride to cheer and flame, 
 We would surely be content for the years that we 
 
 had spent 
 In our little old sod shanty on the claim. 
 
 105
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 And after years elapse and all those little chaps 
 To men and honest womanhood have grown, 
 
 It won't seem half so lonely if a dozen cozy cots 
 Surround our old sod shanty on the claim. 
 
 CHORUS 
 
 The hinges are of leather, and the windows have no 
 
 glass, 
 
 While the roof it lets the howling blizzards in, 
 'And I hear the hungry coyote, as he sneaks up thro' 
 
 the grass, 
 Round my little old sod shanty on the claim. 
 
 Anonymous 
 
 The Red Bird 
 
 Be the weather never so cold, we hear 
 Your voice in the tree-tops, trombone clear : 
 " Come out in the bitter ! " " Now what do you 
 
 fear?" 
 
 But ever your challenge, bright trumpeter, varies : 
 "Come hither !" " Come hurrj ! " " Come see 
 
 the green prairies ! " 
 
 " Wild roses ! " " Primroses ! " " Blue vetches ! " 
 "S o n e a r !" 
 
 : ' V ,^ 
 
 i 'Amanda T. Jones 
 
 * 
 
 106
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The Song of the Kansas Emigrant 
 
 We cross the prairies as of old 
 The Pilgrims crossed the sea, 
 
 To make the West, as they the East, 
 The homestead of the free. 
 
 CHORUS 
 
 The homestead of the free, my boys, 
 
 The homestead of the free, 
 To make the West, as they the East, 
 
 The homestead of the free. 
 
 We go to rear a wall of men 
 
 On Freedom's Southern line, 
 
 And plant beside the cotton tree 
 The rugged Northern pine. 
 
 We're flowing from our native hills, 
 
 As our free rivers flow; 
 The blessings of our mother-land 
 
 Is on us as we go. 
 
 We go to plant her common schools 
 
 On distant prairie swells, 
 And give the Sabbaths of the wild 
 
 The music of her bells. 
 
 107
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Upbearing, like the ark of old, 
 
 The Bible in her van, 
 We go to test the truth of God 
 
 Against the fraud of man. 
 
 No pause, nor rest, save where the streams 
 
 That feed the Kansas run, 
 Save where our pilgrim gonfalon 
 
 Shall flout the setting sun. 
 
 We'll tread the prairies as of old 
 Our fathers sailed the sea; 
 And make the West, as they the East, 
 The homestead of the free. 
 
 John G. Whittier 
 
 1 08
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Stay West, Young Man 
 
 Out of the West they called me, and I turned my 
 
 face to the East, 
 And there was pride in my going, as a bridegroom 
 
 goes to the feast ; 
 Here in the land of legend and the region of 
 
 romance 
 I should sit at the feet of learning and charter 
 
 thought's advance; 
 
 For every eastern hill-top was sacred and divine 
 To the humble prairie plow-boy who sought in the 
 
 East a sign. 
 
 Out of the East I turn me God, what my eyes have 
 
 seen! 
 From a land of degenerate farmers, from the Land 
 
 of the Might-Have-Been, 
 From the narrow hills of learning where the 
 
 lamp of truth goes out 
 And the still, small voice of the spirit is drowned 
 
 in the vulgar shout, 
 From a land of wanton cities and dread night things 
 
 that prey, 
 I turn my face to the West-land God, give me one 
 
 prairie day! 
 
 109
 
 Give me the blaze of sunshine, give me the open sky, 
 The crude, young strength of manhood undrained in 
 
 harlotry ; 
 Give me a voice that thunders and wisdom to 
 
 restrain 
 
 The flail of honest anger and pity for men's pain, 
 Give me the faith of Kansas and a few young men 
 
 I know, 
 And we'll carry the gates of Gaza and shatter Jericho. 
 
 The East is an ulcered carcass, bedecked like a 
 
 courtesan, 
 The West, like a boy, has heard her call and flushed 
 
 through his coat of tan, 
 He has spent, like Samson, his body's strength 
 
 for a gaudy finger ring 
 And the East has fettered him body and soul 
 
 with a rope of twisted string; 
 But I cannot keep in silence the things my eyes have 
 
 seen 
 
 As I turn to the youth of Kansas from the Land of 
 the Might-Have-Been. 
 
 Wittard Wattles 
 
 no 
 
 !
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 A Challenge to Youth 
 
 Lo, I will shape you a song for only the strong to 
 
 sing, 
 And swift are its words and sure as the hammered 
 
 sword of a king, 
 And the grip of my hand is stern as I turn to its 
 
 fashioning. 
 
 You who are young and clean and sweetened by the 
 sun, 
 
 Who have followed the binder afield till the blind 
 ing day was done 
 
 And the sheaves of beaten gold were garnered every 
 one, 
 
 Who have slept 'neath the open sky and pillowed a 
 
 dusty head 
 On the shiny saddle-leather, nor wished for a better 
 
 bed, 
 For you is the music moulded, for you is the anvil 
 
 red. 
 
 I sing you the song of Kansas, of reaper, brand, and 
 
 spade. 
 The sword of youth more splendid than Alexander's 
 
 blade, 
 The flag of faith transcendant in a mighty last 
 
 Crusade. 
 
 HI
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 For I have seen the cities that loom over eastern 
 seas, 
 
 And trodden the purple vintage of ancient revel 
 ries, 
 
 Where the simpering grin of Bacchus is the mask of 
 miseries. 
 
 The midnight reeled with laughter of rioting women 
 
 and men, 
 Sleek waiters tiptoed after and brimmed the glasses 
 
 again, 
 Till the night was a blare of ragtime and red with 
 
 lust and pain. 
 
 For this is the brood of the cities, elegant, deb 
 onair, 
 
 Men with the scars of license and women with shoul 
 ders bare 
 
 But I have swung in the saddle and swallowed the 
 prairie air. 
 
 The tang of the sun-dried grasses, the spangled cup 
 
 of the sky, 
 The yelp of a hundred devils that shriek in the 
 
 coyote's cry, 
 And forty miles of freedom and the moon to canter 
 
 by. ' 
 
 For I have walked the corn-rows that are so cool 
 and green, 
 
 112
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 And I have found the nesting dove under the bur 
 dock screen, 
 
 And many other wondrous things that no one of 
 these has seen. 
 
 Oh, none beside the farmer boy who walks the rows 
 
 of corn, 
 When blowing winds are ministers that sound a 
 
 silver horn, 
 And dreams bud like the prairie rose upon a fairy 
 
 thorn. 
 
 But now I sound to battle and brazen the notes are 
 
 blown, 
 You whom the sun has strengthened, follow the 
 
 flag is flown ! 
 And if you will not follow, I'll spur to the charge 
 
 alone. 
 
 Lo, this is the song I shape you, a song for the strong 
 and fleet, 
 
 A sword for the arms that wrestle with slippery 
 shocks of wheat, ' , 
 
 A flag of the dreams of Kansas by wide winds win 
 nowed sweet. 
 
 A sword for the youth of Kansas, a song for their 
 lips to sing,
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The reckless sword of manhood, blue steel from the 
 
 furnacing, 
 Oh, who will dare to wear it, still fresh from its 
 
 fashioning ? 
 
 Willard Wattles 
 
 Manhood 
 
 Out of the reek and swelter, out of the sink of shame, 
 Shape us the perfect manhood that leaps like a living 
 flame. 
 
 The Old World's foul corruption is poured on our 
 
 naked shores, 
 
 And the soul of the nation festers, ulcerate with sores. 
 The sons of the Pilgrim Fathers, on the hills their 
 
 fathers trod, 
 Have reared Gomorrah and Sodom in the face of 
 
 their father's God ; 
 And the land of the bloody meadows, of slaughtered 
 
 brother and son 
 Is foul with the nameless vintage of perished 
 
 Babylon. 
 The fields of folly are ripened, red and shameless 
 
 and bold ; 
 
 The harvest is ready for reaping, and Esau's birth 
 right sold.
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The brave little Mayflower breasted the thunder 
 ing leagues of foam, 
 
 But the peoples she engendered have builded a mod 
 ern Rome. 
 
 Rome of the corybantic worship of Orsiris, 
 
 Rome of the leprous satyr and dumb Astarte's kiss. 
 
 The land of Standish and Edwards, Revere and 
 Nathan Hale, 
 
 Has clanged to the clamoring cymbals in the hands 
 of the priests of Baal. 
 
 Better the blast of sirocco and a sudden terrible 
 
 death 
 Than to dwell in the tents of the godless and suckle 
 
 a harlot's breath. 
 
 Better a nation perish, root and blossom and branch, 
 Whelmed by the mighty thunder of God's great 
 
 avalanche, 
 Than to rear in perfumed cities a brood with feeble 
 
 chins 
 
 Whose delicate fingers tickle emasculate violins, 
 Where palaces of marble rise over Eastern seas 
 And people starve, while wantons batten on luxuries. 
 
 Out of America's sorrow, out of 'America's sluzme, 
 Shape us, O God, the manhood that leaps like a liv 
 ing flame! 
 
 Wittard Wattles
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 An Epic for Kansas 
 
 For the Eunice Sterling Chapter of the Daughters 
 of the American Revolution, Wichita. 
 
 I have stood on the hill where Warren looked out 
 over Charlestown Bay 
 
 When the confident British frigates opened the fate 
 ful fray 
 
 And the red-coats stormed the bulwarks on an un- 
 forgotten day. 
 
 From a swarm of Italian children rises the old 
 
 North spire 
 Where Robert Newman mounted to kindle the beacon 
 
 fire 
 And hang in his rusty lanterns the star of a new 
 
 empire. 
 
 And I have passed beneath it to where on the silent 
 
 hill 
 Old Cotton Mather slumbers, and his thundering 
 
 voice is still 
 That sentenced the Salem witches and wrought his 
 
 shame-red will. 
 
 And northward in the harbor, though the steadfast 
 masts are bare, 
 
 .116
 
 I have climbed to the Constitution over an oaken 
 
 stair 
 And stroked the immortal cannon that silenced the 
 
 Guerriere. 
 
 Old Ironsides rides at anchor and her mightier chil 
 dren creep 
 
 Home from the far-flung ocean that the war-dogs 
 guard and keep, 
 
 The terrible, steel-shod gray-hounds that harry the 
 flanks of the deep. 
 
 Old Ironsides in harbor, and every voyage done, 
 Home from the screaming shrapnel and death-ex 
 haling gun, 
 
 Home where heroes slumber with Prescott and 
 Washington. 
 
 What have we in Kansas, we of the Golden West, 
 To equal their deeds of glory and kindle a patriot's 
 
 breast 
 With tales of wild night-riding, and names by a 
 
 nation blessed? 
 
 Is all of the wonder vanished? Are all of the dreams 
 forgot, 
 
 All of the stress of battle when blood is stream 
 ing hot
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 And the dead undying squadrons go down in a crim 
 son blot? 
 
 Not alone in the trenches where throbbing war- 
 drums beat 
 
 Are mustered the nation's heroes from ranks of 
 the strong and fleet, 
 
 But out of the feeble marchers on bruised and lag 
 ging feet. 
 
 And we of the West have vanquished the stubborn 
 
 lonely plain 
 And stormed the heights of famine and foundered 
 
 the ships of pain 
 And clothed with an emerald garment the ancient 
 
 scars of Cain. 
 
 Never a trumpet sounded, never a blast was blown 
 When the pioneers of Kansas marched out to a field 
 
 unknown 
 And fronted drought and hunger, unheralded and 
 
 lone. 
 
 What of the days of struggle, the young corn shriv 
 eled sear 
 
 With scarcely a blade left glossy and never a full- 
 formed ear, 
 
 And Care to eat at your table, and you made a bed 
 with Fear? 
 
 118
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Never a church-bell ringing, scarcely a passing 
 
 friend, 
 Till it seemed you had walked forever and reached 
 
 the horizon-end ; 
 And ever the treeless prairie and the blazing skies 
 
 that bend 
 
 Down like a copper furnace, and the wind that 
 
 burned and stung 
 The white-washed, one-roomed shanty where the 
 
 withered moon-vine clung; 
 And you wondered if you had dreamed it that once 
 
 you were gay and young. 
 
 What have we in Kansas, sprung from those pio 
 neers ? 
 
 A story of deeds our fathers wrought through the 
 barren years, 
 
 A tale that our mothers sweetened with a baptism 
 of tears. 
 
