



Produced by Barbara Watson and the Online Distributed
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                            SONGS OF THE
                              PRAIRIE



                                BY
                        ROBERT J. C. STEAD
                     Author of "PRAIRIE BORN."




                             New York
                       THE PLATT & PECK CO.




                        Copyright 1912, By
                       The Platt & Peck Co.




                             CONTENTS


                                              PAGE
                 The Prairie                     1
                 The Gramophone                  4
                 The Plow                        8
                 The Mothering                  12
                 Hustlin' in My Jeans           15
                 The Homesteader                20
                 Vain Suitors                   24
                 God's Signalman                26
                 Going Home                     32
                 Just Be Glad                   38
                 The Canadian Rockies           40
                 A Prairie Heroine              42
                 The Seer                       51
                 The Son of Marquis Noddle      56
                 The Prodigals                  62
                 The Squad of One               64
                 Alkali Hall                    70
                 Prairie Born                   76
                 "A Colonial"                   81
                 Little Tim Trotter             84
                 The Vortex                     86
                 The Old Guard                  91
                 Kid McCann                     93
                 Who Owns the Land?             99
                 A Race for Life               103





THE PRAIRIE


    The City? Oh, yes, the City
      Is a good enough place for a while,
    It fawns on the clever and witty,
      And welcomes the rich with a smile;
    It lavishes money as water,
      It boasts of its palace and hall,
    But the City is only the daughter--
      The Prairie is mother of all!

    The City is all artificial,
      Its life is a fashion-made fraud,
    Its wisdom, though learned and judicial,
      Is far from the wisdom of God;
    Its hope is the hope of ambition,
      Its lust is the lust to acquire,
    And the larger it grows, its condition
      Sinks lower in pestilent mire.

    The City is cramped and congested,
      The haunt and the covert of crime;
    The Prairie is broad, unmolested,
      It points to the high and sublime;
    Where only the sky is above you
      And only the distance in view,
    With no one to jostle or shove you--
      It's there a man learns to be true!

    Where the breeze whispers over the willows
      Or sighs in the dew laden grass,
    And the rain clouds, like big, stormy billows,
      Besprinkle the land as they pass;
    With the smudge-fire alight in the distance,
      The wild duck alert on the stream,
    Where life is a psalm of existence
      And opulence only a dream.

    Where wide as the plan of creation
      The Prairies stretch ever away,
    And beckon a broad invitation
      To fly to their bosom, and stay;
    The prairie fire smell in the gloaming--
      The water-wet wind in the spring--
    An empire untrod for the roaming--
      Ah, this is a life for a king!

    When peaceful and pure as a river
      They lie in the light of the moon,
    You know that the Infinite Giver
      Is stringing your spirit a-tune;
    That life is not told in the telling,
      That death does not whisper adieu,
    And deep in your bosom up-welling,
      You know that the Promise is true!

    To those who have seen it and smelt it,
      To those who have loved it alone
    To those who have known it and felt it--
      The Prairie is ever their own;
    And far though they wander, unwary,
      Far, far from the breath of the plain,
    A thought of the wind on the Prairie
      Will set their blood rushing again.

    Then you to the City who want it,
      Go, grovel its gain-glutted streets,
    Be one of the ciphers that haunt it,
      Or sit in its opulent seats;
    But for me, where the Prairies are reaching
      As far as the vision can scan--
    Ah, that is the prayer and the preaching
      That goes to the heart of a man!





THE GRAMOPHONE


    Where the lonely settler's shanty dots the plain,
    And he sighs for friends and comradeship in vain,
        Through the silences intense
        Comes a sound of eloquence
    Shrilling forth in steely, brazen, waxen strain--
          The deep, resonant voice of Gladstone calling from the tomb,
            Or Ingersoll's deliverance before his brother's bier;
          Then a saucy someone singing, "When the daisies are in bloom,"
            And the fife and drummers rendering "The British Grenadier."

    Back as far into the hills as they could get,
    They've a roof that turns the winter and the wet,
        They are grizzled but they're gay,
        They've a daily matinee,
    They are happy though they're head and ears in debt--
          "I wish I had my old girl back again,"
            "If the wind had only blown the other way,"
          Uncertain voices join an old refrain
            And repeat the same performance every day