. 
 
 

 
 
 
 ABQDK./KA1W POEMS
 
 
 p 
 
 * I 

 
 SUNFLOWERS 
 
 A Book of Kansas Poems 
 
 Illustrations 
 by 
 
 IVAN SCHULF.R 
 
 Printed by 
 THE WORLD COMPANY 
 
 LAWRENCE, KANSAS 
 1914
 
 Kansas 
 
 BY THOMAS EMMET DEWEY 
 
 Not for what she hath done for me, 
 
 Though it be great, 
 For what she is, her majesty, 
 
 I love my State.
 
 This Book For Sale 
 by 
 
 WILLARD WATTLES 
 
 LAWRENCE, KANSAS 
 
 Price, One Dollar, in Lawrence 
 
 Ten Cents Extra for Postage
 
 Acknowledgements 
 
 1 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 Mr. A. G. Allerton of Hamlin, Kansas, I 
 owe permission to use the poems of Ellen P. Aller 
 ton. Mr. Charles H. Manley of Junction City, 
 Kansas, has allowed the use of the poems of 
 Amanda T. Jones, all four of which originally ap 
 peared in the Century Magazine. 
 
 I use Funston by James J. Montague as it or 
 iginally 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 Even 
 ing Mail. To the American Magazine for Edson s 
 The Promise of Bread. My own Kansas verse has 
 appeared in The University Kansan, The Graduate 
 Magazine, The Journal-World, The Topeka Cap 
 ital, and The Springfield Republican. 
 
 w. w.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 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 wo 
 men 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 inter 
 pretative. 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 appeal. Be 
 lieving that provincialism is as much of an essential in literature as it 
 is a bane in morality, I have chosen those poems that smack unmis 
 takably of our Kansas soil and are close to the grass-roots. It will 
 be the task of some other laborer, when our literature shall have 
 been more completely written, to garner in future harvest-fields the 
 richest of our grain. 
 
 That day I believe will come. Much more has already 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. Ed- 
 son, 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 
 privilege 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 Herbert Carruth, 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 University of Kansas to publish a 
 volume called "Songs from the Hill." At that time in our pardon 
 able enthusiasm, we argued that, since the centers of American litera- 
 tur 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 euphoniously christen our muddy Kansas river. 
 After living 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 fulfill 
 ment 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 this 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 perma 
 nent publication. I received yesterday from New York the following 
 telegram from Kemp in regard to the poem: "Yes, I wrote it for 
 you." 
 
 Without the aid of Miss Esther M. Clark this book could not 
 have been prepared. She has written letters, prepared my copy, and 
 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 institutes 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 Collier s Weekly that Kansas has little or no origi 
 nal 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 civilization such as is unquestion 
 ably 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 his state, to bring to the consideration of pub 
 lic questions a mind unswayed by provincialism or fanaticism, with 
 the simultaneous obligation of not forgetting, 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 ,1 should shatter 
 the Decalogue by my way of saying, "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 rny 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 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 Man 
 hattan only, but citizens 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 copyright. 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 col 
 lection possible, because they believe in me and in the people of Kan 
 sas. These are your poets and your poems. What will you do with 
 them? 
 
 WILLARD WATTLES. 
 Lawrence, Kansas, 
 October 1 8, 1914.
 
 The Call of Kansas 
 
 BY ESTHER M. CLARK 
 
 Surfeited here with beauty, and the sen 
 suous-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. 
 
 Gay as the bold poinsettia is, and the bur 
 den 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 1 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.
 
 Kansas 
 
 BY HARRY KEMP 
 
 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 grey that men revere 
 Her Time is "Now," Her Heritage 
 
 is "Here." 
 
 -Helmetta, N. J.
 
 Morning in Kansas 
 
 BY WALT MASON. 
 
 There are lands beyond the ocean which are 
 gray beneath their years, where a hundred gen 
 erations 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 
 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. 
 
 10
 
 Three States 
 
 BY EUGENE F. WARE. 
 
 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 onlv be remembered as mere names. 
 
 Kansas and London 
 
 BY HARRY KEMP. 
 
 Where the vast and cloudless sky was broken by one 
 
 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. 
 
 11
 
 Each in His Own Tongue 
 
 BY WILLIAM HERBERT CARRUTH 
 
 A fire-mist and a planet, 
 
 A crystal and a cell, 
 A jelly-fish and a saurian, 
 
 And caves where the cave men 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 golden-rod, 
 Some of us call it Autumn, 
 And others call it God. 
 
 12
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 13
 
 Opportunity 
 
 BY JOHN J. INGALLS. 
 
 Master of human destinies am I ! 
 
 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. 
 
 14
 
 Ka nsas 
 
 BY NICHOLAS VACHEL LINDSAY 
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 15
 
 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. 
 
 16
 
 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 cottomvoods would croon, 
 
 And past the sheaves and through the leaves 
 Came whispers from the moon. 
 
 17
 
 When the Sunflowers 
 Bloom 
 
 BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE. 
 
 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- 
 Flowers 
 Bloom. 
 
 18
 
 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, 
 
 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. 
 
 19
 
 It Will Be a Kansas Year 
 
 BY J. B. EDSON. 
 
 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 au 
 tumn s goldenrod; 
 
 20
 
 So get out the scythe and whet it, haying season s 
 
 almost here; 
 For the Lord s got back to Kansas and twill be 
 
 a Kansas year. 
 
 Joy In the Corn Belt 
 
 BY C. L. EDSON. 
 
 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! 
 
 21
 
 Walls of Corn 
 
 BY ELLEN P. ALLERTON. 
 
 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. 
 
 22
 
 Clothes and food for the toiling poor, 
 Wealth to heap at the rich man s door; 
 
 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. 
 
 23
 
 Who would have dared, with brush or pen, 
 As this land is now, to paint it then? 
 
 And how would the wise ones have laughed in scorn, 
 Had prophet foretold these walls of corn, 
 Whose banners toss in the breeze of morn ! 
 
 Ah! Sunflower! 
 
 BY WILLIAM BLAKE. 
 
 Ah! Sunflower, weary of time, 
 
 Who countest 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! 
 
 24
 
 Winds of Delphic Kansas 
 
 BY KATE STEPHENS. 
 
 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 
 
 25
 
 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, 
 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 Osawato- 
 
 mie, 
 
 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 ; 
 
 26
 
 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.
 
 Le Marais du Cygne 
 
 BY JOHN G. WHITTIER. 
 
