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April Twilights and Other Poems

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<h3>MACON PRAIRIE (NEBRASKA)</h3> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> She held me for a night against her bosom, The aunt who died when I was yet a baby, The girl who scarcely lived to be a woman. Stricken, she left familiar earth behind her, Mortally ill, she braved the boisterous ocean, Dying, she crossed irrevocable rivers, Hailed the blue Lakes, and saw them fade forever, Hungry for distances;—her heart exulting That God had made so many seas and countries To break upon the eye and sweep behind her. From one whose love was tempered by discretion, From all the net of caution and convenience She snatched her high heart for the great adventure, Broke her bright bubble under far horizons,— Among the skirmishers that teased the future, Precursors of the grave slow-moving millions Already destined to the Westward-faring. </div> <div class="stanza"> They came, at last, to where the railway ended, The strange troop captained by a dying woman; The father, the old man of perfect silence, The mother, unresisting, broken-hearted, The gentle brother and his wife, both timid, Not knowing why they left their native hamlet; Going as in a dream, but ever going.{58} </div> <div class="stanza"> In all the glory of an Indian summer, The lambent transmutations of October, They started with the great ox-teams from Hastings And trekked in a southwesterly direction, Boring directly toward the fiery sunset. Over the red grass prairies, shaggy-coated, Without a goal the caravan proceeded; Across the tablelands and rugged ridges, Through the coarse grasses which the oxen breasted, Blue-stem and bunch-grass, red as sea-marsh samphire. Always the similar, soft undulations Of the free-breathing earth in golden sunshine, The hardy wind, and dun hawks flying over Against the unstained firmament of heaven. </div> <div class="stanza"> In the front wagon, under the white cover, Stretched on her feather-bed and propped with pillows, Never dismayed by the rude oxen’s scrambling, The jolt of the tied wheel or brake or hold-back, She lay, the leader of the expedition; And with her burning eyes she took possession Of the red waste,—for hers, and theirs, forever. </div> <div class="stanza"> A wagon-top, rocking in seas of grasses, A camp-fire on a prairie chartless, trackless, A red spark under the dark tent of heaven. Surely, they said, by day she saw a vision, Though her exhausted strength could not impart it,— Her breathing hoarser than the tired cattle.{59} </div> <div class="stanza"> When cold, bright stars the sunburnt days succeeded, She took me in her bed to sleep beside her,— A sturdy bunch of life, born on the ocean. Always she had the wagon cover lifted Before her face. The sleepless hours till daybreak She read the stars. </div> <div class="stanza"> “Plenty of time for sleep,” she said, “hereafter.” </div> <div class="stanza"> She pointed out the spot on Macon prairie, Telling my father that she wished to lie there. “And plant, one day, an apple orchard round me, In memory of woman’s first temptation, And man’s first cowardice.” That night, within her bosom, I slept. Before the morning I cried because the breast was cold behind me. </div> <div class="stanza"> Now, when the sky blazes like blue enamel, Brilliant and hard over the blond cornfields, And through the autumn days our wind is blowing Like the creative breath of God Almighty— Then I rejoice that offended love demanded Such wide retreat, and such self-restitution; Forged an explorer’s will in a frail woman, Asked of her perfect faith and renunciation, Hardships and perils, prophecy and vision, The leadership of kin, and happy ending On the red rolling land of Macon prairie. {60}</div> </div></div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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