Page 29 - Poetry-Country

Whew! the thought of that big fellow telling all creation round him
How he feels about the subject of green ground and high, bright sky,
Sets the section corn-field rustling in my ears, and then (confound him!)
Sets me blinking over something that has got into my eye.

There’s a music in that rustling beats what any mother’s daughter
Ever sung in any opera,—that’s as sure as you are born!
And if you are Western-bred there’s no breeze from off salt water
That smells half so satisfying as a mile of Indian corn.

Pretty landscapes made to order here, down East, they’re always praising,
And they call our prairies “dreary,” “tame,” or “very stupid plains”;
But they never rode full gallop past the osage hedges, raising
Hoofing flakes of black mud flying, running race with wild storm-rains.

And they never tried the pleasure of the great clash through the
slough-lands
When the prairie creek boils over in a foaming lake of brown,
When the hickory grove is budding, just beyond the buckwheat
plow-lands,
And the sky’s all turned to beet-red where the sun’s been going down.

And they never pulled the bridle, by the wild crabapples halting,
When the little knotty trees were full of buds and blossoms pink,
And the air was crammed with sweetness, while the bees were
somersaulting
Round the honey-cups half crazy till they got a chance to drink.

What’s the use! The oats are planted in ten million acres loamy,
And the wheat’s all up and sprouting as if working by the day,
And the poplars are done tasseling: our old place might not seem homy,
And I’m down East,—got a job here,—and can’t seem to get away.

— Minna Smith (Century Magazine, 1893)

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