 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; 
 
 28
 
 Unyoke the brown oxen, 
 
 The plowman lies dumb. 
 
 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 the rifles 
 
 Right manly they looked. 
 How pale the May sunshine, 
 
 Green Marias du Cygne, 
 When the death-smoke blew over 
 
 Thy lonely ravine ! 
 
 29
 
 Strong man of the prairies, 
 
 Mourn bitter and wild! 
 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 
 
 Whose 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. 
 
 30
 
 The Prairie Pioneers 
 
 BY C. L. EDSON. 
 
 He builded a house of sod on the slope of a prairie 
 knoll ; 
 
 He builded in praise of God, content with the scan 
 ty 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 and she was a wife; 
 A-foot in the daisy fields of life ; 
 They would not be denied. 
 
 31
 
 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 din, 
 
 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. 
 
 32
 
 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 flics; 
 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; 
 
 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 unfraid 
 Of the world and its waiting woe. 
 
 33
 
 Ch e win k 
 
 BY AMANDA T. JONES. 
 
 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?" 
 
 34
 
 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, 
 And a universe fresh as the rose unfold. 
 
 So at it again. "Che-wink, che-wink!" 
 
 Spring in Kansas 
 
 BY KATE STEPHENS. 
 
 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 ; 
 
 35
 
 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 land ! 
 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 leaf -buds: 
 
 The peach puts forth her bitter-tinted pink, 
 Red-bud empurples far each wooded stretch. 
 And, by the magic of the lord of spring, 
 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! 
 36
 
 The Prairie Schooner 
 
 BY CHARLES MOREAU HARGER. 
 
 Slow was the weary, toilsome way 
 
 Where creaked the heavy 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 37
 
 Unused, forlorn, and gray, it stands, 
 
 A faded wreck cast far ashore, 
 The Mayflower of the prairie lands, 
 Its journey o er. 
 
 Where "A Lovely Time 
 Was Had" 
 
 BY WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE. 
 
 Bill Hucks, the item-chaser on the Wilier Creek 
 
 Gayzette, 
 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 invite to a doins 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." 
 
 38
 
 O yes, now come to think of it her maw cook 
 ed 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 - 
 
 up 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, 
 The guests agreed at leaving that a lovely time 
 
 was had." 
 
 Old Bill has gone from Wilier Crick: the Gayzctte 
 is no more, 
 
 For Old McCray has stole away to find the Gold 
 en Shore. 
 
 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 scrapbook long with little 
 Laury s death, 
 
 39
 
 And the pome about the baby and the accident to 
 
 Seth 
 The piece about the doins, and today it makes us 
 
 glad 
 To read at Susie s party "that a lovely time was 
 
 had." 
 
 Pawpaws Ripe 
 
 BY SOL MILLER. 
 
 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. 
 
 40
 
 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? 
 
 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. 
 
 41
 
 A man of five-and-forty years, 
 
 With beard of grizzled brown; 
 A brimless hat sat on his 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, 
 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. 
 
 42
 
 "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. 
 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!" 
 
 43
 
 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 corn-cob pipe, 
 
 He dreamed not of that better world, 
 For here pawpaws were ripe! 
 
 Kansas 
 
 BY WILLARD WATTLES. 
 
 (Dedicated to Esther M. Clark, author of "The 
 Call of Kansas.") 
 
 From the surge of the western ocean and the roar 
 ing 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. 
 
 44
 
 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 awkardness are 
 
 mine ; 
 And yet from the hills of longing thru severing 
 
 leagues between 
 I cry with the bitter aching of loneliness as keen. 
 
 Manhattan s walls reecho with a million clamor 
 ing 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. 
 
 45
 
 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 desd, 
 
 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; 
 Here on the wooded hillside I sicken in heart and 
 
 brain, 
 But some day, beloved Mother, I m coming home 
 
 again. 
 
 46
 
 Carrie Nation 
 
 BY WILLARD WATTLES. 
 
 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. 
 
 47
 
 And then to die so, after all, 
 Insane and in a hospital, 
 Good God, suppose she had been sane 
 And *ve 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 hyprocrisies 
 And woke a commonwealth to shame 
 With crashing axe and words of flame 
 Until men dare to carry out 
 The laws they made and lied about. 
 
 John Brown 
 
 BY EUGENE F. WARE. 
 
 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 
 
 48
 
 The WHY and WHERE all questionings defy, 
 
 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 
 
 49
 
 Shall sweep the lake-gemmed upland with its surge ; 
 
 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." 
 
 50
 
 John Brown 
 
 BY W. H. SIMPSON. 
 
 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! 
 
 A Tribute to John Brown 
 
 BY J. G. WATERS. 
 
 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. 
 51
 
 John Brown 
 
 BY WILLIAM HERBERT CARRUTH. 
 
 Had he been made of such poor clay 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. 
 
 52
 
 In Idol-Smashing Land 
 
 BY C. L. EDSON. 
 
 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, 
 
 53
 
 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 
 townsite 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. 
 
 54
 
 "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." 
 
 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," 
 
 55
 
 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 
 
 thunder blast ; 
 
 That "What s-the-matter" article in 96 he wrote, 
 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 poet, 
 
 Ware. 
 
 Twas thus they dealt with William, and we ll 
 hear, fore very long, 
 
 56
 
 That Ware, himself a faker, cribbed his "Wash. 
 
 erwoman 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 fun 
 eral 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, 
 And the soil is thus kept fertile so that new ideas 
 
 can spring, 
 For over there in Kansas still the intellect is king. 
 
 57
 
 A Wheat-Field Fantasy 
 
 BY HARRY KEMP. 
 
 As I sat on a Kansas hilltop, 
 
 While, far away from my feet, 
 
 Rippled with 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, 
 
 There burst the strangest vision 
 Up from that ancient sea. 
 
 Twas not the pearl-white Venus 
 Anadgomene, 
 
 58
 
 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. 
 
 The Promise of Bread 
 
 BY C. L. EDSON. 
 
 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 
 
 59
 
 In the frost-locked tomb of winter sleeps the Mira 
 cle 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. 
 
 60
 
 A Wilier Crick Incident 
 
 BY WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE. 
 
 Long ago before the hoppers an the drouth of 
 
 seventy-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 
 
 his talk; 
 He was awkward an near-sighted an he couldn t 
 
 more 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 
 
 ull be well, bye m bye." 
 
