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!