 Give me the strength to sing it, the epic of our 
 
 dead, 
 
 The legend of their glory and the armies vanquished ; 
 Their battle-fields of anguish bearing a nation's 
 
 bread, 
 
 And those who have knelt in homage before an 
 eastern shrine
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Shall shake to a mightier music and pledge with a 
 
 ruddier wine 
 The pioneers of Kansas Come, touch your cup to 
 
 mine - Willard Wattles 
 
 The Old Timer 
 
 You've built up quite a city here, with stately 
 business blocks, and wires a-running far and near 
 and handsome concrete walks. The trolley cars go 
 whizzing by, and smoke from noisy mills is trailing 
 slowly to the sky, and blotting out the hills. And 
 thirty years ago I stood upon this same old mound, 
 with not a house of brick or wood for twenty miles 
 around. I'm mighty glad to be alive, to see the 
 change you've made; it's good to watch this human 
 hive, and hear the hum of trade ! 
 
 I list to the moans and wails 
 
 Of your town, with its toiling hands, 
 
 But O for the lonely trails 
 
 That led to the unknown lands ! 
 
 I used to camp right where we stand, among these 
 motor cars, and silence brooded o'er the land as I 
 lay 'neath the stars, save when the drowsy cattle 
 lowed, or when a broncho neighed ; and now you 
 have an asphalt road, and palaces of trade. We hear 
 the clamor of the host on every wind that blows, 
 
 \2Q
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 where people take the time to hoast of how their city 
 grows ! I do not doubt that you will rise to greater 
 heights of fame, and maybe paint across the skies 
 your city's lustrous name ! 
 
 I list to the ceaseless tramp 
 
 Of the host, with its hopes and fears ; 
 But O for the midnight camp 
 
 And the sound of the milling steers ! 
 Walt Mason 
 
 To the Wild Verbena 
 
 Verbenas blue, verbenas shining white, 
 Verbenas of a rich, pulse-quickening red 
 Grow here together in my garden bed, 
 Weaving their tangled mats for my delight; 
 Yet do I take less joyance in the sight 
 Of all their beauty, lavishly outspread, 
 Than in contemplating thy lowlihead, 
 O wild verbena, modestly bedight. 
 Theirs our flag's bright colors, your dull hue 
 Is aboriginal; the primal clay 
 Tinges your petals ; grateful for scanty dew, 
 Patient of sun, you bear the scorching ray 
 That withers them. Sweet wildling, but for you 
 Where now had been their red, their white, their 
 blue? 
 
 Rose Morgan 
 
 121
 
 Out of the Kansas Dust 
 
 Out of the dust of Kansas, 
 
 In old, primeval days, 
 Out of the shroud of a drifting cloud 
 
 Across its grassy ways, 
 Flaunting the flag of the prairie dust, 
 
 The shaggy bisons graze ; 
 Over a landscape red with rust 
 The herds emerge from the Kansas dust. 
 
 Treading the dust of Kansas, 
 Before she knew her name; 
 
 Standing aghast at the vernal vast, 
 The spying Spaniard came. 
 
 And his armour scales in the grassy vales 
 Gleamed out like an oriflamme, 
 
 As he sought -for the fabled city, thrust 
 
 Afar in the phantom desert's dust. 
 
 Trailing the dust of Kansas, 
 
 The Forty-Niners went; 
 Over the grass their oxen pass, 
 
 With their drovers, travel-spent. 
 And the weary weep their souls to sleep, 
 
 And lie in a grassy tent, 
 While the rest press on with feverish lust, 
 For the sunset land and its yellow dust. 
 
 122
 
 Into the dust of Kansas 
 
 Went tribe and caravan ; 
 All swallowed up in the desert's cup 
 
 That drank them, horse and man. 
 And the vision bold and the dream of gold, 
 
 It died as it began. 
 
 And the dreamer's heart turned mold and must 
 And drifted dead in the dreamless dust. 
 
 Out of the dust of Kansas 
 
 The marching dead return 
 Beneath the beat of their spectral feet 
 
 The springing poppies burn ! 
 And out of their tomb the towers loom 
 
 Like genii from an urn. 
 The burnished cities are skyward thrust, 
 Rending the veil of the Kansas dust. 
 
 Out of the dust of Kansas, 
 
 They lift the voice of song ; 
 Out of her heart the visions start 
 
 That lead the world along ! 
 Her sons have eaten the mystic bread 
 
 That makes a people strong. 
 And He whom the stumbling nations trust 
 Is salting the world with the Kansas dust. 
 
 George T. and C. L. Edson 
 
 123
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The Real Foreign Invasion 
 
 I'm going to quit the farm, Bill, my farming days 
 
 are done 
 The young ones all have left me to swell the city 
 
 tide; 
 My years have passed the zenith and life's declining 
 
 sun 
 
 Is gleaming from the Westward across the 
 prairies wide. 
 
 I've cattle in the feed lots and porkers in the shed, 
 And hayracks and haystacks and cribs of Kansas 
 
 corn 
 But, O, it seems a pity, all the boys have sought the 
 
 city, 
 
 And none would stay to till the soil, the land 
 where they were born. 
 
 I've seen my children leave me and then those of all 
 
 my neighbors, 
 And then I saw my neighbors go, and foreign 
 
 farmers came; 
 And the cattle at the mangers knew the accents of 
 
 the strangers, 
 
 And the English tongue is silenced and the land 
 is not the same. N 
 
 124
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Of all the old Americans that settled up this coun 
 try, 
 The boys that were my comrades when your dad 
 
 was green as May, 
 Who made the old days merry as we broke the 
 
 virgin prairie 
 
 They are sleeping 'neath the limestone or they've 
 wandered far away. 
 
 I have seen the dark Bohemians come creeping all 
 
 around me 
 McCracken sold and Jenks sold, and Rabbit 
 
 Smith he died; 
 And then there came a season when to sell it seemed 
 
 a treason, 
 
 For the native crowd began to fear the sweeping 
 foreign tide. 
 
 For every time a farm was sold a foreigner would 
 
 take it, 
 Well I remember Sod Corn Jones, the way it 
 
 hurt his pride 
 On the homestead that he founded, when at last he 
 
 was surrounded, 
 
 By the men from Southern Europe joining 
 fence on every side. 
 
 125
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Since we steered our covered wagon through 
 
 the blue stem of this state ; 
 
 And each fellow stuck his mug out of the sod con 
 structed dugout, 
 
 And began the task of harnessing the caprices 
 of fate. 
 
 We had claimed a virgin country where no plow had 
 
 kissed the grass roots ; 
 We were first to come with hamestraps and with 
 
 wheels and plowing gear, 
 And the hoppers and the blizzards couldn't daunt our 
 
 youthful gizzards, 
 
 For our army days were over, but our fighting 
 line was here. 
 
 Of the boys that whipped the prairie in the days of 
 
 " little eating," 
 When the rabbit was our savior and we cooked 
 
 with " prairie coal," 
 Not a one is left to cheer me as the evil days come 
 
 near me, 
 
 And the flag of my surrender hangs half-masted 
 at the pole. 
 
 O'er yon hilltop is the village one time filled with 
 
 Yankee fellows, 
 
 Where we used to loaf in summer when the corn 
 . was in the ear; 
 
 126
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 There the strangers now are thronging and my heart 
 
 is crushed with longing, 
 
 As I wander through the village and no native 
 accents hear. 
 
 I have kept the vow I promised ; I'm the lest to leave 
 
 my birthright; 
 I'm the last whose tongue knows English, and 
 
 my eyes are wet with tears ; 
 For last week old Bill De venter took the train from 
 
 Richland Center, 
 
 And the last link broke that bound me to those 
 early Kansas years. 
 
 I had hoped my children's children here would till 
 
 these fertile acres, 
 Tend the cattle on the hillsides and the clover 
 
 in the dales; 
 And we've all reared boys a-plenty, but when they 
 
 reached one and twenty, 
 
 City-ward they went a-flying down yon reach 
 of shining rails. 
 
 Strange, glum men from o'er the ocean, with their 
 
 wasteful farming methods, 
 Till those farms that Yankee muscle once made 
 
 laugh a harvest tide; 
 And where Rabbit Smith lies sleeping, alien feet go 
 
 creeping, creeping, 
 
 127
 
 And the plow whose kisses curse us spreads its 
 desolation wide. 
 
 Sod Corn Jones whose magic foresight proved that 
 
 new turned sod was able 
 To yield up a hundred bushels to the acre cropped 
 
 in maize; 
 In his grave he must be burning, with a frenzy and a 
 
 yearning, 
 
 For his land is surely turning desert tilled in 
 fatal ways. 
 
 Who will save this land from ruin, from the dust 
 
 storm and the famine; 
 Why have all our farm-bred children spurntd 
 
 their father's native soil? 
 Why is English no more spoken in the fields our 
 
 plows have broken? 
 
 Must my land be ripped to bedrock, now that 
 I'm too old to toil? 
 
 I had hoped some son returning from the wage war 
 
 in the city 
 Would take up this rich dominion I have battled 
 
 for so long ; 
 So that in the summer weather, Ma and I could sit 
 
 together 
 
 And could watch the browsing cattle and could 
 hear the harvest song. 
 
 128
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 One by one our children left us, one by one our 
 
 friends departed, 
 Till no soul that knew the rapture of the conquest 
 
 of the grass 
 Is beside us at the parting, none to see the tear-drops 
 
 starting, 
 
 But I've kept the vow I promised, and my time 
 has come to pass. 
 
 Fare you well, my Kansas acres, when the sun comes 
 
 up tomorrow, 
 Strangers' eyes shall lift to greet you, strangers' 
 
 feet my fields shall tread; 
 And the long teeth of the river, they shall gnaw these 
 
 hills forever, 
 
 And God help my city children in the hour they 
 ask for bread. 
 
 C. L. Edson 
 
 129
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Kansas 
 
 Give me the land where miles of wheat 
 Ripple beneath the wind's light feet, 
 Where the green armies of the corn 
 Sway in the first sweet breath of morn; 
 Give me the large and liberal land 
 Of the open heart and the generous hand. 
 Under the widespread Kansas sky 
 Let me live and let me die. 
 
 Harry Kemp 
 
 The Gradgerratun' of Joe 
 
 Way down crost the meadow an' cow-lot, 
 
 Thro' paths made by cattle an' sheep, 
 Where, cooled in the shade by the tall ellums made, 
 
 The old crick has curled up to sleep ; 
 Down there where the wind sighun' mingles 
 
 'Ith prattelun' waters at play, 
 And the coo coo coo of the turtle-dove too, 
 
 Seeps in from the dim far away ; 
 Down there by the banks of the Wilier 
 
 In spring where the sweet-williams grow 
 'Twas at this place 'at he all the time used to be 
 
 The home of our little boy Joe. 
 My oh 
 
 How long ago. 
 
 130
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Nope ; none o' you couldn't a' knowed him, 
 
 Way back there in seventy-four, 
 When Idy an' me concluded 'at we 
 
 'Ud edjicate Joe, rich or pore. 
 I mind how we skimped, scraped, an' worried, 
 
 An' how our first Christmas was dim, 
 An' how mother cried when we had to decide, 
 
 We couldn't send nothin' to him. 
 An' nobidy else dreams the sorrow 
 
 'At Idy an' me'd undergo, 
 A livin' that way all alone ever' day, 
 
 A yearnun' an' longun' fer Joe. 
 High O. 
 
 Long ago. 
 
 So Idy an' me went together, 
 
 To hear little Joe gradgerrate; 
 Little Joe, did I say? Meant big, anyway; 
 
 He spoke on the subject of " Fate." 
 An' my ! but the " effort was splendid," 
 
 The folks said 'at set by my side, 
 But I never hurd a sentence 'er word 
 
 An' mother jest broke down an' cried. 
 I hadn't the heart fer to ask her 
 
 What was the matter, you know; 
 Fer I felt she'd 'a' said: " Our baby is dead, 
 
 I want back my own little Joe : 
 Our Joe 
 
 Of long ago."
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 So foller me down thro' the cow-lot 
 
 Thro' paths made by cattle an' sheep, 
 To where in the shade by the tall ellums made 
 
 The old creek is tucked in to sleep; 
 Where sighs of the tired breeze whisper 
 
 To quiet the waters at play; 
 An* the dreamy coo coo of the turtle-dove true 
 
 Frightens care-phantoms away; 
 Fer I like to set hyur a thinkun', 
 
 An' astun the waters 'at play, 
 What's come o' the dear little boy 'at played here 
 
 In the days o' the long ago? 
 Oar Joe; 
 High ho ! 
 
 William 'Allen White 
 
 The Little Tree 
 
 In a fair branching sisterhood, 
 Protecting each other as sisters should, 
 
 The crabapple trees in the hollow stand, 
 Closely crowding, hand in hand. 
 