 61
 
 But instead of gettin stronger Dick grew thinner 
 
 every year; 
 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 u d play; 
 Killin lucky bugs an buildin dams at always broke 
 
 away. 
 
 But his mother used to pray: 
 "God make Dickie strong, some day!" 
 God u d make him strong an happy, her "pore 
 
 angul" she u d 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 griev 
 ed 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. 
 
 62
 
 A Border Memory 
 
 BY FLORENCE L. SNOW. 
 
 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 spring 
 time 
 
 Came with clouds of denser gloom, 
 And the passion on the prairies 
 
 Broke into more deadly bloom; 
 
 63
 
 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, 
 
 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. 
 
 64
 
 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, 
 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. 
 
 65
 
 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 1 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. 
 
 66
 
 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, 
 
 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. 
 
 67
 
 The Defense of Lawrence 
 
 BY RICHARD REALF. 
 
 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 posts. 
 
 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. 
 68
 
 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. 
 
 69
 
 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 on 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. 
 
 Funston 
 
 BY JAMES J. MONTAGUE. 
 
 Never any style about him, not imposing on parade ; 
 Couldn t make him look heroic with no end of golden 
 braid. 
 
 70
 
 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 
 
 something 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; 
 
 Aguinaldo s crafty warriors filled him nearly full 
 o lead. 
 
 71
 
 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. 
 
 Ode to Kansas 
 
 BY WALT MASON. 
 
 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 with record breakin , 
 
 And the hogs are raising bacon 
 
 By the keg ! 
 
 72
 
 My Sage-Brush Girl 
 
 BY C. L. EDSON. 
 
 Under a cross in a rainless land my Sagebrush 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 Sagebrush 
 
 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. 
 
 73
 
 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. 
 
 74
 
 Plowing Corn in Kansas 
 
 BY WILLARD WATTLES. 
 
 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 yel 
 low 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. 
 
 75
 
 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. 
 
 Hi, Tommy, there s a gopher, can t you hit him 
 
 with a clod? 
 Get a hard one, that s the ticket, or a suncaked 
 
 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 her 
 self plumb blind ; 
 
 76
 
 Blamed if I d a rode so near you, if I didn t think 
 
 that you 
 Know d 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 give 
 
 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, 
 
 77
 
 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. 
 
 But I m in Massachusetts, and we ve had a tardy 
 spring, 
 
 And twas only just this morning that I heard a 
 robin sing. 
 
 Sunflowers in the Corn 
 
 BY WILLARD WATTLES. 
 
 There s a certain day in summer that I always rec 
 ognize, 
 Though I m far from prairie land and sun, 
 
 78
 
 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. 
 
 Oh, 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; 
 See, I flush thy cheek with kisses, what s the harm ?" 
 
 79
 
 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 crimson 
 ing 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-earringed, 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. 
 
 80
 
 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 golden rod; 
 
 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 aflashing 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-pen 
 nons 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. 
 
 81
 
 Cutting The Corn 
 
 BY C. L. EDSON. 
 
 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. 
 
 82
 
 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-burrs 
 
 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 dryads hair. 
 83
 
 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. 
 
 A Ridge of Corn 
 
 BY HAMLIN GARLAND. 
 
 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. 
 
 84
 
 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. 
 
 I saw the field (as trackless then 
 
 As wood to Daniel Boone) 
 Wherein we hunted wolves and men, 
 
 And ranged and twanged the green bas 
 soon. 
 
 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. 
 
 85
 
 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! 
 
 Farm Machinery 
 
 BY WALT MASON. 
 
 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 rid 
 ing 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 
 
 86
 
 ?. 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 every 
 where, till he thinks he d give a nickle for a decent 
 chance to swear; then they all get underneath him 
 and capsize 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 quoting divers pagan authors and the bards of 
 ancient Rome. And he murmurs while he s washing 
 mud off at the kitchen sink: "What we need is a 
 contraption 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 
 Burbank spuds; all about the modern farmstead 
 you may hear the levers clink, but we re shy of a 
 contrivance that will teach the calves to drink! 
 
 87
 
 The Land That God Forgot 
 
 BY HARRY KEMP. 
 
 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: 
 
 88
 
 Now the tender grass springs up, 
 
 And the sleek kine lay them down, 
 
 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. 
 
 89
 
 Before the Robin Dares 
 
 BY ROSE MORGAN. 
 
 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 hear the red bird caroling. 
 
 90
 
 Pine Trees in Kansas 
 
 BY ROSE MORGAN. 
 
 "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. 
 
 91
 
 Bouncing-Bet 
 
 (In memoriam; Kansas, 1874) 
 BY ROSE MORGAN. 
 
 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 are filled, thinking 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, still twas thine to show 
 A modest face undaunted to the sky. 
 
 92
 
 The Thrush 
 
 BY AMANDA T. JONES. 
 
 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 thrush! 
 
 93
 
 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 bend 
 ing 
 And yellow blossomed nettle, prone to sting!) 
 
 Shook out his red-brown wings as for descend 
 ing 
 
 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. 
 
 94
 
 Sunflowers 
 
 BY C. L. EDSON. 
 
 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 over 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. 
 
 95
 
 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 
 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. 
 
 96
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 The Little Old Sod Shanty 
 On the Claim 
 
 A FRONTIER SONG. (Anonymous) 
 
 Tune "The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane." 
 I am looking rather seedy now, while holding down 
 my claim, 
 
 97
 
 And my victuals are not always served the 
 
 best, 
 
 And the mice play 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 bliz 
 zards in; 
 
 And I hear the hungry coyote, as he sneaks up thro 
 the grass, 
 
 Round my little old sod shanty on the 
 claim. 
 
 98
 
 But when I left my Eastern home, so happy and 
 so gay, 
 
 To try and win my way to wealth and 
 
 fame, 
 
 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 make our fortune on the prairies of 
 the West, 
 
 99
 
 Just as happy as two bed-bugs we d re 
 main; 
 
 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. 
 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 bliz 
 zards in, 
 
 And I hear the hungry coyote, as he sneaks up 
 through the grass, 
 
 Round my little old sod shanty on the 
 claim. 
 
 100
 
 The Song of the Kansas 
 Emigrant 
 
 BY JOHN G. WHITTER. 
 
 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. 
 
 101
 
 We go to plant her common schools 
 
 On distant prairie swells, 
 And give the Sabbaths of the wild 
 
 The music of her bells. 
 
 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. 
 
 102
 
 Stay West, Young Man 
 
 BY WILLARD WATTLES. 
 
