On the Prairie - Birdly Poetry

On the Prairie.

The world grows beautiful. Each morn I look

Out of my window on some beauty born

In the still night. Where late the swift fires ran.

Making a glory of the dead, dry grass,

To-day there smiles a fresh growth of green

That I could fall upon my knees and bless,

It is so sweet and restful to the sight —

It is so sweet and restful to the soul.

I see the sun rise in the earth's far edge,

And, unobscured at night, go down beyond

Its utmost rim; no city's lights to mar

The perfect picture, and no city's din

To break the silence that unto the soul

That listens, hath a thousand messages

That sound knows not.

 

The sky bends low

And clasps the dear earth in a warm embrace,

And the glad earth smiles back its promises

Of beauty yet to be. A little while,

And on the brook's edge there will come again

Familiar sights; on its glad breast will rock

The water-lilies — those white thoughts of God —

And by-and-by strange little tufts of grass,

Between which and the meadow lark there is

A small, sweet secret, will grow glad with song.

And later still — Nature if prodigal —

The "tides of grass will break in foam of flowers."

Year after year our eyes have seen the same

Entrancing marvel; leaf and bud and flower,

The music of the happy streams and birds,

And yet each year it is as strange and new,

As though it were the first. And so I pray

That when my heart shall cease to thrill with joy

At all the solemn, tender, happy sights,

At all the myriad little whispered sounds,

Of the young year, that it may cease to beat.

Carlotta Perry.

Milwaukee, July 8.

July 11, 1885. Hyde Park (Illinois) Herald 4(28): 2.