 But on the hilltop's barren crest, 
 Sundered far from all the rest, 
 
 Whipt by all the winds that blow, 
 Five little trees together grow. 
 
 132
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 They put out their hands, but cannot reach, 
 For all their striving, each to each. 
 
 Thus the others could not aid 
 
 When a direful stroke at one was made 
 
 A stroke that maimed the little tree 
 And left her praying not to be 
 
 A piteous sight for who might pass, 
 Her topmost twigs in the matted grass. 
 
 But when fair Spring came by that way, 
 Could the tree her bidding mild gainsay? 
 
 One weakling bud was left her still 
 She put it forth with a quickening will. 
 
 Now here she stands, a cripple bent, 
 Calm with wild Nature's calm content; 
 
 And when again the thrushes sing, 
 She'll hold her nosegay out to Spring. 
 
 Somehow, fairest of all I find 
 The little tree that would not be 
 But changed her mind. 
 
 Rose Morgan 
 
 133
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 On the Links 
 
 Said the locust trees to the sycamore tree, 
 " You are one, but two are we. 
 
 It is not good to stand alone; 
 Go get you back unto your own." 
 
 To the locust trees said the sycamore tree, 
 " Heaven set me here where all may see ; 
 
 My leaves are the swift rain's castanet; 
 As a harp for the wind my boughs are set ; 
 
 From my topmost twig the redbird sings, 
 Below flits his brother with bluebird wings ; 
 
 And in the shade I must spread at my feet 
 Prances the robin with motion fleet; 
 
 While for them and for you my pendulums mark 
 The lightfoot moments from dawn to dark. 
 
 These are the tasks I am set to do ; 
 
 For companionship Heaven gave me you." 
 
 Said the locust trees to the sycamore tree, 
 " One are you, but we are three." 
 
 Rose Morgan 
 
 134
 
 The Maverick 
 
 There is wonder in the wander-lust that sets the 
 
 feet to roaming, 
 And love has met me on the road and sweetened all 
 
 the gloaming; 
 Still, hard it is to walk so far, the while my heart is 
 
 homing 
 For the West-land, the best land, the land that gave 
 
 me birth, 
 The wide and sunny prairie-land, the fairest land of 
 
 earth, 
 
 Oh, hills are kind and comforting, and spicy woods 
 
 are clean, 
 And there's familiar friendship in the homely dales 
 
 between, 
 But I have seen the sunflower in a dress of dusty 
 
 green, 
 The sunflower, the one flower, the flower that gypsies 
 
 wear 
 When they go singing down the years, with star-dust 
 
 in their hair. 
 
 Oh, every road in Kansas-land is walled about with 
 
 gold, 
 
 And overhead the August sun is like a lord of old 
 A-riding down to Palestine, and staunch is he to 
 
 hold 
 
 135
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The West way, the best way, the way that I would 
 
 take 
 If I could scale these sullen walls where all my 
 
 lances break. 
 
 T^he hills of Massachusetts are a-bud with early 
 spring, 
 
 But it's little that I reck or care for all their bur 
 geoning ; 
 
 For my heart is at the stirrup and I feel the pommel 
 swing 
 
 The West-land, the blessed land, I hear the homing 
 call, 
 
 The wide and sunny prairie-land, the fairest land 
 of,all. 
 
 Willard Wattles
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Threshing Time 
 
 There's dew on the stubble and fog in the air, 
 
 And a red eye peeps over the hill, 
 And a white flag of steam, flaring up with a scream, 
 Has awakened the dull, drowsing doves from their 
 dream 
 
 On the aged, gray granary sill. 
 
 And through dew on the grasses and fog in the air, 
 The throng of the threshers is gathering there. 
 With toiling and tugging, and lifting and lugging, 
 They belt the steam engine that's wheezing and 
 
 chugging 
 
 And pitchforks are gleaming and laborers laugh, 
 Preparing to hurry the wheat from the chaff. 
 
 The smoke and the vapor float over the trees, 
 And a stamping horse rattles a chain; 
 
 And men with red handkerchiefs looped at their 
 throats 
 
 Are climbing the mountains of barley and oats, 
 The beautiful Alps of the grain. 
 
 The smoke and the vapor floats over the trees, 
 
 And the sun now has routed the fog on the breeze, 
 
 While creaking and turning, and slapping and 
 churning, 
 
 The belted red thresher has lisped out its yearning 
 
 137
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Has mumbled its hunger in mourn fulest note, 
 
 And the first sheaf is ground in its ravenous throat. 
 
 II 
 
 " Look out, fellers. Let 'er go ! 
 
 Pitch them first few bundles slow. 
 
 Hold on, son, don't gash my hands 
 
 When you're cuttin' off them bands. 
 
 Wheat's a-spilling. Hey, you Jack ! 
 
 Run that cussed wagon back ! 
 
 Grab a wheel, Bill, help him there. 
 
 We ain't got no wheat to spare. 
 
 Wheat's too high now, I'll be bound, 
 
 To thresh and throw it on the ground. 
 
 Belt 's off now ! And I just said 
 
 You boys would get her over-fed. 
 
 You mustn't try to rush her through ; 
 
 The straw's still tough and damp with dew. 
 
 When the sun gets two hours high 
 
 You will find it's plenty dry. 
 
 All right, let 'er go again; 
 
 Now we're threshin' out the grain. 
 
 See how plump them berries is ; 
 
 That's the stuff that does the biz. 
 
 That there wheat's from college seed 
 
 Of selected Turkey breed; 
 
 The land was fall plowed just as soon 
 
 All right, boy, she's blowed for noon. 
 
 Ease her down and hold her steady, 
 
 Women folks says grub is ready." 
 
 138
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 III 
 
 Now the thirsty sun swings lower on his torrid path 
 
 to earth, 
 
 And the yellow straw is piling toward the sky. 
 Say, a feller learns at threshm' what a drink of 
 
 water's worth, 
 For it tastes as sweet as cider when you're dry. 
 
 At last the sun is setting, just a crimson ball of fire, 
 
 And a coolness all the atmosphere pervades; 
 The stalwart feeder's dusty arms at last begin to 
 
 tire, 
 
 And the last sheaf passes downward through the 
 blades. 
 
 Now the whistle's long-drawn wailing is a song of 
 i seraphim, 
 
 And the stars light up in heaven's purple deep ; 
 And the smoking and the joking, how it rests the 
 weary limb 
 
 Ere bedtime ushers in the perfect sleep. 
 
 IV 
 
 The day is over, 
 
 The world is fed. 
 And the farmer sleeps 
 
 On his feather bed. 
 
 C. L. Edson 
 
 139
 
 On the Farm 
 
 How sweet to lean on Nature's arm, 
 
 And jog through life upon the farm; 
 
 Merchants and brokers spread a dash 
 
 A little while, then go to smash; 
 
 But we can keep from day to day 
 
 The even tenor of our way. 
 
 (There go those horses! Quick, John, catch 'em. 
 
 They'll break their necks! You didn't hitch 'em.) 
 
 How sweet 'and shrill the plow-boy's song, 
 
 As merrily he jogs along; 
 
 The playful breeze about him whirls, 
 
 And tosses wide his yellow curls. 
 
 His hands are brown, his cheeks are red 
 
 An ever-blooming flower-bed. 
 
 Unspoiled by crowds, unvexed by care 
 
 (Goodness! do hear the urchin swear!) 
 
 How soft the summer showers fall, 
 On field and garden, cheering all; 
 How bright in woods the diamond sheen, 
 Of rain-drops strung on threads of green 
 Each oak a king with jewel crown. 
 (The wind has blown the haystack down! 
 I knew 'twould hail, it got so warm. 
 That fence is flat. My! what a storm!) 
 
 140
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 How soft the hazy summer night! 
 On dewy grass the moon's pale light 
 Rests dreamily. It falls in town 
 On smoky roofs and pavements brown. 
 How tenderly when night is gone, 
 Breaks o'er the fields the summer dawn ! 
 How sweet and pure the scented morn. 
 (Get up.' Old Molly's in the corn!) 
 
 Far from the city's dust and broil, 
 We women sing at household toil, 
 Nor scorn to work with hardened hands; 
 We laugh at fashion's bars and bands, 
 And on our cheeks wear nature's rose. 
 (That calf is nibbling at my clothes! 
 Off she goes at double shuffle, 
 Chewing down my finest ruffle!) 
 
 We workers in our loom of life, 
 Far from the city's din and strife, 
 Weave many a soft, poetic rose, 
 With patient hand through warp of prose; 
 We love our labor more and more. 
 (John! here! the pigs are at the door! 
 They've burst the stye and scaled the wall 
 There goes my kettle, soap and all!) 
 
 Ellen P. Allerton 
 
 141
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 A Regular Dry Spell 
 
 Said Uncle Bye to Judson Nye, 
 "Well, old top, it's sure some dry, 
 Oats aren't more than a half-inch high. 
 When you goin' a get your corn laid by?" 
 
 " Talk about dry," said Neighbor Nye, 
 
 " Why, I've scorched my eye like an oyster fry, 
 
 Peeling that orb at the red-hot sky 
 
 Watching for clouds, but they don't drift by. 
 
 Here it is close to the Fo't July. 
 
 Can you lay corn by when it ain't knee-high ? " 
 
 " Corn's awful backward sure this year ; 
 
 Don't look like it could make an ear. 
 
 The Lord, He's watching each green young 
 
 spear, 
 And my corn's just as good as the rest 'round 
 
 here. 
 
 It's clean as the floor of a barn, darn near. 
 The growth is slow, I admit that's so ; 
 But in nary a row does the least weed show, 
 It's so plumb darn dry that the weeds can't 
 
 grow ! " 
 
 Uncle Bye said, "If you're asking me, 
 
 I swan, I swear that I never did see 
 
 Such a long dry spell. And so hot, too. Gee ! 
 
 142
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 But 'twas just like this in ninety-three. 
 It cut off raining away in May, 
 Had to use scissors to cut the hay. 
 Some of it short as a goslin's fuzz, 
 We lathered and shaved like a barber does; 
 Corn rolled up like a cigarette; 
 A chap could have smoked the stuff, I bet. 
 I tell you what, if you b'lieve my words, 
 Little chicks grew up to full-sized birds, 
 Summer-born calves they were five feet tall, 
 And never yet seen one raindrop fall ! 
 Hay was twenty-five dollars a ton, 
 Cash couldn't get it, 'cause there wasn't none. 
 Yet here is the fact that seems so queer, 
 That was a scandalous big peach year. 
 They grew everywhere that the eye could see, 
 On any bush claiming to be a tree ; 
 You could drive right along beside the road 
 And shake them off by the wagon load. 
 Though it's dry and hot, I tell you what, 
 Peaches can stand a terrible lot. 
 If it rains this year, some time 'fore fall, 
 There'll be peaches to throw at the birds, 
 that's all." 
 
 C. L. Edson
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The Farmer 
 
 The farmer is a man of wit, 
 There's a simply no denying it ! 
 He leads a life of pampered ease, 
 And is as happy as you please. ' 
 
 At 9 o'clock he's ready for 
 His morning rolls and cafe noir; 
 And when the gourmet thus is fed, 
 His valet helps him out of bed. 
 From 10 to i he reads the news, 
 The market tips and trade reviews; 
 To corn and wheat his heed he gives, 
 For 'tis by these the farmer lives. 
 
 So having figured for the day 
 Which way the markets he will play, 
 His batch of daily bread is made 
 By dealing on the Board of Trade. 
 His daily labor being through, 
 The farmer takes his lunch at 2; 
 Then donning riding-garb, he'll call 
 His favorite motor from the stall. 
 
 He rides about to view his farm, 
 And feel the restful country's charm. 
 His wife, with paints and sketching pad, 
 And all the trinkets of her fad, 
 
 144
 
 Her easel sets beneath the tree, 
 And paints the view from 2 to 3 ; 
 At 6 o'clock they dine in state 
 The farming life is simply great! 
 
 The products of the earth and air 
 Are on the table groaning there. 
 Sweet milk is always at their hand, 
 Bought by the case all neatly canned. 
 The trolley line that rattles down, 
 It brings them butter fresh from town, 
 And eggs and luscious chicken fries, 
 The best the city's mart supplies; 
 
 Green truck and fruit all crisp and nice, 
 
 Just taken from cold storage ice; 
 
 And juicy, luscious ham, O my! 
 
 The best the packers can supply. 
 
 No wonder life upon the farm 
 
 Has always held so rare a charm! 
 
 The cry of " Rube ! " which town folks shout, 
 
 Is only envy, inside out. 
 
