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RIVER SONGS
Up the swinging, bluff-bound reaches
Where the lonely bittern boomed Throbbed a dull, insistent whisper, growing strong,
As the steamboat, flame-winged herald
To an age forespent and doomed, Waked the woodlands with its piston's pulsing song.
Reeling down the rain-washed gullies
To its fertile, grassy vales The Missouri saw the weary ox-teams plod;
Saw the red scouts on the ridges,
Heard the shots and dying wails, Knew the unmarked graves beneath the prairie sod.
It has watched the thin, gray dust-cloud
With the summer heat-haze blent, And the glint below of swords and bridle-chains,
As some squad of blue-clad troopers,
Like a wolf-pack on the scent, Trailed the fleeing travois' track across the plains.
It has seen the long-horned cattle
Take the bisons' pasture lands, Seen the cornfields spread where once the wild grass stood,
Marked the railroad bind the prairies,
League by league, with iron bands, Felt the dizzy bridge-span leap its own dark flood.
Till the cow-town's rutted roadways
Into asphalt pavements grew. By wires webbed and busy markets walled,
And the steel-trussed office building
Reared its cornice to the blue Where the shanties of the mining camp had sprawled.
Now the hissing, rock-jammed rapids
Where of yore the fish-hawks bred, Hear the thirsty turbines mumble in the gorge,
Tearing twice ten thousand horse-power
From the prisoned waters' head To drive the distant smelter, mill and forge. |
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