this land of undulating prairies, this geographic center of the nation, a veritable Pandora's box out of which has risen many strange and irrelevant things: Jayhawkers with a New England conscience, John Brown the Ossawatomie abolitionist, Carrie Nation and her crusading hatchet, Prohibition! "Sockless Jerry Simpson" running for Congress, Doctor John R. Brinkley, the modern medical magician, renovator of old men. Kansas is a long series of exclamation marks in the national mind. large counties pieced together like a crazy quilt, towns and cities appliqued upon its surface, old world names and new: Wichita, Topeka, Wakarusa, Runnymede, Humboldt, St. John; one enormous fabric intricately quilted by many roads. A tourist camp sign: "Coronado passed through here, try our cabins (75c.)." grain elevators in long rows like wet-cell batteries germinating the strength of a nation. Kansas is a shrewd old man with white hair and young eyes looking toward the future, enjoying the amazement of his contemporaries. when it thunders in Kansas that is only the tumbleweed of public opinion gathering momentum enough to roll across the national sky. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE LAND OF DREAMS by WILLIAM BLAKE A CHILD'S EVENING PRAYER by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE THE RUNES ON WELAND'S SWORD by RUDYARD KIPLING THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE by ALFRED TENNYSON REBECCA; WHO SLAMMED DOORS FOR FUN AND PERISHED MISERABLY by HILAIRE BELLOC THE CAPTAIN'S LADY by ROBERT BURNS FRAGMENT OF A HYMN by JOHN BYROM MASQUE AT THE MARRIAGE OF THE LORD HAYES: HESPERUS SPEAKS by THOMAS CAMPION |