 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, gave me 
 one prairie day! 
 
 103
 
 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 flush 
 ed 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. 
 
 104
 
 Manhood 
 
 BY WILLARD WATTLES. 
 
 Out of the reek and swelter, out of the sink of 
 shame, 
 
 Shape us the perfect manhood that leaps like a liv 
 ing 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 fathers 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. 
 
 105
 
 The brave little Mayflower breasted the thunder 
 ing leagues of foam, 
 
 But the peoples she engendered have builded a 
 modern 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 lux 
 uries. 
 
 Out of America s sorrow, out of America s shame, 
 Shape us, O God, the manhood that leaps like a 
 living flame. 
 
 106
 
 A Challenge to Youth 
 
 BY WILLARD WATTLES. 
 
 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 bet 
 ter bed, 
 
 For you is the music moulded, for you is the anvil 
 red. 
 
 107
 
 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. 
 
 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 wo 
 men 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, debonair, 
 Men with the scars of license and women with 
 
 shoulders bare 
 But I have swung in the saddle and swallowed the 
 
 prairie air. 
 
 108
 
 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, 
 
 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, 
 
 109
 
 Lev, 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 
 
 winnowed sweet. 
 
 A sword for the youth of Kansas, a song for their 
 
 lips to sing, 
 The reckless sword of manhood, blue steel from the 
 
 furnacing, 
 Oh, who will dare to wear it, still fresh from its 
 
 fashioning ? 
 
 Kan sas 
 
 BY HARRY KEMP. 
 
 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. 
 
 110
 
 An Epic For Kansas 
 
 BY WILLARD WATTLES. 
 
 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 bea 
 con 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. 
 
 Ill
 
 And northward in the harbor, though the steadfast 
 
 masts are bare, 
 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 
 
 children creep 
 Home from the far-flung ocean that the war-dogs 
 
 guard and keep, 
 The terrible, steel-shod grey-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 ? 
 
 112
 
 Is all of the wonder vanished ? Are all of the dreams 
 forgot, 
 
 All of the stress of battle when blood is stream 
 ing hot 
 
 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 
 lagging 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. 
 
 113
 
 What of the days of struggle, the young corn 
 shrivelled 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? 
 
 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 bap 
 tism of tears. 
 
 114
 
 Give me the strength to sing it, the epic of our dead. 
 
 The legend of their glory and the armies vanquish 
 ed; 
 
 Their battle-fields of anguish bearing a nation s 
 bread, 
 
 And those who have knelt in homage before an 
 
 Eastern shrine 
 Shall shake to a mightier music and pledge with 
 
 a ruddier wine 
 The pioneers of Kansas Come touch your cup 
 
 to mine. 
 
 April on Half Moon 
 Mountain 
 
 BY C. L. EDSON. 
 
 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. 
 
 115
 
 Out of the Kansas Dust 
 
 BY GEORGE T. AND C. L. EDSON. 
 
 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. 
 116
 
 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. 
 
 117
 
 The Old Timer 
 
 BY WALT MASON. 
 
 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 cat 
 tle 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, where people take the time to boast of how 
 
 118
 
 their city grows! I do not doubt that you will rise 
 to greater heights of fame, and maybe paint across 
 thr 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 ! 
 
 When She Was Born Upon 
 That Kansas Hill 
 
 BY WILLIAM HERBERT CARRUTH. 
 
 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! 
 
 119
 
 Tescot t 
 
 BY WILLIAM HERBERT CARRUTH. 
 
 Somewhere out West there lies a sloping plain 
 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. 
 
 120
 
 The Real Foreign Invasion 
 
 BY C. L. EDSON. 
 
 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 declin 
 ing 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. 
 121
 
 Of all the old Americans that settled up this 
 country, 
 
 The boys that were my comrades when 
 
 your dad was green as May, 
 
 Who made the old days merry as we broke the vir 
 gin 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 Rab 
 bit Smith he died; 
 
 And then there came a season when to sell it seem 
 ed 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 join 
 ing fence on every side. 
 
 122
 
 Forty years have rolled above me, years of drought 
 and years of plenty, 
 
 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 cap 
 rices 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. 
 
 123
 
 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; 
 
 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 last to 
 leave my birthright; 
 
 I m the last whose tongue knows English, 
 
 and my eyes are wet with tears; 
 For last week old Bill Deventer 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. 
 
 124
 
 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, 
 
 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 
 
 spurned 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? 
 
 125
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 126
 
 The Gradgerratun of Joe 
 
 BY WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE. 
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 127
 
 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." 
 
 So f oiler 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 ; 
 
 128
 
 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 ? 
 Our Joe; 
 High ho! 
 
 The Red Bird 
 
 BY AMANDA T. JONES. 
 
 *********** 
 
 III. 
 
 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 hurry!" "Come see the 
 
 green prairies 
 
 "Wild roses!" "Primroses!" "Blue vetches !"- 
 
 S o n e a r!" 
 
 *********** 
 
 129
 
 The Maverick 
 
 BY WILLARD WATTLES. 
 
 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 gyp 
 sies wear 
 
 When they go singing down the years, with star- 
 dust in their hair. 
 
 130
 
 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 
 The West way, the best way, the way that I would 
 
 take 
 If I could scale these sullen walls where all my 
 
 lances break. 
 
 The 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. 
 
 131
 
 Threshing Time 
 
 BY C. L. EDSON. 
 
 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 gram. 
 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 churn 
 ing, 
 
 The belted red thresher has lisped out its yearning 
 132
 
 Has mumbled its hunger in mournfulest 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. 
 Belts 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; 
 
 133
 
 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." 
 
 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 threshin 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 
 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. 
 134
 
 IV. 
 
 The day is over, 
 
 The world is fed. 
 
 And the farmer sleeps 
 On his feather bed. 
 
 The Farmer 
 
 BY C. L. EDSON. 
 
 The farmer is a man of wit, 
 There s a simply no denying itl 
 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. 
 
 135
 
 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, 
 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 chickens fries, 
 The best the city s mart supplies ; 
 
 136
 
 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! 
 
 On the Farm 
 
 BY ELLEN P. ALLERTON. 
 
 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 
 
 cm.) 
 
 137
 
 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 checks are red 
 
 An everblooming 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!) 
 
 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!) 
 
 138
 
 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!) 
 
 A Regular Dry Spell 
 
 BY C. L. EDSON, 
 
 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?" 
 