 C. L. Edson 
 
 145
 
 Butchering Day 
 
 High through the sky see the homing birds sailing 
 
 It's butchering time. 
 
 Frost on the fences, on picket and paling 
 Hear the weird winter wind whining and wailing, 
 The warmth and the daylight are flitting and 
 failing 
 
 It's hog-killing time. 
 
 The season of feasting has come with the fall, 
 
 And the digging of yams. 
 The corn- fattened oxen are sleek in the stall 
 
 And the hogs are all hams. 
 The hands of the harvest have come from their 
 
 toiling, 
 
 They've set the black pot full of water a-boiling, 
 There's a jangle of knives and the whetstone they're 
 oiling 
 
 It's butchering time. 
 
 The women have laid down their sewin' and stitchin', 
 
 There's a stir in the place 
 And their laughter and chatter reflects from the 
 
 kitchen 
 
 The joy of the chase. 
 
 For old primal passions are stirring again, 
 And a wave of the cave*d\veller days on their ken 
 \ 
 
 146
 
 Lures them keen on the blood-sprinkled trail of the 
 
 men 
 At butchering time. 
 
 The porker is squealing the pangs of his fear, 
 
 For the chase has grown hot. 
 His cry is like music to every ear, 
 It's a flash of the cave man pursuing the deer, 
 It's the lusty and blood-shedding time of the year, 
 And the moment of rapture and capture is here 
 
 There's the sound of a shot. 
 
 The prey has gone down and the men with a shout 
 Plunge a knife in its heart and the life gurgles out, 
 
 In the old feeding lot. 
 
 , / 
 
 And the women come out with a smile on each face 
 
 To their part in the task 
 
 As our foremothers followed the men to the chase 
 In an age that is hid in the hazes of space 
 
 And Time's motionless mask. 
 But we know that the past surges back in our veins, 
 
 . At the terrified cry, 
 And the fever of conquest lights up in our brains, 
 
 And the blood-lust in eye; 
 And the best day of all, in the lap of the fall, 
 
 With its multifold charm, 
 Is the thick of the fray upon butchering day 
 
 On the farm. 
 
 C. L. Edson 
 
 147
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 My People 
 
 I have dwelt in a land of strangers where even the 
 
 sun is cold, 
 And the hills are damp with the sweat of age and 
 
 rotten with its mould; 
 The hemlocks stretch their shuddering arms where 
 
 ancient lichens cling, 
 And winter lingers the summer through in the lap of 
 
 the fainting spring. 
 The sad skies weep through the somber gloom that 
 
 gathers overhead 
 And the shadows close like a charnel-house when the 
 
 pallid day is dead; 
 But human creatures live and love and crumble with 
 
 the rains 
 Who never knew the madness of the sunshine in 
 
 their veins. 
 
 They never felt the touches of the south wind on 
 
 their faces 
 When down she sweeps upon them from the azured 
 
 open spaces; 
 They never saw the wild rose in a tangle at their 
 
 feet, 
 The bumble-bee that filches all her shyly treasured 
 
 sweet ; 
 For them no tawny sunflowers with their crowns 
 
 of beaten gold 
 
 148
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Have nodded through the summer sun like Spanish 
 
 kings of old; 
 They never stumbled in the grass upon the brown 
 
 quail's brood 
 And heard their frightened cheeping break the 
 
 prairie solitude. 
 
 But what of ye, my people, in the furrows where 
 
 you stand, 
 With your eyes of patient watching and the cheeks 
 
 that June has tanned? 
 Ye have turned with adoration toward the homeland 
 
 of your youth 
 And have worshipped in a childish faith the empty 
 
 husks of Truth ; 
 With the confidence of children ye have followed 
 
 from afar 
 And eastward turned your yearnings as the Wise 
 
 Men to the Star ; 
 Ye do not know as I know all the empty, faithless 
 
 shrines 
 And the altars where the sodden priests are drunk 
 
 with wanton wines. 
 
 Ye do not know as I know all the glory of the West, 
 (Or is it that ye know it well and leave it unex 
 pressed?) 
 
 I am one with ye, my people, of the rough, work- 
 hardened hands, 
 
 149
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Have trod the furrows ye have trod across the level 
 
 lands, 
 Have felt the hot wind's fevered breath when cloud 
 
 on cloud was arched, 
 While all the earth cried out for rain and every 
 
 throat was parched. 
 In reverence I bow me down before those patient 
 
 eyes 
 That see across the shriveled corn a rainbow in 
 
 the skies. 
 
 Is it wonder, then, my people, that we storm the 
 
 heights of God? 
 For they know Him best who build for Him an altar 
 
 from the sod. 
 Is it wonder that our dreamers who have died the 
 
 death of shame, 
 As John Brown on the gallows-tree, have set the 
 
 world aflame? 
 We are young, but through our pulses leaps a flood 
 
 from heroes' veins, 
 Men who struck in flaming anger at the Southland's 
 
 slaving chains; 
 
 Then to homely ploughshares forging every battle- 
 gleaming blade, 
 They have wrestled in the desert with an Angel 
 
 undismayed. 
 
 Day by day the dread endeavor, muscles tense and 
 faces grim, 
 
 150
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 With the prairie like a caldron banded by a brazen 
 
 rim: 
 Now the corn in rich abundance heals the ancient 
 
 scars of pain, 
 And the wheat-field's golden deluge overflows the 
 
 fertile plain. 
 'Twas for love of us, my people, you and me, their 
 
 children still, 
 Though their toil-worn bodies slumber on the little, 
 
 lonely hill. 
 Lo, the eastern shrines are pallid, cursed as Cain 
 
 their sacrifice, 
 And we turn our faces westward where our own 
 
 white altars rise. 
 
 WiUard Wattles
 
 As a Tale That Is Told 
 
 This is the tale of Kansas, and this way her legends 
 
 run 
 From the dawn of the day on her eastern rim to the 
 
 going down of the sun ; 
 Whatever js done in thy valleys, whatever is said on 
 
 thy heights, 
 Thy losses, and crosses, and sorrows; thy triumphs, 
 
 thy joys, and delights 
 
 Tho' the deed be done in the shadow, and only a mur 
 mur the word 
 The tyes of the nation behold it, the ear of the world 
 
 has heard. 
 As the Kaw runs to the Missouri, the Missouri 
 
 runs on to the sea 
 And their waters in misty beauty fall back from the 
 
 clouds on thee, 
 So the winds from the corners of heaven bring back 
 
 thy message to thee. 
 
 Out on the desolate highway that led to the Span 
 iards' land 
 
 Went the unknown trader and trapper o'er the cac 
 tus-fringed path of sand, 
 
 Where these wardens of commerce went building the 
 trail down to old Santa Fe, 
 
 With unmarked graves for their milestones over 
 stretches of wilderness gray, 
 
 152
 
 Where the Pawnee Rock stood, a fortress, grim 
 
 citadel of the Plains, 
 Where the blood of Comanche victims the Cimarron 
 
 desert stains 
 The Kaw has told the Missouri, the Missouri has told 
 
 the sea, 
 And the iron-clad engines of traffic today bring their 
 
 treasures to thee 
 From the Lakes to where the Sierras dip down to 
 
 the sunset sea. 
 
 Fertile and fair lay thy prairies, awaiting a pioneer's 
 
 hand 
 Sheltered by cottonwood branches, the brave little 
 
 cabin home stands 
 Where the staunch-hearted lover of freedom in an 
 
 unequaled terrible fight, 
 With the ruffian from over the Border has made his 
 
 last stand for the Right, 
 'Til defenseless he falls like a martyr in the wrath 
 
 of the torch's red glare 
 Is there no voice to tell of this hero, no ear that will 
 
 list to a prayer? 
 Yes.' The Kaw has told the Missouri, the Missouri 
 
 has told the sea, 
 And the roar of a thousand cannons on battlefields 
 
 thunder thy plea, 
 From that deed by the darkness enshrouded comes 
 
 the sunburst of liberty. 
 
 153
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Here in the " short grass " country with distances 
 
 dreamy and wide 
 The sturdy young claim-holder builded a sod-covered 
 
 house for his bride. 
 Though the Cheyenne put on his .war-bonnet and 
 
 went forth by bands to destroy 
 Though the drouth and the locust and cyclone joined 
 
 hands in a force to annoy 
 He planted his grain by all waters, his service can 
 
 never be told 
 And the seed that fell by the wayside has brought 
 
 forth a hundred fold. 
 JFor the Kaw has told the Missouri, the Missouri has 
 
 told the sea, 
 And food for the starving millions, thy broad-acred 
 
 bounty shall be 
 The toil begun at the " grass roots," brings riches 
 
 and honor to Thee. 
 
 Broad are thy skies, over-arching, and fair is thy 
 land to behold 
 
 Thy schools are the pride of thy people, thy churches 
 are manifold. 
 
 In the veins of thy sons, strong and noble, is the blood 
 of a pioneer line 
 
 And the demon they fight on thy border is the demon 
 that lurks in red wine. 
 
 And patiently still wait thy daughters, their God- 
 given rights to possess 
 
 154
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 When a citizenship universal thy brow with new 
 
 laurel shall dress 
 The Kaw will tell the Missouri, the Missouri will tell 
 
 the sea, 
 And the power that uplifts a nation, the leaven of 
 
 history 
 Through a whispered word on the prairie will shout 
 
 from the skies to thee. 
 
 The prophet, Ezekiel, has written that fronting to 
 Eastward stands 
 
 A house, from under whose threshold the waters 
 pour, healing all lands. 
 
 The fishermen of Engedi spread their nets and re 
 joice day by day, 
 
 The trees on its banks never wither, the deserts with 
 blossoms are gay. 
 
 And so may we write of this Kansas, a house front 
 ing still to the sun, 
 
 So long as its sons and its daughters shall do as their 
 fathers have done 
 
 While the Kaw runs to the Missouri, the Missouri 
 runs on to the sea, 
 
 The throb of the blossom-starred prairies, the pulse 
 of the world shall be, 
 
 And the limit no man shall measure, for the end is 
 Eternity. 
 
 Margaret Hill McCarter 
 
 155
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The University of Kansas 
 
 They have throned her upon a hill-top, mother and 
 
 queen in one, 
 
 Bride of the skies at midnight, sister of the sun; 
 Crowned with the glory of wisdom, garlanded with 
 
 light, 
 With the stars in her shadowy tresses when she 
 
 sleeps in the arms of night, 
 With the stars in her shadowy tresses, and a million 
 
 lamps that gem 
 The undulant lines of her body to the fringe of her 
 
 garment hem. 
 
 To her feet from the far-flung prairie her loving 
 subjects press, 
 
 Sprung from the sun-browned heroes who peopled 
 a wilderness; 
 
 Lads on whose hearts are graven epics of toil 
 unsung. 
 
 Bolder than olden story boasted in golden tongue 
 
 Bolder than knights of Arthur, braver than Charle 
 magne, 
 
 The patient unchronicled warriors whose plowshare 
 conquered the plain. 
 
 Beside them kneel their sisters, womanly, strong 
 and true, 
 
 156.
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Their hearts aflame with a courage such as their 
 
 mothers knew 
 When they watched the hot winds shrivel the corn 
 
 in the swelling ear, 
 Yet smiled at the men who faltered when every 
 
 smile hid a tear; 
 Still smiled when the tiny invader set teeth to the 
 
 ripening wheat, 
 And the face of the sun was darkened, and ruin 
 
 seemed complete. 
 
 They have throned her upon a hill-top and her 
 
 scepter sways afar; 
 The ends of the earth acknowledge her wherever 
 
 her children are. 
 Never in pride of her glory may those she has 
 
 nourished forget 
 That not on the purple dais is her throne of dominion 
 
 set. 
 Not on the purple dais May the sons of those 
 
 pioneers 
 Stand strong by their father's struggle and clean 
 
 by their mother's tears. 
 
 Willard Wattles
 
 Kansas, mother of us all, 
 Bosomed-deep, imperial, 
 Queen of states with dusty feet 
 Glowing through the ripening wheat; 
 Crowned with cloud, and amply free 
 In large motioned majesty; 
 Sky and prairie, circling plain, 
 Take us to thy breast again. 
 
 We, thy sons, have strengthened thews, 
 Fed on manna of thy dews, 
 And have laid our heads to rest 
 On thy slowly heaving breast, 
 Felt the vast tide of thy heart 
 All its silent peace impart 
 Mother, we, the kernelled grain, 
 In thy bosom sink again. 
 
 We, thy daughters, lithe and tall, 
 Follow when our brothers call ; 
 Eyes that see the right to do, 
 Hand to hold the rudder true, 
 Lip to set the seal of love 
 On thy sons who worthy prove. 
 Give us strength to bear thy pain, 
 Folded to thy side again. 
 
