Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.

Western States: Prairies, The

The Prairie

By George Pearse Guerrier (1837–1911)

WE stand, my horse and I,

On the prairie’s high divide,

With nothing betwixt us and the sky,

And naught the land to hide.

And, oh! it is fair to see

The acres and acres that roll

Like the waves of a stiffened sea,

With ours to crown the whole.

And far away a plain,

Through which a river glides;

Yet never a single field of grain

The fertile soil provides.

Long has it been the right

Of bison and of deer;

The home of the red man in his might,

Who scorns to have a peer.

But now is the scene all still

As a graveyard’s hallowed ground;

Nor sign of life save of us on the hill,

Nor any other sound.