 139
 
 "Talk about dry," said neightbor 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 plum 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 ! 
 
 But twas just like this in 93. 
 
 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; 
 
 140
 
 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 rain drop 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." 
 
 Butchering Day 
 
 BY C. L. EDSON. 
 
 High through the sky see the homing birds sailing- 
 It s butchering time. 
 Frost on the fences; on picket and paling 
 
 141
 
 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 dweller days on their ken 
 Lures them keen on the blood sprinkled trail of the 
 
 men 
 At butchering time. 
 
 142
 
 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. 
 
 143
 
 My People 
 
 BY WILLARD WATTLES. 
 
 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 sombre 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, 
 
 144
 
 The bumble-bee that filches all her shyly treasured 
 
 sweet ; 
 For them no tawny sunflowers with their crowns 
 
 of beaten gold 
 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 home 
 land 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. 
 
 145
 
 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, 
 
 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? 
 
 146
 
 We are young, but through our pulses leaps a flood 
 from heroes veins, 
 
 Men who struck in flaming anger at the South 
 land s slaving chains; 
 
 Then to homely ploughshares forging every bat 
 tle-gleaming blade, 
 
 They have wrestled in the desert with an Angel 
 undismayed. 
 
 Day by day the dread endeavor, muscles tense and 
 
 faces grim, 
 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 lit 
 tle, 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. 
 
 147
 
 Then, Whate er the 
 Weather" 
 
 BY WILLARD WATTLES. 
 
 Howdy, old man, how s K. U.? Lord, what a grip 
 
 you have got. 
 Somehow I thought it was you, and I made for 
 
 you rapid and hot, 
 There was something familiar about you, a curve 
 
 of the shoulder and back, 
 A stride that I hadn t forgotten from the days at 
 
 McCook on the track; 
 And so as I stood in the subway I let the express 
 
 whistle by, 
 And said to myself, "It s Bill Blazes, I ll walk up 
 
 and swat the old guy/ 
 And now that I ve got you, Bill Blazes, I ll keep 
 
 you and jaw you for fair; 
 A warm little dinner at Shanley s, we ll walk it 
 
 to-night through Times Square. 
 And so, just you loosen and tell me as much as you 
 
 care to relate 
 Of your intimate personal doings, I ll bet they are 
 
 rich, you old skate. 
 
 148
 
 You ve been off in Brazil building railroads, 
 
 that s sort of a jump 
 From the classical halls where we used to cavort 
 
 and the rest of the mossy old dump. 
 Malaria, skeeters, and niggers, and crocodiles ready 
 
 to chaw ; 
 I ll bet the old Amazon s bigger, but give me a 
 
 ride on the Kaw. 
 I ll never forget that May evening we rowed up 
 
 to Cameron s bluff, 
 And the way that the girls got excited when the 
 
 wind came up sudden and rough, 
 Or the cussing you gave to me later, with both of 
 
 us sopped to the skin, 
 Because I forgot to keep rowing while holding the 
 
 young ladies in. 
 It s only the way that things go, Bill, and I guess we 
 
 were both of us slow; 
 
 They re married, I reckon, by this time, and teach 
 ing their daughters to row. 
 
 And do you remember, Bill Blazes don t mind my 
 
 lord Bobs at the door, 
 He looks mighty glum but he s harmless, I ve been 
 
 here at Shanley s before 
 The time that you strung me so smoothly with one 
 
 of your sophomore jokes 
 
 149
 
 Till I put on my war-paint and feathers before I 
 got onto the hoax? 
 
 Or the garment I found in the attic and sent to 
 the good Mrs. Chase 
 
 Demurely tucked in with your laundry, all ribbons, 
 Bill, ruffles and lace? 
 
 You know what a story next morning she told to 
 the good Mrs. Brown 
 
 And how that young reprobate Blazes was account 
 ed the rake of the town. 
 
 But it wasn t all fiddles and dancing, (yes waiter 
 
 a table for two, 
 And something right warm for a starter, I think 
 
 a Martini will do.) 
 There were nights when the gas was a-sputter till 
 
 we pulled down the windows at four 
 And set the alarm clook for seven, too jaded,. Bill, 
 
 even to snore ; 
 There were days when I waited on tables, and 
 
 chewed all the skin off my thumbs 
 Because some thin faculty spinster came late as I 
 
 brushed off the crumbs; 
 There were times, Bill, I am sorry to own it, when 
 
 it seemed all the cards in the pack 
 Had been juggled to deuces and three-spots and I 
 
 didn t have grit to "come back" 
 150
 
 There are moments that make us or break us, you 
 
 knew when I had em, old top, 
 And once when I nearly went under, twas the look 
 
 in your eyes made me stop. 
 But where in the (come here, waiter, my order 
 
 was Camembert cheese, 
 And bring us another Chianti.) they re harder to 
 
 lasso than fleas. 
 
 And so you have bought a plantation and stocked 
 
 it with gringos and guns, 
 As big as the state of New Jersey, and you export 
 
 crude rubber by tons, 
 With niggers to swing you in hammocks, and wave 
 
 you to sleep with their fans, 
 
 And niggers to fetch you and carry, all calicos, yel 
 lows, and tans; 
 Can you find any blacker and truer than old Aunt 
 
 Louisa, the cook, 
 Who swore that the medices ate corpses, and said 
 
 her Lucindy was took? 
 She died in the harness last April, I m sorry I 
 
 couldn t trot back 
 And buy her a big bunch of roses and follow the 
 
 hearse in a hack. 
 
 151
 
 They say that Carruth is at Stanford, but Zeus is 
 still chipper and spry, 
 
 A sort of immortal Tithonus Gee, I wish I could 
 see the old guy. 
 
 And Boynton is busy as ever, Uncle Jimmy still 
 shouts for the boys, 
 
 And Naismith, God bless the old beggar, accumu 
 lates avoirdupois. 
 
 Miss Watson still frightens the Freshmen, Miss 
 Gardner s the queen of the hill, 
 
 Miss Lynn with her quaint prairie sunshine has 
 captured the Atlantic s good-will. 
 
 There s host of new faces among them, and some 
 times the old ones forget; 
 
 But, Bill, if old Hoppy should spy us, he d know us 
 in Hades, you bet, 
 
 A kinder, and shrewder, and truer (Here, waiter, 
 just hand me the bill, 
 
 And tinkle this chip in your pocket, and clear off 
 the cloth if you will.) 
 
