Sunflowers.When all their bloom was shed, A field of Kansas sunflowers All standing brown and dead, They hovered there upon the hill; And like a phantom crew, The ghost of all the sunflowers, The prairies over grew Came trooping toward me in a crowd Each shining through a misty shroud And flashed like fireflies thro' my brain As once they lit the Kansas plain. For I have known the sunflowers As well as mortals know; They leaned to me, the sunflowers And whispered, long ago__ The things the sunflowers told me then, Some day I'll tell the world again, Some day when all their fairy band Is banished out of Kansas land. For they are of the sprite world, They are a fairy band, They speak in mystic meanings We scarcely understand. They sprang in shining lanes of gold Across the prairies where of old The "Forty-Niners'" creaking wains Went rutting through the grassy plains And so were born the sunflowers, The nymphs of earth and air; They reached their arms imploring, They tossed their golden hair, They were a fairy band that cried, "The gold is here on every side,*' And yet the argonauts went by To vanish in the sunset sky. My playmates were the sunflowers Besides the sod house door, They spread a sweet enchantment That lured me evermore Their army queen, with shields ablaze Went marching down the summer ways__ Across the mystic prairie land Where Youth and I walked hand in hand. The land grew full of cornstalks That flapped against the sky, The summer sun went running Across the wheat and rye, And nestling in the sunflower's shade The wild canary's nest was made; And every dream within me born Was of the sunflowers and the corn. The sound of splashing raindrops, The whistle of the quail, The roar of men and reapers, The night hawk in the vale; The crooning of the cradle song, Out in the west where I belong, A day that nevermore may be. Is what the sunflowers say to me. __C. L. Edson. |
Sunflowers
Willard Wattles
(Lawrence: The World Company. 1914)
Pages 95-97
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