Trees On The Plains - A poem by Leslie Wallace

Trees On The Plains.

Trees on the plains are braver trees
Than those found otherwhere;
For like a sailor on the seas,
Or like a soldier, trees like these
Go forth to war.

They face the boisterous winds that blow;
Now East, now West, now North;
They face the onslaughts of the foe,
They face the droughts that scourge them so,
As they fare forth.

And some are leaning in the end,
Lean in the battle's wake^___
The winds may bend, but do not rend;
Invincible these trees that bend,
But do not break.

Some dwarfed and some misshapen are,
Some gnarled and some combine
The twisted fantasies that mar
Those forms that hug the hills afar,
At timberline.

Trees on the plains are braver trees
Than those found otherwhere;
For like a sailor on the seas,
Or like a soldier, trees like these
Go forth to war.

^__Leslie Wallace

Contemporary Kansas Poetry
Helen Rhoda Hoopes
page 116
(Kansas City: Joseph D. Havens Company. 1927)