 158
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Over all the stubbled plain 
 Stretch low tents of yellow grain, 
 Rakish bumble-bees have wheeled, 
 Looting the alfalfa field; 
 And long lances of the corn 
 Storm the ramparts of the morn. 
 Lo, the sword that knows no stain 
 In a plough-share melts again. 
 
 Kansas, mother, what shall be 
 
 Guerdon fitting unto thee, 
 
 Who have bent and lifted up 
 
 To our lips a brimming cup? 
 
 We, thy children, dedicate 
 
 All our lives to make thee great. 
 
 Strength and sinew, heart and brain 
 
 Lull at night to sleep again ! 
 
 Willard Wattles 
 
 159
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The Prairie-Sleeper 
 
 I have so many friends. God sends them to me 
 
 As freely as He sends the sun or rain. 
 The very winds of Heaven seem to woo me 
 
 With all their wild, sweet ecstacy of pain. 
 The silent stars of Heaven stoop unto me 
 
 And with their fellowship my strength is slain 
 As I lie out beneath the skies that dew me 
 
 All night upon the wind-swept Kansas plain, 
 Till all the comradeship of earth ebbs through me 
 
 Like surge of tide upon the restless main. 
 
 A thousand voices of the crickets cry me 
 
 Quaint serenades that are unheard by day; 
 The wind comes by on tip-toe, seems to try me, 
 
 Touching with cooling finger-tips that stray 
 Along my body to my bosom shyly, 
 
 Then, like a startled maiden, slips away, 
 Brushing my flushed cheeks as she scampers by me 
 
 With musty fragrance from a heavy spray 
 Of goldenrod that drowsily nods nigh me 
 
 Sweet wind that loves me far too well to stay. 
 
 Above, the stars across the empty spaces 
 Fling clustered silver diadems of light; 
 
 Like queen who on her lover's forehead places 
 Her coronal, so kings me now the Night, 
 
 160
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 And I forget my hopes and my disgraces 
 In my new wonder at such vast delight; 
 
 Until, from deeps beyond star-deeps, there races 
 Her fire-haired messenger enrobed in white 
 
 And 'round each circling sun the friendly faces 
 Of God's far universe burst into sight. 
 
 Lord of the Night and all her beauty's splendor, 
 
 Pillowed upon her warm, sweet-scented breast, 
 Prairie and starlight, ecstacies unkenned or 
 
 Dared in dreaming while as yet unguessed, 
 Can she so shake a form so boyish-slender 
 
 With quenchless longings for the unpossessed, 
 How lavish would be Love, the reckless spender 
 
 Of hoardings minted in such sweet unrest? 
 The love of God is not more strong and tender 
 Than these wind-kisses on my eyelids pressed. 
 
 Friend with the night, the wind, the stars, the prairie, 
 
 I lie out-flung on her deep-rooted sod ; 
 The crickets chant their anthem, and the very 
 
 Loneliness is eloquent of God. 
 The wind slips by me like a frightened fairy 
 
 And nestles in a tuft of goldenrod; 
 The primroses their dew-filled censers carry 
 
 Along the grass-aisles where they drowse and 
 
 nod 
 And swing them ever slower, till a hairy 
 
 Indignant bee-priest rattles a milkweed pod. 
 
 161
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 I know that in the crowding world behind me 
 
 Where'er I turn I touch a friendly hand, 
 Frank eyes, and strong, clean faces are inclined me 
 
 And I behold their smile and understand. 
 But now, tonight, no phantom fetters bind me, 
 
 No unbeliefs the faithless world has planned; 
 If men would love me, they must come and find me, 
 
 Strange travelers from some far distant strand, 
 For now, tonight, no human cinctures blind me 
 
 And Love lays bare His mysteries unscanned. 
 
 Willard Wattles 
 
 162
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The Gates Ajar 
 
 I have seen a Kansas sunset like a vision in a dream, 
 When a halo was about me and a glory on the 
 
 stream ; 
 When the birds had ceased their music and the 
 
 summer day was done, 
 And prismatic exhalations came a-drifting from the 
 
 sun; 
 And those gold and purple vapors, and the holy 
 
 stillness there 
 Lay upon the peaceful valley like a silent evening 
 
 prayer. 
 And I've gazed upon that atmospheric splendor of 
 
 the West 
 Till it seemed to me a gateway to the regions of the 
 
 blest. 
 
 I have seen a Kansas sunrise like the waking of a 
 
 dream, 
 When every dewy blade of grass caught up the 
 
 golden gleam; 
 When every bird renewed the song he sang the night 
 
 before, 
 And all the silent, slumbering world returned to life 
 
 once more; 
 When every burst of radiance called up a throng of 
 
 life, 
 
 163
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 And all the living, waking world with melody was 
 
 rife. 
 And as that flood of life and song came floating 
 
 down the plain, 
 It seemed to me those golden gates were opened 
 
 wide again. 
 
 Albert Bigelow Paine 
 
 Tescott 
 
 Somewhere out West there lies a sloping plam 
 That looks across the winding river-track 
 A mile away to northward, bluish-black 
 
 With elm and cottonwood, then up again 
 
 Rises to meet the distant sky. Green grain 
 
 And greener grass in spring; in fall, wheat 
 
 stack 
 
 And pink-brown prairie grass, stock at the 
 rack, 
 
 And marvels of sky this landscape doth contain. 
 
 Here was my dear one born and passed her days, 
 Familiar with each bird and flower and tree, 
 
 Light-hearted, supple-thewed, a boy in ways, 
 
 Knew nature, music, books, but knew not me. 
 
 How beautiful her youth ! yet I confess 
 
 The memory breeds in me strange loneliness. 
 
 William Herbert Carruth 
 
 164
 
 The Sensitive Brier* 
 
 When sweetly breathed the budded rose 
 In new-made majesty and grace, 
 Did not the Master for a space 
 
 A holy stillness interpose 
 
 Forbidding any wind to brush 
 
 Her clasping petals? . . Ere they stirred 
 
 While yet her whispered name, half-heard, 
 Sank silenced in that heavenly hush, 
 
 Did He not turn to fashion thee, 
 
 O babe-like flower ! and smile to see 
 
 Deep-musing on the Christ to be? 
 
 II 
 
 Pales in thy woof th.e rainbow's red ; 
 
 Her gold adorns the raveled veils 
 
 Where-through thy blessed breath exhales ; 
 Her lucid dews are on thee shed. 
 
 So sweet! So sweet! The beds of spice 
 Whereon our fair, first mother slept, 
 No daintier drops of honey kept 
 
 To feed the bees of Paradise. 
 Lo, where thy shrinking leaves retreat 
 At coming of the sinner's feet! 
 Yet will thy soft forgiving greet. 
 
 165
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 III 
 
 Ah, if the Lowly One might pass 
 And yonder blowing roses all 
 Their fragrant loveliness let fall 
 
 To cushion smooth the thickening grass, 
 How would I haste thyself to choose 
 
 From all the pure ! And lifting high 
 
 These most abundant blossoms, sigh: 
 " Thou who canst virtue give nor lose, 
 With whom the burdened ones find rest 
 The while I touch thy seamless vest, 
 
 Gaze but on these and I am blest ! " 
 
 Amanda T. Jones 
 
 * A procumbent perennial, American genus Schrankia, found 
 on the rolling prairies of Kansas and other south-eastern states. 
 Because of the exceeding loveliness and unsurpassable fragrance 
 of its flowers, it is popularly known as The Sensitive Rose. 
 
 166
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The Prairie Wind 
 
 Dim in the dawn of the centuries, born of the Prairie 
 
 and Sun, 
 Brother of tempest and sunshine, swift on the sandals 
 
 of air, 
 Laughing, I race with the shadows that chase 
 
 o'er the infinite plain, 
 
 Thrilling with passionate pleasure and pain ; 
 As the wind-blossoms shatter and scatter their 
 
 delicate petals of white 
 On the grass as I pass with a near-imperceptible 
 
 tread, 
 With a rustle as slight as the whisper of night 
 
 To the tremulous stars overhead; 
 So, pulsing with light, aglow with the rapture of 
 
 flight, 
 
 Under the glorious heavens I love 
 Where the ponderous thunder-heads rumble 
 
 above, 
 I leap in the gladness and strength of a life without 
 
 limit of length, 
 And laugh as I run on my way to the sun. 
 
 Ah, prairies of Kansas, craving the vast, far reach 
 of the sky, 
 
 Astir with wind-longings, aquiver, afire with yearn 
 ings and deathless desire, 
 
 167
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Passionate-leaning along the horizon bar in 
 
 the shimmering heat, 
 
 Where the lips of warm lovers meet and press 
 In a region of dreams, so it seems, with an 
 
 infinite tenderness. 
 Still when the luminous star of the West is alight 
 
 on the breast of the night, 
 Wilt thou greet with as constant caress, with the 
 
 ardor of -noon, 
 Those death-pallid lips, dimly white in the indistinct 
 
 light of the moon? 
 Hearken, ye dreamers that dwell in the cell of a 
 
 ripening milkweed pod, 
 The burly thistle is white as snow, and the 
 
 crimson cactus-plant aglow, 
 While the glorious goldenrod 
 Shelters the lumbering bumble-bee as the murmurous 
 
 breezes drowsily 
 
 Drone him slumberously to rest in the musty fra 
 grance of her breast 
 Come forth on fairy, ephemeral wings to the golden 
 
 earth and the azure deep, 
 Upward the wild wind-currents sweep, vir 
 ginal, entire, 
 
 Sweet with a prairie purity, to the purging passion 
 of the sun and perfected desire. 
 
 The frail wild hyacinths shudder to feel my sinewy 
 finger-tips circle their stems, 
 
 168
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The haughtiest brook-grasses waver and reel and 
 
 loosen their dusty pollen gems, 
 Rich treasure of fragrant prairie kind they cast in 
 
 the pouch of the flying wind; 
 The gold I filch from the sunflower crown, and bend 
 
 the sturdiest ragweed down ; 
 I tease the delicate sensitive-rose till all of her 
 
 slender tendrils close 
 And the exquisite pink-veined stamens shrink in pain 
 
 of the boisterous wind that blows. 
 The purple plume of the buffalo-pea trembles in 
 
 dreamy ecstasy ; 
 And the fragile primrose, creamy white, bathes in 
 
 the lucent floods of light; 
 While the scarlet mallow spreads her cup to gather 
 
 the golden globules up; 
 And the star-grass spangles the sod. 
 
 The yellow grain in the waving plain a molten ocean 
 
 rolls; 
 Cloud billows fleet with dusky feet over the golden 
 
 heads of wheat; 
 Wind-ruffled corn blades flap and sigh, and lift their 
 
 cool green standards high, 
 Electric to the sun and sky. 
 
 Many a shy-hid russet bird with wild wind-longings 
 
 dumbly stirred 
 From his lowly nest on the homely ground, startles 
 
 the silence into sound. 
 
 169
 
 Wee, quavering cricket voices shrill, and thrushes' 
 
 songs that throb until 
 Sweet-aching wonder strikes them still, 
 Mingle and float and fade and die in the vast, wide 
 
 arches of the sky; 
 Hushed reverence of solemn prayer hallows the 
 
 prairie everywhere; 
 Cloud altars glow, while to and fro the wild-rose 
 
 censers fragrant blow. 
 
 The mottled bull-snake glides between low Gothic 
 aisles of living green, 
 
 Light-flickering shadows fret his back with change 
 ful sheen of gold and black ; 
 
 The brooding dove on her eggs of white thrills with 
 a dumb maternal fright, 
 
 And closer crouches, lustrous-eyed, in the merciful 
 dusk where the shadow's hide. 
 
 Slight, fragile, long-antennaed things with gossamer 
 
 and emerald wings, 
 Querulous teem in the matted grass as the slender 
 
 ant processions pass, 
 Each thrifty toiler swart and brown beneath his 
 
 burden of thistle-down. 
 In dim secluded galleries the ravenous spider his 
 
 shuttle plies, 
 With swift and sure precision weaves a silver web 
 
 in the shining leaves, 
 Spinning death from a poison heart. 
 
 170
 
 Afar, apart, 
 
 Lone in the violet vault of the sky, with a steady 
 
 wing and a watchful eye, 
 The silent buzzards fly. 
 
 The saucy brown gopher's prying snout noses the 
 
 tumble-weed about; 
 The stiff little prairie-dog warily watches the radiant 
 
 summer sky, 
 Till a sudden shadow, swooping fell, arouses the 
 
 vigilant sentinel; 
 At the warning chipper of his alarm the little gray 
 
 townsmen scurry from harm, 
 And the angry hawk, with his swoop in vain, mounts 
 
 in the dusk to his post again. 
 
