THE page is snowy white, the pen is dipped, And yet unwritten is this manuscript -- Save for a scattered letter leagues apart. But through this frail beginning I can peer On days when all this wilderness shall hear The rhythmic throbbings of the human heart. The heavens are bare; no clouds are on her face To make the laggard sun increase his pace Above the rusted hillocks bare and red. The yellow straw-pipes, spearing through the ice, Are lovely from an ancient sacrifice; They gave and hear the nations breaking bread. The prairie lands are spread to-day for me Like frozen billows on a pulseless sea That waits the golden wheat's releasing tide. Here, in his largest mood, the artist tries To catch the amber glory with his dyes, And sees, with aching soul, his task defied. Bolder, the poet, with a stronger hand Anoints with song this little-laurelled land, Weaving the west winds wildly in his rune. He sees the cattle stand with moveless tails, And heads together, to outwit the gales That blow the bronze of summer from the moon. He sees, beside a ridge where poplars grow, A bronco coldly nosing in the snow, And gains the prairie vastness from his form. He sees the patient straw-stack, brown with rain, A giant, ripened mushroom of the plain Whose stem is worn by rubbing flank and storm. Here, while the blizzard aches its heart in sound, The cattle move like driftwood, 'round and 'round, Yea, 'round and 'round as in a whirlpool's reach. And, in a nook that lulls the wilder whine, A shaggy bush claims kinship with the pine And meets the gale with boldness in its speech; Or, with a thought for some far woodland, dense, Her branches wail against an old offense -- Complaining of the hoof that brought them here. No lordly tree this land shall ever dare; And yet, unfearful of their valiant fare, Soon, in this vast, shall frailest flowers appear. Where Might doth falter, Beauty enters in; Where Pride shall fail, Humility shall win. And this will be until the heavens are old. And here, to prove the adage, I shall pass When April kindles beauty in the grass And warms these frozen fields with red and gold. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TRANSLUCENT FINGERS by MALCOLM COWLEY NOBODY'S LOOKIN' BUT DE OWL AND DE MOON (A NEGRO SERENADE) by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON TO -, WITH A ROSE by SIDNEY LANIER SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: SHACK DYE by EDGAR LEE MASTERS |