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    Songs of the Prairie
    Songs of the Prairie
    Songs of the Prairie
    Ebook97 pages1 hour

    Songs of the Prairie

    By Elizabeth Colborne and Robert J.C. Stead

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 15, 2013
    Songs of the Prairie

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      Book preview

      Songs of the Prairie - Elizabeth Colborne

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of Songs of the Prairie, by Robert J. C. Stead

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: Songs of the Prairie

      Author: Robert J. C. Stead

      Illustrator: Elizabeth Colborne

      Release Date: March 3, 2011 [EBook #35475]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONGS OF THE PRAIRIE ***

      Produced by Barbara Watson and the Online Distributed

      Proofreading Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net (This

      file was produced from images generously made available

      by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)

      SONGS OF THE

      PRAIRIE

      BY

      ROBERT J. C. STEAD

      Author of PRAIRIE BORN.

      New York

      THE PLATT & PECK CO.

      Copyright 1912, By

      The Platt & Peck Co.

      CONTENTS

      THE PRAIRIE

      The City? Oh, yes, the City

      Is a good enough place for a while,

      It fawns on the clever and witty,

      And welcomes the rich with a smile;

      It lavishes money as water,

      It boasts of its palace and hall,

      But the City is only the daughter—

      The Prairie is mother of all!

      The City is all artificial,

      Its life is a fashion-made fraud,

      Its wisdom, though learned and judicial,

      Is far from the wisdom of God;

      Its hope is the hope of ambition,

      Its lust is the lust to acquire,

      And the larger it grows, its condition

      Sinks lower in pestilent mire.

      The City is cramped and congested,

      The haunt and the covert of crime;

      The Prairie is broad, unmolested,

      It points to the high and sublime;

      Where only the sky is above you

      And only the distance in view,

      With no one to jostle or shove you—

      It's there a man learns to be true!

      Where the breeze whispers over the willows

      Or sighs in the dew laden grass,

      And the rain clouds, like big, stormy billows,

      Besprinkle the land as they pass;

      With the smudge-fire alight in the distance,

      The wild duck alert on the stream,

      Where life is a psalm of existence

      And opulence only a dream.

      Where wide as the plan of creation

      The Prairies stretch ever away,

      And beckon a broad invitation

      To fly to their bosom, and stay;

      The prairie fire smell in the gloaming—

      The water-wet wind in the spring—

      An empire untrod for the roaming—

      Ah, this is a life for a king!

      When peaceful and pure as a river

      They lie in the light of the moon,

      You know that the Infinite Giver

      Is stringing your spirit a-tune;

      That life is not told in the telling,

      That death does not whisper adieu,

      And deep in your bosom up-welling,

      You know that the Promise is true!

      To those who have seen it and smelt it,

      To those who have loved it alone

      To those who have known it and felt it—

      The Prairie is ever their own;

      And far though they wander, unwary,

      Far, far from the breath of the plain,

      A thought of the wind on the Prairie

      Will set their blood rushing again.

      Then you to the City who want it,

      Go, grovel its gain-glutted streets,

      Be one of the ciphers that haunt it,

      Or sit in its opulent seats;

      But for me, where the Prairies are reaching

      As far as the vision can scan—

      Ah, that is the prayer and the preaching

      That goes to the heart of a man!

      THE GRAMOPHONE

      Where the lonely settler's shanty dots the plain,

      And he sighs for friends and comradeship in vain,

      Through the silences intense

      Comes a sound of eloquence

      Shrilling forth in steely, brazen, waxen strain—

      The deep, resonant voice of Gladstone calling from the tomb,

      Or Ingersoll's deliverance before his brother's bier;

      Then a saucy someone singing, When the daisies are in bloom,

      And the fife and drummers rendering The British Grenadier.

      Back as far into the hills as they could get,

      They've a roof that turns the winter and the wet,

      They are grizzled but they're gay,

      They've a daily matinee,

      They are happy though they're head and ears in debt—

      I wish I had my old girl back again,

      If the wind had only blown the other way,

      Uncertain voices join an old refrain

      And repeat the same performance every day.

      There's a Scotchman holding down a mining claim

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