A Song For The Prairies

Men who sell their souls to the inland
Must be patient with quiet things;
Never for them the hymn of the hills
And never the chanty the wild sea sings.

Iron peace is the code of the hill-men;
Proudly they dwell where the storm heads are;
Comrade of star and wind they live;
Then rest, and the prayers of their wind and star.

Men of the sea live gladlY, gladly,
Wet with the spray of the restless waves;
Men of the sea die boldly, madly,
Hurled by the storm into living graves.

Men of the plains hear the dull rain falling;
Men of the plains hear the lone dog's cry;
Listening close for their old dreams calling,
Building their days 'neath a sepulchre sky.

^__Allan Crafton

Contemporary Kansas Poetry
Helen Rhoda Hoopes
page 33
(Kansas City: Joseph D. Havens Company. 1927)