 Soft-footedly the Twilight steals with its blessed 
 
 benison of rest 
 
 Up the long vistas of the West, 
 The slow sun sinks to the level rim of the prairie 
 
 ocean, cold and dim ; 
 The earliest moon crescent, thin and slim, pale 
 
 in her bridal garments white, 
 Follows after and it is night. 
 Soft-shrouding shadows darken all the prairie in a 
 
 sombre pall; 
 
 Star-eddies rise where the star-dust lies in the wind 
 ing highway of the skies; 
 
 Pale, phosphorescent fire-flies glow; and plaintive 
 murmurings are heard, 
 
 171
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Sleep-wrested from a drowsy bird. 
 The white moth fondles the yucca bloom 
 Wan gleaming through the ghostly light her spectral 
 
 wings ; 
 Weird wailing through the midnight gloom, with 
 
 haunting minor quaverings 
 The coyote cries forebodingly as some lone 
 phantom from a tomb. 
 
 The planets swing in a deathless ring, serene and 
 
 clear ; 
 Sure-piloted the meteors steer through the 
 
 thin, translucent atmosphere, 
 And every dusky satellite safe voyages the sea 
 
 of Night. 
 In the prairie-grasses the mother dove broods on her 
 
 nest with a constant love, 
 While the sensitive-rose leaves delicate spread a 
 
 thicker shadow around her head; 
 Shrouding Creation from pole to pole, stretches the 
 
 infinite Over-Soul, 
 And the world-wind yearns unsatisfied, from the 
 
 Thing Possessed to the Thing Denied 
 But the merciful, sheltering Wings abide. 
 
 Wind of the Prairie, blowing free, 
 Wind of the Prairie, blow for me 
 With shining feet o'er the golden wheat, 
 Where the green corn blades in the summer heat 
 
 172
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Whisper and sigh as you rustle by, 
 
 Blow with impalpable fragrancy 
 
 The little white cloud from the infinite sky, 
 And my heart all clean and sweet. 
 
 Wind of the Spirit, blowing free, 
 Wind of the Spirit, blow for me 
 
 On wings afire with subtle desire 
 Lift the lily soul from the crumbling mire, 
 And higher, higher, and ever higher than the noisy 
 
 mart and the slender spire, 
 Blow through unspeakable azure deeps, through the 
 
 silver lane where the comet leaps, 
 By the molten moon, up the starry steeps, 
 Those white soul blossoms through the night, 
 In scarce-heard music out of sight. 
 
 Willard Wattles 
 
 173
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The Prairie 
 
 A world, wide, wide; 
 
 Hours, long, and slow ; 
 High grass, brown, dead; 
 Hills, dim and low; 
 
 A sky, blue, blue; 
 
 A hawk, high, lone; 
 A blazing sun, 
 
 To clouds, unknown ; 
 
 A bird, small, small, 
 
 And timid and gay ; 
 A cactus bloom; 
 
 A coyote at play; 
 
 A wind, wild, wild; 
 
 A tree, dim, far, 
 On a bluff, red, steep; 
 
 Twilight a star ; 
 
 A moon, gold, gold; 
 
 Silence, deep, deep; 
 Magic, mystery, 
 
 Night and sleep. 
 
 Dorothy Station 
 
 174
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Corn 
 
 Everywhere, spicy air, 
 Ditches dry and meadows bare. 
 And sailing high with honking cry, , 
 The ducks go tracking down the sky. 
 
 We hear the pipe of quail and snipe, 
 And paw-paw and persimmons ripe, 
 The loaded wains with creaking chains 
 Go rolling down the country lanes. 
 
 The blackbirds talk in raucous squawk, 
 And hop from spray and mullen-stalk ; 
 The huskers* shout has put to rout 
 The hungry crows that hung about. 
 
 With ragged plumes and garments torn, 
 There stands the army of the corn, 
 But victor chariot wheels have passed 
 Above the reeling ranks at last. 
 
 II 
 
 The kingly corn on dale and swell, 
 The Kansas corn I love so well 
 
 175
 
 \ 
 If I could tell its wonder tale, 
 
 Could sing the epic of the corn, 
 The scythe of time could not avail, 
 Nor Death that beats us with his flail, 
 Could husk the kernels of my fame 
 
 From fruited hearts as yet unborn 
 If I could tell the wonder tale, 
 
 And sing the epic of the corn. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Around the dream-encrusted maize 
 The tendrils of my heart entwine, 
 
 As dew-kissed morning-glories raise 
 
 Their eyes that in the corn rows shine ; 
 The clinging morning-glory's vine, 
 
 That like a gentlewoman sweet 
 
 With soft caress of love divine, 
 Doth let her dimpled arms entwine 
 
 Her champion sitting at her feet. 
 
 I cannot tell how much they mean, 
 The morning-glory's tendrils green 
 
 That kiss, caress and closely grasp 
 Their towering lord of waxy sheen, 
 An Indian monarch, by his queen 
 
 Held gently in an amorous clasp; 
 A monarch and his lovely queen 
 That ne'er a shadow falls between. 
 
 176
 
 
 Not closer does the flower twine, 
 
 Not closer do its tendrils dart, 
 Than dings this dreaming heart of mine, 
 
 Than twine the tendrils of my heart. 
 From furrows cut through prairie grass 
 
 The startled wild owl rose and flew ; 
 The prairie-dog blinked to see them pass, 
 
 And over his roof-tree the sod com grew. 
 
 The startled hiss of the rattlesnake 
 
 Was music strange to my baby ears, 
 
 As I watched the toiling of " Bill " and " Jake," 
 The^stupid, lumbering yoke of steers. 
 
 And the cracking lash was a lilting song, 
 With a slow, monotonous, dull refrain 
 
 Which told of a nation, young and strong, 
 Come out to conquer the desert plain. 
 
 A great migration that moved along 
 Into the desert that else had lain 
 As it first was dreamed in the Maker's 
 brain, 
 
 When the planets chorused their morning song. 
 
 IV 
 
 The glowing coals of memory, they flicker up and 
 
 start 
 A thousand ghosts a-walking in the chatnbers of my 
 
 heart. 
 
 177
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Again I see the prairie home, the snow storm drifting 
 high, 
 
 And the little children gazing through the dugout's 
 battered eye. 
 
 A sod house in the winter 'neath the blizzard's howl 
 ing din, 
 
 With famine stalking 'round us and the lean wolf 
 looking in. 
 
 That night within the sod house home a tragedy was 
 
 seen, 
 A little soul came in and went like firelight on a 
 
 screen. 
 The tired children lay and slept within a trundle 
 
 bed, 
 And did not hear the angel's wings that fluttered 
 
 overhead. 
 
 Upon her bed of prairie grass a mother lay in pain, 
 A little soul came in the room and winged its flight 
 
 . again. 
 And all night by the smoking lamp a father knelt and 
 
 wept, 
 And folded in a cotton quilt the little body slept. 
 
 " Take me back to Indiana," was the woman's plain 
 tive moan. 
 
 The words fell on his anguished heart and crushed it 
 like a stone ; 
 
 The lean and wolfish desert, it had gulped them in its 
 maw, 
 
 178
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The driveling, red gummed famine how it ground 
 them in its jaw. 
 
 The god of Indiana, where the waving Wabash flows, 
 
 Rode not the saw-edged shrieking gales amid the 
 Kansas snows. 
 
 The heaven they praised in fairer lands, in fairer 
 days gone by, 
 
 Gleamed not above this dugout in this winter-cur 
 dled sky 
 
 With that stricken mother weeping for her girlhood 
 home afar 
 
 Where the red hearth fires were burning underneath 
 a kinder star. 
 
 It is morning on the prairie, 
 
 And beneath the frozen snows 
 
 The father lays his baby 
 
 In its tiny swaddling-clothes, 
 
 With no board to form a coffin 
 For the little one's repose. 
 
 The years have in -their cycle turned 
 
 With vast, unceasing tread, 
 The fires of grief that hissed and burned 
 
 Lie in their ashes, dead. 
 Again it is the harvest morn, 
 With long green rows of standing corn. 
 
 179
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The long green rows of standing corn, 
 
 Their leaves in quiet set; 
 The beaded grass of dewy morn, 
 
 The yellow tassels wet, 
 A cobweb jeweled with a pearl, 
 The sweet face of a country girl. 
 
 The long green rows of kingly corn, 
 And love's enchanted dream ; 
 
 And tedded grass and prickly thorn, 
 How sweet doth labor seem! 
 
 For down the bladed rows I see 
 
 The laughing lips that long for me 
 
 The silken plumage of the corn 
 
 Is but her waving hair; 
 The morning-glory's purple horn 
 
 That twinkles in the air 
 , Is like her limpid, laughing eyes 
 That lure me on to paradise. 
 
 / 
 VI 
 
 When the cotton clouds drift over after rain, 
 And the floods have eased the arid earth of pain, 
 And in the meadow's grassy swale, 
 A thousand frogs are croaking, 
 And this the burden of their tale : 
 
 " The land enjoyed the soaking ! " 
 
 180
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Then my spirits soar as high 
 As those fleeces in the sky 
 
 That go sailing, sailing sailing when the rain's 
 gone by. 
 
 When the thirsty corn has drunk its fill of rain, 
 Then the heart of every man is glad again ; 
 And the blades that had been curling, 
 
 When the days of drought were here, 
 Are crisping and unfurling 
 
 With the old-time hope and cheer. 
 Then I gaze into the sky 
 At the fleeces riding high, 
 
 That go sailing, sailing, sailing when the rain's 
 gone by. 
 
 VII 
 
 Corn shuck and corn stalk. Plenty in the land. 
 Country men and country maids going to the 
 
 dance ; 
 
 Henry Boggs guessing hogs. Country sport is grand ! 
 Me a-courting Mary with a shy and honied 
 
 glance. 
 Yellow ears are for the steers, and 'the grunting 
 
 swine, 
 
 Smell of coffee on the air and bacon in the pan, 
 Loaded cribs with bulging ribs, country life is fine 
 And Corn's the mighty pillar that supports 
 Jehovah's plan. 
 
 181
 
 VIII 
 Daddy's burning cornstalks, 
 
 All the sky is red ; 
 All the little tow-heads 
 
 Desert the trundle-bed 
 To gather at the window 
 
 And watch the tossing fires, 
 Reaching toward the starland, 
 
 With their gleaming spires. 
 
 They are pixy armies 
 
 Clashing in the night, 
 Marching, flaming soldiers 
 
 To the fairy fight. 
 See the torches dancing 
 
 In the evening chill 
 Daddy's burning cornstalks 
 
 Out upon the hill. 
 
 IX 
 
 They are planting corn in the dark brown loam, 
 And dreaming the dream of the harvest home ; 
 And the first anemone's azure eye 
 Has looked in love at the summer sky. 
 
 They are planting the corn and the earth lies brown 
 Underneath the planters, sailing up and down, 
 With blackbirds fluttering in their lee 
 Like ships and gulls on an ebon sea. 
 
 182
 
 X 
 
 The days of youth are golden; Oh, doubly so were 
 
 mine. 
 The morning was a conjurer, the night was mellow 
 
 wine. . . t 
 
 The days of youth are holy, for they thrilled with 
 
 hope divine. 
 
 I toiled amid the cornfields, on hill and dewy dell ; 
 The voices of the corn leaves, they wove a faerie 
 
 spell ; 
 I heard the living whisper of her I loved so well. 
 
 A hundred wild emprises within my heart were born ; 
 I was a mighty emperor, my soldiers were the corn; 
 My herald blew a signal blast upon the dinner 
 horn. 
 
 But time has wrecked my empire, my people all are 
 
 slain ; 
 Ah, vanished boyhood yearnings and dreams that 
 
 died in vain. 
 Like broken cornstalks blowing about the wintry 
 
 plain. 
 
 XI 
 
 Cutting weeds in August days 
 'Neath the sun's relentless rays, 
 Through the corn's unending rows, 
 Where the buffalo briar grows, 
 
 183
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Where the red-winged hopper sings 
 To his friend with yellow wings, 
 Chopping down the cockle-burrs, 
 Where the hopper leaps and whirrs. 
 
