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| WHEN youth was in its May-day prime, | |
| Life’s blossoming and singing time, | |
| While heart and hope made cheerful chime, | |
| We dropped into our cottage-nest | |
| Upon a prairie’s mighty breast, | 5 |
| Soft billowing towards the unknown West. | |
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| Green earth beneath, blue sky above! | |
| Through verdure vast the hidden dove | |
| Sent plaintively her moan of love. | |
| South wind and sunshine filled the air; | 10 |
| Thought flew in widening curves, to share | |
| The large, sweet calmness everywhere. | |
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| In space two confluent rivers made,— | |
| Kaskaskia, that far southward strayed, | |
| And Mississippi, sunk in shade | 15 |
| Of level twilights,—nestled we, | |
| As in the cleft branch of a tree; | |
| Green grass, blue sky, all we could see. | |
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| Torch-like, our garden-plot illumed | |
| The sea-like waste, when sunset gloomed; | 20 |
| Its homely scents the night perfumed; | |
| And through the long bright noontide hours | |
| Its tints outblazed the prairie-flowers: | |
| Gay, gay and glad, that nest of ours! | |
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| Our marigolds, our poppies red, | 25 |
| Straggling away from their trim bed, | |
| With phlox and larkspur rioted; | |
| And we, fresh-hearted, every day | |
| Found fantasies wherewith to play, | |
| As daring and as free as they. | 30 |
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| The drumming grouse; the whistling quail; | |
| Wild horses prancing down the gale; | |
| A lonely tree that seemed a sail | |
| Far out at sea; a cabin-spark | |
| Winking at us across the dark: | 35 |
| The wolf’s cry, like a watch-dog’s bark; | |
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| And sometimes sudden jet and spire | |
| Belting the horizon in with fire, | |
| That writhed and died in serpent-gyre,— | |
| Without a care we saw, we heard: | 40 |
| To dread or pleasure lightly stirred | |
| As, in mid-flight, the homeward bird. | |
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| The stars hung low above our roof; | |
| Rainbow and cloud-film wrought a woof | |
| Of glory round us, danger-proof; | 45 |
| It sometimes seemed as if our cot | |
| Were the one safe, selected spot | |
| Whereon Heaven centred steadiest thought. | |
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| Man was afar, but God close by; | |
| And we might fold our wings, or fly, | 50 |
| Beneath the sun, His open eye: | |
| With bird and breeze in brotherhood, | |
| We simply felt and understood | |
| That earth was fair, that He was good. | |
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| Nature, so full of secrets coy, | 55 |
| Wrote out the mystery of her joy | |
| On those broad swells of Illinois; | |
| Her virgin heart to Heaven was true. | |
| We trusted Heaven and her, and knew | |
| The grass was green, the skies were blue, | 60 |
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| And life was sweet! What find we more | |
| In wearying quest from shore to shore? | |
| Ah, gracious memory! to restore | |
| Our golden West, its sun, its showers, | |
| And that gay little nest of ours | 65 |
| Dropped down among the prairie-flowers! | |
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