Hope Deferred

Three lonely graves beside a placid stream
That winds beneath the cottonwoods light shade,
Tell where a heartsick settler sadly laid
His wife and and childrenm and with them his dream
That they and he should some fair play redeem
Those years of toil and hardship that had made
Their life upon their claim a dark crusade,
Devoted to privation's dismal theme.

Oh, wife and children, under prairie sods;
Oh, broken-hearted settler, fled afar;
Would that you might have seen your barren wast
Spout riches from its dusty, sun-scorched clods==
Where planted now, oil derricks grimly mar
The landscape,--and great wealth is made in haste.

Kansas Poets
Edited by May William Ward
(New York: Henry Harrison. 1935)
Page 202