 Oh, to bathe my burning face 
 
 At the mossy watering-place; 
 
 Wash my eyes that smart and sting 
 
 In the waters of the spring 
 
 Bursting from its stony grot 
 
 And trickling through the pasture lot, 
 
 Through the frog-befuddled pond, 
 
 Through the broken dam beyond, 
 
 On and on adown the draw, 
 
 Through thickets green of plum and haw; 
 
 With liquid tones among the stones 
 
 As white as ancient battle bones; 
 
 Still winding down the grassy glen 
 
 Through shadows, in and out again, 
 
 Till 'midst the scrub and alders thick, 
 
 It tumbles into Shallow creek. 
 
 How my youthful, fevered dream 
 Sails upon that pigmy stream, 
 Drifts and sails abroad, afar 
 Past the pasture's wooden bar 
 Where the waxen sumachs gleam, 
 Guide posts on the path o' dream, 
 Past the sunset's yellow sea, 
 Past the weary things that be, 
 
 1ST
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 To the land of We Shall See, 
 Where my Princess waits for me! 
 
 XII 
 
 A blight is on the elderblooms; the leaves are gray 
 
 with dust; 
 The willows droop their silver plumes ; the weeds are 
 
 red with rust. 
 Where once the brook went flowing, under elm and 
 
 .. plum, 
 Are thirsty cattle lowing 
 
 Drought has come! 
 
 King Drought is on the clover land ; the cringing 
 
 corn is curled; 
 
 Death is blowing overland ; doom is on the world. 
 The sky a brassy canopy; the brown turf charred; 
 Famine in full panoply 
 
 The Drought King's Guard ! 
 
 Where late the grass was blooming, loud the locust 
 
 hums; 
 Their tom-toms are booming; the King's Court 
 
 comes. 
 
 Heat Wave and Dust Swirl, his courtiers advance; 
 The Whirlwind his nautch girl 
 In a winding dance ! 
 
 The south wind his trumpet, frighting with its cries ; 
 The Whirlwind his strumpet, to lure his wanton eyes.
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 His hosts tramp the clover sward, in their mirth' 
 
 obscene ; 
 Death is his overlord ; 
 
 Famine his queen ! 
 
 XIII 
 
 Under the tufted prairie sod they laid the pioneer; 
 Under the glowing golden rod and the grasses he 
 held dear. 
 
 The funeral candle lit for him 
 
 In his mortuary chamber dim, 
 
 Was the helianthus' flaming rim ; 
 
 And the night hawk sang his requiem. 
 
 The night hawk sang his requiem to soothe him 
 
 underground ; 
 The sunflower lifted its flowing rim above the little 
 
 mound ; 
 
 And deep in the folds of the grateful grave, 
 Where the dreaming dead in its blisses lave, 
 He heard the flutter of banners brave 
 Where the blades of corn on its tassels wave. 
 
 Where the blades of corn and the tassels wave they 
 
 laid the pioneer; 
 He heard the flutter of banners brave, a sound that 
 
 the dead can hear; 
 
 They told the tale of his vanished days, 
 Of love's first kiss in the rustling maize, 
 
 186
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Of her who followed his winding ways 
 From life's first green to its autumn grays. 
 
 Of her who followed his winding ways, this prophet 
 
 of the corn, 
 And shared his triumph of harvest days and the rue 
 
 and prickly thorn ; 
 And she is slumbering close beside 
 The lover with whom she dared to ride, 
 From the far Ohio's dimpled tide 
 Into the dusty desert wide. 
 
 Into the dusty desert wide he came, a pioneer, 
 Leading the cornfield's spreading tide, and now he's 
 
 resting here ; 
 
 The corn he loved in the days of old 
 Has over his pillow its blades unrolled, 
 And sent its roots through his dreaming mold, 
 And twined them deep in his heart of gold. 
 
 Under the tufted prairie sod they laid the pioneer; 
 Under the glowing golden rod and the grasses he 
 
 held dear. 
 
 And the funeral candle lit for him 
 In his mortuary chamber dim, 
 Was the helianthus' flaming rim; 
 And the night hawk sang his requiem. 
 
 C. L. Edson 
 
 187
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The Harvest Hand 
 
 Hot, later June : the midday sun blazed down 
 Above a little flat-roofed Western town, 
 
 While, mile on mile, dappled with wind and sun, 
 The multitudinous-headed, billowy wheat 
 'Rippled and shimmered in the midday heat ; 
 
 Reapers were whirring; harvest was begun. 
 
 In the town's park a vacant bandstand stood, 
 And round it lounged a noisy multitude 
 
 Of men drawn thither by the lure of wheat ; 
 Some come for work, and some to win away 
 At dice and cards the others' harvest pay. . . . 
 
 They filled the grass, and overflowed the street, 
 
 And still in dusty flocks they straggled in, 
 
 With luggage or without, long, short, fat, thin 
 
 Hoboes, and schoolboys looking for a lark, 
 And due for aching arms and blistered hands 
 They dropped from puffing trains in dusty bands 
 
 And lit the river's edge with fires at dark. 
 
 Ice boxes were depleted of their store, 
 Chicken roosts robbed, and every kitchen door 
 
 Was knocked by beggars twenty times a day; 
 Tramps, yeggs, and vagrants every hue and kind 
 Swarmed in, until the townsmen, of one mind, 
 
 Wished the wheat harvested, and them away. 
 
 188
 
 They pitched quoits close to where the farmers 
 
 hitched, 
 And quarreled, cursed, and jested as they pitched, 
 
 And sprawled and read torn papers in the shade ; 
 Gambled, and swapped tales, each of his own worth, 
 And told how they had roamed about the earth, v 
 
 And interchanged the Hobo's stock-in-trade. 
 
 To them a farmer came ... A young man 
 
 played 
 At horseshoes now, his open shirt displayed 
 
 A neck turned like Apollo Belvedere's; 
 He swung upon his left foot light and free 
 Apoise like cloud-descending Mercury 
 
 A limber college lad of twenty years. 
 
 The horseshoe circled through the air and flew 
 Right on the peg another . . . on it . /' : *."*!' 
 " Two Ringers," his partner called. " We've 
 
 got 'em beat." 
 
 The player took his coat and walked away ; 
 The farmer leaned to speak to him. " Good day, 
 Young fellow. Want to help me with ray 
 wheat ? " 
 
 " I will, if you can take my partner here." 
 " My neighbor can." 
 
 " How much ? " 
 
 " Enough don't fear. 
 
 189
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Two and a half a day and board." 
 
 " All right" 
 
 The young men flung their baggage in the back, 
 The farmer gave his horses' thighs a whack, 
 
 And a thick cloud of dust hid them from sight. 
 
 Jack rabbits bobbed their long ears through the green 
 Alfalfa fields, now dropping back unseen, 
 
 Now rising at the end of a long leap 
 Like swimmers coming up through waves at sea ; 
 And, rolling far and wide inimitably, 
 
 Ran miles of grain gold-ripe for men to reap. 
 
 And headers in wide fields along the road 
 With rolling reels and moving horses showed 
 
 And made a sleepy sound like distant rain; 
 The latticed-sloping header-boxes went 
 Beside them, taking in the full tide sent 
 
 Upward, of canvas-carried streams of grain. 
 
 Four bastioned clouds of toppled gold and snow 
 Peered over the sky's edge; another, slow, 
 
 Swam out, and drew a continent of shade, 
 That lingered after it, across the grain, 
 Then left the void without one fleecy stain 
 
 To mark the dome of quiet blue it made. . . . 
 
 And now the little flat-roofed Western town 
 
 Lay mile on mile behind, and night came 
 
 down. . . . 
 \ 
 
 190
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Across the prairie lights gleamed here and 
 
 there 
 
 And now the horses quickened as they clomb 
 The last rise in the road, and were at home. 
 
 Across the yard a lantern's smoky flare 
 
 Lit two long legs that scissored through the gloom. 
 
 It was a farmhand came There was no 
 
 room; 
 
 So one boy slept that night in the stifling mow ; 
 The other went across to the next farm, 
 While dogs for miles around took up alarm, . . *, 
 
 And both of them were harvest workers now. 
 
 The first, John Anson, lay awake till morn, 
 Hearing the horses stir and munch their corn, 
 
 Then slid into the flow of a soft dream, 
 When, to the dim light of their la'nterns* flame, 
 The twilight-risen harvest workers came, 
 
 Each one to feed and curry his own team. 
 
 " Get over, Pete," and " Where's my currycomb 
 
 gone?" 
 So (the east olive-gray with windy dawn, 
 
 The gray moon sick with sunrise) round by 
 
 round 
 Anson groped down the ladder. . . . Someone 
 
 beat 
 
 Upon a pan. . . The men pushed in to eat, 
 And drank their coffee with a sucking sound. 
 
 191
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 " What's your name, lad ? " 
 
 "John Anson." 
 
 "From the East?" 
 "Yes." . . . 
 
 For a moment the mouth-smacking ceased, 
 And round the men a wave of interest ran. 
 
 "What! Only one egg? Best take three or 
 
 four. . . ." 
 " I have no appetite. . . . No, thanks no 
 
 more. . . ." 
 " You'll have to eat to stand the harvest, man." 
 
 As for others . . . Any one would think 
 Them Norsemen all, to see them eat and drink : 
 
 Bacon and eggs 'and pancakes, piles of 
 
 bread . . .. 
 
 " Just wait until the sun burns over noon ; 
 Tomorrow he will sing a different tune 
 
 Or I'm a liar," big Bill Adams said, 
 
 Helping himself to his third plate of eggs. 
 
 " Yes, or the strength will drop out of his legs 
 
 And he'll cave in and go on back to town." 
 With this they hurried forth and drove afield 
 To gather in the ripened harvest yield 
 
 Where the hot sun already sizzled down. ( 
 
 The hot sun sizzled down, the sky blazed bare, 
 A barren brooding blue. No cloud was there 
 
 192
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 To trail its moving shadow o'er the wheat ; 
 And up and down the buzzing reaper went, 
 Casting its flooding grain-flow upward-sent 
 
 Into the latticed header-box. The heat 
 
 Sent the sweat pouring forth in itchy streams. 
 To John, the novice, it already seems 
 
 That he has worked a full half -day or more 
 Ere a slow hour has dragged. Straws smite his ears ; 
 Sweat stings his eyes ; chaff fills them full of tears 
 
 He labors like a slave chained to an oar, 
 
 Spreading the heads out even. At the stack, 
 Though straining till he aches in all his back, 
 
 Another wagon waits their place. " Doggone it," 
 His driver shouts ; " we're getting in the road. . . .' 
 How in the heck can we heave off a load 
 
 When you lift at each forkful standing on it? 
 
 " Here let me show you." After which it comes 
 Easier to John, though his veins beat like drums 
 
 About his ears. " Football's an hour or two, 
 But here you're on the leap the whole day long 
 Not cheered by schoolmates with a college song, 
 
 And sixteen hours a day before you're through." 
 
 He shot a glance up from his red-streaked eye : 
 " Won't the sun ever mount up in the sky ? " 
 The brackish water tasted like rare wine. 
 
 193
 
 " Thank Gk)d! At last!" 
 
 " Come, boys," the farmer said. 
 John snatched his straw hat from his sweat-drenched 
 
 head. 
 A waving apron moved the dinner sign. . . . 
 
 Bob (Anson's partner) ran through the same mill 
 On the next farm, till he, too, grew in skill 
 
 And learned endurance of the heavy grind; 
 He, too, fought with their enemy, the wheat, 
 And sprawled about the load on slipping feet, 
 
 And reveled in each little cooling wind. 
 
 That afternoon wore slowly to an end. . . . 
 Homeward by moonrise men and horses wend. 
 
 John's muscles tremble from the unused strain 
 A fellow quit that night, and so, instead 
 Of the close mow, he had a cot for a bed ; 
 
 But nightmares seized upon his tired brain. 
 
 He thought that he lay prone beneath the sky 
 And giants heaped wheat on him mountain-high ; 
 
 He strove in vain to cast the weight aside; 
 And if his legs were not held ramrod-straight 
 Tense cramps would come and seize on them, nor 
 bate 
 
 Until he rose and rubbed and almost cried. 
 
 At breakfast the men held themselves in wait 
 Till for the second time he heaped his plate, 
 
 194
 
 Then fosth into unbridled mirth they broke. 
 " The kid has changed his diet overnight." 
 " Work always did improve the appetite." 
 
 John ate, and groaned, and snarled against their 
 joke. 
 
 So galled and sore that he could hardly walk, 
 Scant wish had he to jest with them or talk. 
 
 He felt like quitting, swore he would by noon. 
 But soon the stiffness wore away, and he 
 Grew blithest of the rowdy company 
 
 And leaned against his fork, and hummed a tune. 
 
