Unless his veins are the sluggish drains for the blood of a craven race.--
He will gain new life for a better strife, whatever the odds he face.
So that is the rede and the homely creed of one who has spelled it forth
In the rivers' sweep and the splendors deep of the stars of the hardy North;
To some, I ween, it may seem but mean; too short, too blunt, too plain,
But if those I touch who have felt as much, it will not have been in vain.
Gathered in from three hundred-odd claims,
While the far ridges shine in a waving blue line
As they swish through the dry prairie grass,
No life anywhere save a hawk, high in air,
For the quarry we hunt is a shadow in front
A shot from the grass where the far flankers pass
Would we rest when the day's work is over
There is double patrol round the lean water-hole
With muskets clutched close in our hands,
The hours of night drag their heavy-winged flight
While the Great Dipper, pinned to the Pole Star,
And, faint through the dark, sounds the prairie wolf's bark
And the darkness that chokes like a vapor
Of children and wife and the dear things of life
Till the East flushes red with the morning
And the dawn-wind springs fresh o'er the plain,
And the reveille's note from the bugle's clear throat
We were guiding our trains over Iowa's plains
That the mountains and plains of the red man's domains
We are playing a game which is largely the same
|YES, it's pretty, this town. And it's always been so;
We pioneers picked it for beauty, you know.
See the far-rolling bluffs; mark the trees, how they hide
All its streets, and, beyond, the Missouri, bank-wide,
Swinging down through the bottoms. Up here on the height
Is the college. Eh, sightly location? You're right!
It has grown, you may guess, since I've been here; but still
It is forty-five years since I looked from this hill
One morning, and saw in the stockade down there
Our women and children all gathered at prayer,
While we, their defenders, with muskets in rest
Lay waiting the Sioux coming out of the West.
They had swept Minnesota with bullet and brand
Till her borders lay waste as a desert of sand,
That the red flood had risen and left us behind.
Then we rallied to fight them,--Sioux, Sissetons, all
Who had ravaged unchecked to the gates of Saint Paul.