Out Of The Kansas Dust.

Out of the dust of Kansas,

In old, primeval days;

Out of the shroud of a drifting cloud

Across its grassy ways^__

Flaunting the flag of the prairie dust,

The shaggy bisons graze,

Over a landscape red with rust
The herds emerge from the Kansas dust.
 

Treading the dust of Kansas,

Before she knew her name;

Standing aghast at the vernal vast,

The spying Spaniard came.

And his armour scales in the grassy vales

Gleamed out like an oriflamme,

As he sought for the fabled city, thrust
Afar in the phantom desert's dust.
 

Trailing the dust of Kansas,

The Forty-Niners went;

Over the grass their oxen pass,

With their drovers, travel-spent.

And the weary weep their souls to sleep,

And lie in a grassy tent,

While the rest press on with feverish lust,
For the sunset land and its yellow dust.
 

Into the dust of Kansas

Went tribe and caravan;

All swallowed up in the desert's cup

That drank them, horse and man.

And the vision bold and the dream of gold,

It died as it began.

And the dreamer's heart turned mold and must
And drifted dead in the dreamless dust.
 

Out of the dust of Kansas

The marching dead return^__

Beneath the beat of their spectral feet

The springing poppies burn!

And out of their tomb the towers loom

Like genii from an urn.

The burnished cities are skyward thrust,
Rending the veil of the Kansas dust.
 

Out of the dust of Kansas,

They lift the voice of song;

Out of her heart the visions start

That lead the world along l

Her sons have eaten the mystic bread

That makes a people strong.

And he whom the stumbling nations trust
Is salting the world with the Kansas dust.

^__George T. and C. L. Edson.