 And, then, the farmer's daughter, home again, 
 Put brightness in the faces of the men 
 
 By her sweet singing presence. She had been 
 To Kansas City visiting a friend. . . . 
 John hoped the world would sooner come to end 
 
 Than the last load of wheat be gathered in ; 
 
 For she was like a cloudless morning. Soon 
 They sat alone beneath the mounting moon 
 
 Despite the next day's work each woke to do ; 
 And the old game between the two began 
 That has been played ever since woman and man 
 
 Lived in the Garden and were only Two. 
 
 A whip-poor-will sang in a cottonwood tree ; 
 Far off another answered plaintively; 
 
 A thousand little night things woke and cried, 
 
 195
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 And the wide body of the bulging moon, 
 Orbed to the full globe of its plenilune, 
 Upon the silver elm-tops seemed to ride. 
 
 Clouds caught, and broke across its amber face 
 And trailed themselves into dissolving lace. . . . 
 
 His hand found hers as if it thought and knew : 
 For the most loveless heart in love's despite 
 Could scarce resist a woman, stars and night 
 
 John only did what any man would do. 
 
 They felt akin. They loved. Their pulses burned 
 As through each other's eyes they each discerned 
 
 New worlds; for she, above the cook-stove's 
 
 heat, 
 
 Dreamed, as she worked, helping her mother cook: 
 He, where the sun blazed down, with visions shook 
 
 While grappling with the pouring hills of wheat. 
 
 Their growing love seized on each idle space, 
 And Anson with his sun-browned boyish face 
 
 Walked with her Sundays. Sweet the thrill that 
 
 comes 
 
 When all the banners of the heart unroll 
 And all the flowers of life break in the soul 
 
 And Fancy marches with her fifes and 
 drums. . . . 
 
 The prairie like a purple map spread far, 
 And here and there a village like a star 
 
 196
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Flashed in the distance; they sat on a hill 
 Hand mixed with hand ; the sky wall, far away, 
 Seemed to push out and break beyond the day 
 
 Until its blue edge touched God's window sill. 
 
 At any moment something might look out 
 Divine, of that the lovers held no doubt ; 
 
 They floated in eternity together. 
 They leaned against a ledge whose lime-traced shell 
 Into the depths of some old ocean fell 
 
 And now lay bared beneath the tooth of weather. 
 
 Tears rushed up in their eyes ; a sacred awe 
 Came on them out of space. Their spirits saw 
 
 The meaning of the Man and Woman's tryst. 
 All that religions sanction or condemn 
 Swept like a prairie whirlwind over them: 
 
 And they were caught to heaven as they kissed. 
 
 A mover's wagon, passing at the base 
 
 Of Pawnee Rock, again brought time and space 
 
 Into their ken, and, light at heart as birds, 
 Homeward they strolled along the winding way, 
 Feeling within their hearts as ones that pray, 
 
 Without a word, beyond the need of words. 
 
 Flashing along the fence a striped squirrel ran. . 
 On either side the road, right fair to scan, 
 
 Leaned crowds of sunflowers full of golden 
 faces. 
 
 197
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 A crimson-budded cactus here and there 
 Spread earlike where the ground was baked and bare ; 
 And wood doves cooed and cooed in shady places. 
 
 Homeward the lovers passed, as much at peace 
 As was the stainless sky where trailed no fleece 
 
 Of golden cloud ; the sun sank red and low, 
 Flinging out bands of tranquil evening light, 
 While in the east the purple fringe of night 
 
 Began to widen upward and to grow. 
 
 But jolly Bob, his mirth was soured with gloom; 
 (Tis fate, I guess two men in the same room 
 May sleep when lightning strikes, one go un- 
 
 /shent) ; 
 
 Love had struck Bob, too, but: " It cannot be." 
 Thus she had spoken; and so, gloomily 
 
 He stuffed his- suitcase, damned his luck, and 
 went. 
 
 " This Kansas, how I hate it." Bob began, 
 " It was the last in the Creator's plan 
 
 He took the leavings when all else was made." 
 "Not so," quoth John. "It was the first begun: 
 Here Eden stood when the round world was done.*" 
 
 " It has gone back since then," the other said ; 
 
 "I hate it. ... This won't last long . . . 
 Soon a draught 
 
 .198
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Will bring its wealth and boastf ulness to naught : 
 
 'Twas meant for coyotes, rattlesnakes and steers ; 
 Some day the locusts will rain down again 
 As they've done in the memory of men." 
 
 " There is no danger, Bob ; those lean-ribbed 
 years 
 
 " Have gone forever. Rich in wheat and corn 
 And crowding herds, redeemed from reach of scorn, 
 
 Serene like a great Titaness she stands, 
 My dear loved Kansas, in herself secure,' 
 No more a jesting-stock or barren lure, 
 
 She feeds the hungry nations with both hands." 
 
 " Oh, very well adopt the blasted State. 
 I'm sorry that I've got an hour to wait 
 
 Until my train comes. Then I'll bid good-bye 
 To sand and chiggers, bearded grain that crawls 
 Like something living up one's overalls, 
 
 And hell-hot plains top-heavy with blue sky." 
 
 So John swung on his heel and homeward rode 
 With head and shoulders high, while evening glowed 
 
 With sunset pinnacles of gold and fire. 
 Dreams of the future filled his breast with joy 
 For all the Man had wakened in the boy ; 
 
 And in his heart there was a man's desire. 
 
 Harry Kemp 
 
 199
 
 The Washerwoman's Song 
 
 In a very humble cot, 
 
 In a rather quiet spot, 
 
 In the suds and in the soap, 
 Worked a woman full of hope ; 
 
 Working, singing, all alone, 
 
 In a sort of undertone. 
 
 " With the Savior for a friend, 
 He will keep me to the end." 
 
 Sometimes happening along, 
 
 I had heard the semi-song, 
 And I often used to smile, 
 More in sympathy than guile; 
 
 But I never said a word 
 
 In regard to what I heard, 
 
 As she sang about her friend 
 Who would keep her to the end. 
 
 Not in sorrow nor in glee 
 Working all day long was she, 
 As her children, three or four, 
 Played around her on the floor ; 
 But in monotones the song 
 She was humming all day long: 
 "With the Savior for a friend, 
 He will keep me to the end." 
 
 200
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 It's a song I do not sing, 
 
 For I scarce believe a thing 
 Of the stories that are told 
 Of the miracles of old; 
 
 But I know that her belief 
 
 Is the anodyne of grief, 
 
 And will always be a friend 
 That will keep her to the end. 
 
 Just a trifle lonesome she, 
 Just as poor as poor could be ; 
 But her spirits always rose 
 Like the bubbles in the clothes, 
 And, though widowed and alone, 
 Cheered her with the monotone, 
 Of a Savior and a friend 
 Who would keep her to the end. 
 
 I have seen her rub and scrub, 
 On the washboard in the tub, 
 
 While the baby, sopped in suds, 
 Rolled and tumbled in the duds; 
 Or was paddling in the pools, 
 With old scissors stuck in spools ; 
 
 She still humming of her friend 
 Who would keep her to the end. 
 
 Human hopes and human creeds 
 Have their root in human needs; 
 
 201
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 And I should not wish to strip 
 From that washerwoman's lip 
 Any song that she can sing, 
 Any hope that songs can bring; 
 For the woman has a friend 
 Who will keep her to the end. 
 
 Eugene F. Ware 
 
 The Eyes of Lincoln 
 
 Sad eyes, that were patient and tender, sad eyes, 
 that were steadfast and true, and warm with the un 
 changing splendor of courage no ills could subdue ! 
 Eyes dark with the dread of the morrow, and woe 
 for the day that was gone, the sleepless companions 
 of sorrow, the watchers that witnessed the dawn. 
 Eyes tired with the clamor and goading, and dim 
 from the stress of the years, and hollowed by pain 
 and foreboding, and strained by repression of tears. 
 Sad eyes that were wearied and blighted, by visions 
 of sieges and wars, now watch o'er a country united 
 from the luminous slopes of the stars ! 
 
 Walt Mason 
 
 2O2
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The Little Green Tents 
 
 The little green tents where the soldiers sleep, and 
 the sunbeams play and the women weep, are covered 
 with flowers today; and between the tents walk the 
 weary few, who were young and stalwart in 'sixty- 
 two, when they went to the war away. The littlfe 
 green tents are built of sod, and they are not long, 
 and they are not broad, but the soldiers have lots of 
 room; and the sod is part of the land they saved, 
 when the flag of the enemy darkly waved, the symbol 
 of dole and doom. The little green tent is a thing 
 divine; the little green tent is a country's shrine, 
 where patriots kneel and pray; and the brave men 
 left, so old, so few, were young and stalwart in 'sixty- 
 two, when they went to the war away ! 
 
 Walt Mason 
 
 203
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 The Stars Above Mt. Oread 
 
 We walked across the hill one night, 
 
 One summer night Oh, years ago ! 
 And watched each timid valley light 
 
 Peer through the darkness down below. 
 When suddenly he raised his head ' 
 
 In that quick, boyish way he had : 
 " There are no stars like these," he said, 
 
 " That shine above Mount Oread ! " 
 
 I watched the struggling valley lights 
 
 Push bravely out against the dark 
 The while his fancy's quickened flights 
 
 Bridged all the years and made his mark. 
 Youth and ambition know no bars, 
 
 And these and faith were all he had ; 
 So his hopes rose and touched the stars 
 
 That night upon Mount Oread. 
 
 In after years sometimes he sent 
 
 A word of hail across the way. 
 But how those drifting years were spent, 
 
 Or what they brought, he did not say, 
 Nor could I guess. Yet once, alone, 
 
 He wrote, half jestingly, half sad: 
 " There are no stars like those that shone 
 
 That night above Mount Oread ! " 
 
 204
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Tonight I watched them down below, 
 
 The valley lights, now bright, now dim, 
 And wondered what, of weal or woe, 
 
 The fickle years had brought to him 
 Who once, when all his world was young, 
 
 Had dreamed his dream of fame, dear lad ! 
 And dared to set his hopes among 
 
 The stars above Mount Oread. 
 
 Esther M. Clark
 
 The Real Victor 
 
 " He won the prize," they said, and told me how 
 Fortune had smiled, and placed the chaplet on his 
 
 brow. 
 
 I watched him as he passed along the street, 
 Marked and envied by all he chanced to meet ; 
 On his strong face was written, clear and plain, 
 Scorn of all things,, arrogance, disdain. 
 Eagerly I sought the faiths it used to wear, 
 For that fine early frankness, full and fair. 
 Surprised and sad, I turned away my head, 
 " The world says he won but no, he lost," I said. 
 Once he was master of himself, strong, brave 
 Today his face seals him his own slave. 
 Since he has won that which he most desired, 
 The altars die that once the pure flame fired. 
 True, he has won the prize a gaudy jewel 
 Has won the prize, and found himself a fool. 
 
 " He strove to win the prize, but failed," they said, 
 And pointed, jeering, at his bowed, bared head. 
 I paused to watch him as he stood that morn 
 Disregarding alike men's pity, and men's scorn; 
 He raised his head, I scanned his face with care, 
 Seeking if envy, hate, or lust, were there. 
 No, it was stamped with strength and manly pride, 
 Love, hope, the power to suffer and to hide. 
 Rejoicing, I stepped quickly to his side, 
 
 206
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 " The world says he lost, but no, he won," I cried. 
 Though once afraid to trust himself, to choose his 
 
 way 
 
 He is the refuge of the weak, fear of the false, today. 
 As he has failed to win his great desire 
 Still in his eyes he bears the unfading fire. 
 True, he has lost the prize I grasped his hand 
 Has lost the prize, but won a prize unplanned. 
 
 Dorothy Station 
 
 207
 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 Ad Vivos 
 
 I, once a man, now safe in dust and slumber, 
 
 Did watch, as thou, the days die one by one, 
 And thought nor ceased to think how few their 
 
 number, 
 
 Till they were gone 
 Till they were done. 
 
 As thou dost look, I looked with awe and yearning 
 
 To skies of stars, to skies filled full of suns, 
 For trace of gods ; and midst all light there burning 
 I found but one 
 Found only One. 
 
 Then turned I earthward, heart aflame with longing, 
 
 To men and wives, to folk of joy and dole, 
 And found in mine own kind, stars' light outshining, 
 ' Godlike with love 
 And part of One 
 The human soul 
 The moral soul 
 The selfless soul. 
 
 Kate Stephens 
 
 208
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 DEC * 9 1951 
 
 7 195? 
 
 JUN 
 
 Form L-n 
 20ni-12,'39(3:(t<)
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 001 344 999 6 
 
 1 
 
 DO NOT REMOVE 
 TMiS BOOK CARD J 
 
 University Research Library
 
 
 I