A Prairie Song

Is your heart a lonely plain
That yields no golden story?
Is your heart a prairie wide
Whence no echoes rise ?
Your soul it is a mountain-top
With summits lost in glory,
Is your heart a desert pool
Where no image lies ?

Steeped in mystic luring,
Wrapped around with wonder,
Where the silver waterfall
Springs from Paradise,
Your soul it is a mountain peak
Lost above the thunder,
Is your heart a sacred swan
Singing as it dies?

I would have wound you in a maze
With strands you could not sever,
I knew you were a dreamer
That sought a misted goal,
I would have thwarted destiny
To keep you mine forever,
I who am but a woman
And do not own a soul.

Across the sands the far hills lie
All bronze in sunset's splendor
That won you with their luring
In purple, gold and gray
In all their hidden crannies
Springs there no myrtle tender
From out the days that held us
Within the magic sway.

Your soul, it is a shimmering height
Transfigured in the twilight,
I saw it through a rift of cloud
A shaft of purple rise,
Is your heart a silent tomb
With no white ghost at midnight!
Is your heart a lonely plain
Where no echo lies ?

^__Elizabeth N. Barr.

The High Winds of Home
Elizabeth N. Barr
(Olathe: privately published. 1922)
Pages 14-15