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From “A Town on the River”
I KNOW a town all through | |
| Better than I know myself. | |
| Sometimes I think perhaps it is myself. | |
| I know this little town lives unproclaimed | |
| On the banks of a rushing river. | 5 |
| I know that it is there, | |
| And it rests me to know. | |
| In the quiet of this town | |
| There is something living greatly— | |
| I know that too. | 10 |
| When I was little I knew it. | |
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| We played, we always played. | |
| The out-of-doors was ours. | |
| The town, the prairie, the hills and the river | |
| Given with God’s prodigality. | 15 |
| We made new games to fit the great playground. | |
| We played, we always played; | |
| Old and young played. | |
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| We didn’t take God on faith— | |
| There he stood out in the open | 20 |
| And we worshipped him, | |
| Our hearts bursting with the full-blooded joy of it. | |
| We worshipped him | |
| In the rain and the snow and the sun. | |
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| In the summer | 25 |
| A lavender lady-slipper, | |
| Suddenly come upon in the hills, | |
| Was an adventure. | |
| The rock-hung coulees; | |
| The rainbow pearls locked in the flesh of the river clams; | 30 |
| The unkempt shaggy sloughs hiding away from the enterprising river; | |
| In retiring distances, muffled echoes of steamboat whistles; | |
| The silent voices of the trees in the great log-rafts travelling from Minnesota woods to St. Louis; | |
| The season when the hills rang with the songs of the nut-gatherers; | |
| A flock of wild geese flying south; | 35 |
| The Indians’ hot palette splashed on the October hills— | |
| All, all were adventures. | |
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| And when their brothers called from Picardy, | |
| Old and young came from the hills, the fields, the mills, | |
| To fight, as they played, for the full-blooded joy of it. | 40 |
| In shell-torn trenches, | |
| Above the cries of the battle, | |
| My people could laugh, and shout: | |
| “There’s nothing to worry about! | |
| In the hills by a rushing river | 45 |
| A lavender lady-slipper blows. | |
| I know that it is there— | |
| It rests me to know. | |
| I like to think about it.” | |
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