Their Choice - A poem by Leonard Allen Prowant

Cibola

Turn once back a page of Time
To a bedraggled, marching line:
Once a company proud and bold
Seeking cities they were told
Had been paved with yellow gold,
Now returning to their post
A discouraged, plodding host;
While the leader of the band
Cursed the deceitfulness of man:
Cursed the broad and rolling land,
Cursed the brightly shining sun,
Cursed the company one by one,
Cursed the grass that stayed their feet,
Cursed the wind that scared their check,
Cursed the sparkling, rippling streams,
Cursed mirage's s entrancing dreams,
Cursed -- language best untold --
He who valued naught but gold,
He who came from sunny Spain,
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado by name
And who sought for gold in vain.

Now turn forward the page of Time
And we have a different rhyme:
For the soil the Knight had spurned
In the centuries has been turned,
Where the wind and sun had burned;
And the sunshine and the rain
Woos from it the golden grain
In the countless fields untold
Draws from Nature's exhaustless fold:
Draws the waving, precious gold I
Draws clear pictures in the sun,
Draws our farmsteads one by one,
Draws our cattle fat and sleek
Draws prime porkers in the creek,
Draws fair towns on smiling streams,
Draws in truth mirage's dreams,
Draws-and on for years untold
Will draw-this wealth of tangible gold.
Yet he who came from sunny Spain,
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado by name,
Fought and sought for gold in vain.

Stanzas For Kansas
Leonard Allen Prowant
(Wichita, Kansas: __. 1937) Page 2