 As I started to say, this plantation you want to 
 
 know something of me? 
 I can t say there s much worth the telling, I pound 
 
 for a living you see; 
 It s all in the trick of the fingers, but some in an 
 
 eye for the facts, 
 
 152
 
 And hustle each hour for excitement, or else you 
 
 are shaved with an axe. 
 I suppose you don t mind it, you rascal, you re rich 
 
 as a king and alone, 
 And nothing to do but mark rubber and ride round 
 
 the acres you own; 
 Just wait till you ve got to pay taxes, and children 
 
 come on bye and bye 
 What in thunder! You don t say you re married? 
 
 Jehosaphat, Bill, so am I. 
 
 May on Oread 
 
 BY WILLARD WATTLES. 
 
 "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. 
 
 153
 
 The University of Kansas 
 
 BY WILLARD WATTLES. 
 
 They have throned her upon a hill-top, mother and 
 queen in one, 
 
 Bride of the skies at mid-night, 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 mil 
 lion 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 un 
 sung. 
 
 Bolder than olden story boasted in golden tongue, 
 
 Bolder than knights of Arthur, braver than Charl 
 emagne, 
 
 The patient unchronicled warriors whose plow 
 share conquered the plain. 
 
 154
 
 Beside them kneel their sisters, womanly, strong 
 
 and true, 
 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 scep 
 tre sways afar ; 
 
 The ends of the earth acknowledge her wherever 
 her children are. 
 
 Never in pride of her glory may those she has nour 
 ished forget 
 
 That not on the purple dais is her throne of do 
 minion 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. 
 
 155
 
 Kansas, Mother of Us All 
 
 BY 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. 
 156
 
 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! 
 
 Harry Kemp 
 
 BY WILLARD WATTLES. 
 
 Amherst, Mass., Feb 25, 1914. 
 Dear Kansas: 
 
 I don t doubt you think it s rather intimate 
 For me to write a letter to so dignified a State 
 And send the second shipment of Epistles from the 
 East 
 
 157
 
 To round about two million Jayhawks at the very 
 least. 
 
 For I have grown quite cocky since I left for for 
 eign climes 
 
 And have sent from Massachusetts quite a can 
 nonade of rhymes, 
 
 Till I reckon you grow weary of my oft-repeated 
 tunes 
 
 All about the plains of Kansas and the blaze of 
 August noons. 
 
 There s no poetry in August when the sweat runs 
 
 down your back, 
 And you feel the hot winds sizzle till they burn 
 
 your whiskers black, 
 When it seems as if your pitchfork had been dipped 
 
 in melted lead 
 And the threshing-engine chuckles to the red sun 
 
 overhead, 
 And you flounder in the barges choked with flying 
 
 chaff and dirt 
 While the wheat-beards grow familiar through your 
 
 salt and soppy shirt. 
 Then you d like to kill the poet who slops over at 
 
 the mouth 
 When the gentle August zephyrs come hell-blazing 
 
 from the south ; 
 
 158
 
 You would like to set him pumping when the wind 
 mill wheel is dead 
 
 And you have to furnish water for your thirsty 
 hundred-head ; 
 
 When you sluice your heaving porkers with cold 
 water all day long 
 
 You could massacre the minstrel who would set the 
 thing in song. 
 
 And the sunflower! There s another little rift 
 
 within the lute, 
 All about her golden bonnet and her saucy gypsy 
 
 suit. 
 She s no queen in Lincoln kirtle, delicate and shyly 
 
 made, 
 
 But a pert and flippant baggage, rank and shame 
 less, watch the jade, 
 Shouldering aside the corn-stalk s exquisite and 
 
 slender grace, 
 See the brazen hoyden flaunting all her colors in her 
 
 face, 
 Or when Winter strips her fleshless, see her gaunt 
 
 and twisted, stand 
 Scattering a witch s harvest over all the blasted 
 
 land. 
 
 159
 
 Yes, I know that chinch-bugs clamber up the spiky 
 heads of wheat 
 
 And I know they leave destruction where they set 
 their musty feet ; 
 
 I have seen the corn-rows wither in one sunny sum 
 mer day 
 
 When those gray invading squadons set their col 
 umns under way: 
 
 First, the wheat forgets to kernel, then the dumb 
 and helpless corn, 
 
 Limply yielding without quarter where those tiny 
 teeth have shorn. 
 
 And there isn t much of beauty in a broken-heart 
 ed field 
 
 Where you scarce can find a nubbin that the chinch- 
 bugs haven t peeled. 
 
 But I wonder if the beauty some Byronic poet sings 
 Is a real as the beauty underlying common things, 
 And I wonder if in Kansas where we wrestle with 
 
 distress 
 
 There is not a subtler beauty underneath the ugli 
 ness? 
 
 Epic fields have brandished armor to the challenge 
 of the sun 
 
 160
 
 And the feet of charging squadrons over leaning 
 
 wheat-fields run; 
 Mighty ships of portly burden lumber through the 
 
 summer sky 
 And the thunder of armadas speaks in heaven s 
 
 artillery ; 
 
 Cloudy summits crowned with glory lift their sacr 
 ed Alpine snows 
 To the kiss the sun has flung them when he turned 
 
 to his repose; 
 Then the stars shine through the splendor that has 
 
 lingered in the west 
 And you hear a drowsy night-bird twitter from a 
 
 hidden nest. 
 
 There you have it ! Well, I wonder, is it worth my 
 while to try 
 
 Just to put it down on paper when you have as 
 keen an eye, 
 
 And I know that back in Kansas men are living 
 what I write 
 
 And they see the things I say here, only with a 
 clearer sight? 
 
 Yet, there was a man who showed you all of Kan 
 sas loveliness, 
 
 And he came among you barefoot in a strange, un 
 lovely dress, 
 
 161
 
 Such a wild and eerie creature touched with wonder 
 
 in the eyes 
 Like a John the Baptist, maybe, every word a fresh 
 
 surprise. 
 And you couldn t understand him, for he shocked 
 
 you didn t he? 
 And he sometimes spoke in cuss-words and not 
 
 always tactfully. 
 Just a wanderer from heaven who had plumbed the 
 
 depths of hell, 
 One who looked upon such visions as he would not 
 
 dare to tell, 
 But you felt when you were with him he had 
 
 winced beneath the brand, 
 Then you laughed and called "eccentric" what you 
 
 couldn t understand. 
 Harry Kemp, the hobo poet, half a marvel, half 
 
 a joke 
 Till you glimpsed the red volcano underneath the 
 
 veiling smoke. 
 And his flail of woods fell stinging on a Pharisaic 
 
 back, 
 
 For he found the tender places with a most un 
 canny knack. 
 
 162
 
 Was that why when he had left you for his sum 
 mer Paradise 
 Where he tasted bitter apples that he dreamed so 
 
 rare a prize, 
 That the goodly people gathered all the brimstone 
 
 of the Lord 
 And with holy indignation guarded Eden with a 
 
 sword ? 
 John the Baptist has a mission when he sticks to 
 
 curds and whey 
 But he d best be rather careful how he chums with 
 
 Salome, 
 And there s nothing folks like better when their 
 
 hearts are black within 
 Than to ferret out a neighbor and to megaphone 
 
 his sin. 
 
 I don t say it s noble labor to eat apples by the 
 
 quart 
 Of the kind that grow in Eden, for there is a 
 
 better sort, 
 But I d like to ask the people who have had such 
 
 dirt to fling 
 
 If they never hankered after just a little appling? 
 I have walked along the highway long enough to 
 
 know that men 
 
 163
 
 Like to wriggle through the hedge-rows into Edens 
 now and then; 
 
 Then perhaps some braver poacher walks in boldly 
 by the gate 
 
 And they raise a holy hubbub o er the fallen celi 
 bate. 
 
 Harry Kemp is not an angel, never sprouted crown 
 or wing, 
 
 But there is a second party when it comes to Eden- 
 ing; 
 
 And I ve heard of Don Quixotes charging to a 
 damsel s aid, 
 
 Ignorant till all was over how the puppet had been 
 played, 
 
 And I think a little tex-book on the neurasthenic 
 mind 
 
 Would explain this Ardent-Eden in a manner quite 
 refined, 
 
 I have kept my head-piece bolted since the whirl 
 wind hit the camp 
 
 And have read with some amusement all about the 
 "shameless tramp". 
 
 Every little cub-reporter who had heard him tear 
 his hair 
 
 Wrote remunerative "features" emphasizing "I was 
 there," 
 
 164
 
 And I ve heard from older sages plying journal 
 istic trade 
 
 All about "poor fallen Harry and the blunder he 
 has made"; 
 
 Then I looked at Harry s letters written in his rag 
 ged hand 
 
 And I blessed the holy elders horrified in Kansas- 
 land. 
 
 Had they known him as I knew him since that mem 
 orable day 
 
 When he drifted into Horace where we read of 
 Soracte, 
 
 And he scanned the rare Alcaics with such ten 
 derness and grace 
 
 That we half forgot the havoc that was written 
 on his face? 
 
 Later in the day I saw him in that haven, half- 
 divine 
 
 Where Carruth, the friend of dreamers, kept his 
 white and stainless shrine, 
 
 From the altar of his hearth-stone what a gracious 
 warmth he shed 
 
 To the lonely and the homeless, when they wander 
 ed wearied! 
 
 165
 
 Harry Kemp, the hobo poet, quoting lines from 
 Aeschylus, 
 
 Bringing flaming fire from heaven like a new Pro 
 metheus, 
 
 Teaching country boys the beauty of the epic-rolling 
 plain 
 
 When the dusky shadows ripple over heavy-headed 
 grain, 
 
 Turning ugliness to wonder, finding in a mead 
 ow-lark 
 
 All the lyric curlew s rapture thrilling through the 
 Irish dark, 
 
 Sang of aeroplanes and reapers, and the thresher s 
 mighty fan, 
 
 Found as poems in the heavens, Sirius and Aldebran. 
 
 Yes, we sometimes caught some echoes, Ware and 
 
 Whitman and Carruth, 
 And a touch of Blake and Thompson, Keats and 
 
 Shelley in their youth, 
 And you sometimes felt a fancy, like a lonely elfin 
 
 child, 
 Creeping in with minor cadence from the strains 
 
 of Oscar Wilde; 
 But he breathed the wind of Kansas and he felt 
 
 the tingling sun 
 
 166
 
 And he showed us lowly beauty where the homely 
 
 highways run, 
 All the hidden springs of wonder that we never 
 
 dreamed were here, 
 Till he came to point them to us with the star-dust 
 
 in his hair. 
 He had found a flaming vision neath the sunny 
 
 Kansas sky 
 And he woke a land to beauty and a State to poetry. 
 
 Only just this spring I saw him, Eliot Porter, and 
 
 John Shea, 
 And we had our lunch together in a little French 
 
 cafe; 
 Then he left us to go marching in the suffragette 
 
 parade 
 
 When the vast throat of Manhattan cheered the wo 
 men s last crusade. 
 Through Times Square we saw him dodge it past 
 
 the honking limousines 
 Till he reached the subway entrance by a stand of 
 
 magazines ; 
 Then he lifted hand and waved us through the 
 
 intervening space, 
 Harry Kemp, the hatless hobo, with the sunlight 
 
 on his face, 
 
 167
 
 Harry Kemp, our Don Quixote, who has sounded 
 
 the advance. 
 And set against the mighty mills his lyric-pointed 
 
 lance. 
 
 The Prairie-Sleeper 
 
 BY WILLARD WATTLES. 
 
 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 
 
 168
 
 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 golden-rod 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, 
 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. 
 169
 
 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 golden-rod; 
 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 milk-weed pod. 
 
 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. 
 
 170
 
 The Gates Ajar 
 
 BY ALRERT BIGELOW PAINE. 
 
 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 sum 
 mer 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 gold 
 en gleam; 
 
 When every bird renewed the song he sang the night 
 
 before, 
 
 And all the silent, slumbering world returned to life 
 
 once more; 
 171
 
 When every burst of radiance called up a throng of 
 
 life, 
 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. 
 
 
 The Sensitive Brier 
 
 BY AMANDA T. JONES. 
 
 (A procumbent perennial, American genus 
 Schrankia, found on the rolling prairies of Kansas 
 and other south-eastern states. Because of the ex 
 ceeding loveliness and unsurpassable fragrance of its 
 flowers, it is popularly known as The Sensitive 
 Rose). 
 
 I. 
 
 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, 
 
 172
 
 O, babe-like flower! and smile to see, 
 Deep-musing on the Christ to be ? 
 
 II. 
 
 Pales in thy woof the 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. 
 
 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 !" 
 173
 
 The Prairie Wind 
 
 BY WILLARD WATTLES. 
 
 Dim in the dawn of the centuries, born of the Prai 
 rie 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 deli 
 cate 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. 
 
 174
 
 Ah, prairies of Kansas, craving the vast, far reach 
 of the sky, 
 
 Astir with wind-longings, aquiver, afire with yearn 
 ings and deathless desire, 
 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 infi 
 nite 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 milk-weed pod, 
 The burly thistle is white as snow, and the 
 
 crimson cactus-plant aglow, 
 While the glorious golden-rod 
 Shelters the lumbering bumble-bee as the murmur 
 ous breezes drowsily 
 
 Drone him slumberously to rest in the musty fra 
 grance of her breast 
 
 175
 
 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, 
 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 slen 
 der 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 ecstacy ; 
 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. 
 
 176
 
 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. 
 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 shadows hide. 
 177
 
 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 
 
 shuttles plies, 
 With swift and sure precision weaves a silver web 
 
 in the shining leaves, 
 Spinning death from a poison heart. 
 
 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 radi 
 ant 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. 
 
 178
 
 Sof t-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, 
 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 forbodingly as some lone phan 
 tom from a tomb. 
 
 The planets swing in a deathless ring, serene and 
 
 clear ; 
 
 Sure-piloted the meteors steer through the thin, 
 translucent atmosphere, 
 
 179
 
 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 
 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, 
 
 180
 
 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. 
 
 The Stars Above Mt. Oread 
 
 BY ESTHER M. CLARK 
 
 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. 
 
 181
 
 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!" 
 
 # # * # 
 
 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. 
 
 Requiem 
 
 BY EUGENE F. WARE. 
 
 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. 
 
 182
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 5. The Call of Kansas Esther M. Clark 
 
 9. Kansas Harry Kemp 
 
 10. Morning in Kansas Walt Mason 
 
 11. Three States Eugene F. Ware 
 
 11. Kansas and London Harry Kemp 
 
 12. Each In His Own Tongue 
 
 William Herbert Carruth 
 
 14. Opportunity John J. Ingalls 
 
 15. Kansas Nicholas Vachel Lindsay 
 
 18. When the Sunflowers Bloom 
 
 Albert Bigelow Paine 
 
 20. It Will Be A Kansas Year J. B. Edson 
 
 21. Joy In the Corn Belt C. L. Edson 
 
 22. Walls of Corn Ellen P. Allerton 
 
 24. Ah! Sunflower William Blake 
 
 25. Winds of Delphic Kansas Kate Stephens 
 
 28. Le Marias du Cygne John G. Whittier 
 
 31. The Prairie Pioneers C. L. Edson 
 
 34. Chewink Amanda T. Jones 
 
 35. Spring In Kansas Kate Stephens 
 
 37. The Prairie Schooner.... Charles Moreau Harger 
 
 38. Where "A Lovely Time Was Had" 
 
 William Allen White 
 
 40. Pawpaws Ripe Sol Miller 
 
 44. Kansas Willard Wattles 
 
 47. Carrie Nation Willard Wattles 
 
 48. John Brown Eugene F. Ware 
 
 51. John Brown W. H. Simpson 
 
 51. A Tribute to John Brown J. G. Waters 
 
 52. John Brown William Herbert Carruth
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 (Continued) 
 
 Page 
 
 53. In Idol-Smashing Land C. L. Edson 
 
 58. A Wheat-Field Fantasy Harry Kemp 
 
 59. The Promise of Bread C. L. Edson 
 
 61. A Wilier Crick Incident-William Allen White 
 
 63. A Border Memory Florence L. Snow 
 
 68. The Defense of Lawrence Richard Realf 
 
 70. Funston James J. Montague 
 
 72. Ode to Kansas Walt Mason 
 
 73. My Sage-Brush Girl C. L. Edson 
 
 75. Plowing Corn in Kansas Willard Wattles 
 
 78. Sunflowers in the Corn Willard Wattles 
 
 82. Cutting the Corn C. L. Edson 
 
 84. A Ridge of Corn Hamlin Garland 
 
 86. Farm Machinery Walt Mason 
 
 88. The Land That God Forgot Harry Kemp 
 
 90. Before the Robin Dares Rose Morgan 
 
 91. Pine Trees in Kansas Rose Morgan 
 
 92. Bouncing-Bet Rose Morgan 
 
 93. The Thrush Amanda T. Jones 
 
 95. Sunflowers C. L. Edson 
 
 97. The Little Old Sod Shanty on the Claim.... 
 
 Anonymous 
 
 101. The Song of the Kansas Imigrant 
 
 John G. Whittier 
 
 103. Stay West, Young Man Willard Wattles 
 
 105. Manhood Willard Wattles 
 
 107. A Challenge to Youth Willard Wattles 
 
 110. Kansas Harry Kemp 
 
 111. An Epic for Kansas Willard Wattles
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 (Continued) 
 
 115. April on Half Moon Mountain C. L. Edson 
 
 116. Out of the Kansas Dust 
 
 George T. and C. L. Edson 
 
 118. The Old Timer Walt Mason 
 
 119. When She Was Born Upon That Kansas Hill 
 
 William Herbert Carruth 
 
 120. Tescott William Herbert Carruth 
 
 121. The Real Foreign Invasion C. L. Edson 
 
 127. The Graderratun of Joe..William AllenWhite 
 
 129. The Red Bird Amanda T. Jones 
 
 130. The Maverick Willard Wattles 
 
 132. Threshing Time C. L. Edson 
 
 135. The Farmer C. L. Edson 
 
 137. On the Farm Ellen P. Allerton 
 
 139. A Regular Dry Spell C. L. EdsoB 
 
 141. Butchering Day C. L. Edson 
 
 144. My People Willard Wattles 
 
 148. "Then, Whate er the Weather" 
 
 Willard Wattles 
 
 153. May on Oread Willard Wattles 
 
 154. The University of Kansas.. ..Willard Wattles 
 
 156. Kansas, Mother of Us All Willard Wattles 
 
 157. Harry Kemp Willard Wattles 
 
 168. The Prairie-Sleeper Willard Wattles 
 
 171. The Gates Ajar Albert Bigelow Paine 
 
 172. The Sensitive Briar Amanda T. Jones 
 
 174. The Prairie Wind Willard Wattles 
 
 181. The Stars Above Mt. Oread.. ..Esther M. Clark 
 
 182. Requiem Eugene F. Ware 
 
 183. Ad Vivos Kate Stephens
 
 DEC b 1985 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 GAYLORD
 
 000 569 404