The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1876-04-21
AN AGRICULTURAL POEM.
FAST TO WEST sENps enKwrINe.

EAST TO WEST SENDS aRKBrIsG.
aOut westf Jes' sol From minoi?
My Jem IL there-ny Oldest boy
Aud Johns in Kansas-so is Jane
she married one Elnathan Payne
And mother, too-she wants TO goi
No musket ever scattered 40;
And then IL allus p1nts one way
Right where the big Per-aries lay.
Betwixt them two-Death and the West
They get our youngest, strongest, best.
It's queer the graveyard keeps a-growing,
Az II nobody dreamed OF goingi
Its there, right where them brooms of trees
Are sweeping nothing In the breeze.
queen bee in an empty hive
La ali OF mine that's left alive.
cs1l them dead never see,
The West or Heavens all one TO mo-
wait and wait-God give me grace
They don't come back TO either place.
Them miles and miles of level land,
And every tree brought up by hand
The sky shut down around the green
Az snug as any soup tureen:
Poor show for David with his sling.
And not pebble ut TO hingl"
SO talked the Massachusetts man.
And then paused for breath aud then began:
81 hear you have" the farmer said,
"a creature with a horses head,
crichets body, dragons wings.
The long hind legs of a kangaroo,
Inc nungricft Oh Credteu
That eats landscape through and through,
clearinghouse for bugs may DO
A place for you, but not for me-"
Aiasl old man !" I sadly said,
"They are indeed most nobly fed;
You taunt us with no dainty touch,
But had those creatures boarded here,
IL would have saved us many fear;
They could not harm you very much,
And then, il cannot be denied,
..l.r. haxga as
al wouldn't swap the old Bay state,''
The farmer cried, with voice elate,
He stood upright in every joint
Az any exclamation point,
And hoe and stone struck instant hre,
Az IL he thus touched off hls ire
81 Wouldn't swap the old Bay state,
Its rugged rocks and mountains great,
For land as level as hone,
Already fenced and seeded down.
sour grain stands slender in the shock,
The grifts are light we send to mill,
But then We gave you Plymouth Rock,
Where Freedoms clearings first begin;
The world takes stock IN Bunker Hill,
WhereFreedom put the sickle in.
You've Ingens west, but we're ahead;
Our Boston Mohawks allus led.
That took a cargo OF Bohea.
And stepped drawing in the sea,
And asked young Liberty 60 tea
"They stuff at Boston, and they dub
The good old town the Yankee Hub
What all IL means never knew,
My way at least, it may be true:
i know its gritty boys go out
Like spokes of wheels, to reach the rim
That binds creation all about,
Till West and East and South and North,
You hear their whistle or hymn
Around the felly of the earthi"
The old man heard the dinner-born,
And stumped away among the corn.
The truth had lighted up his face,
And lent the furrowed features grace.
He turned. and called across the lot,
"There's one thing more most forgot:
II you see Jenl, or John, or Jane,
Jes' tell EN- where you've been to-day;
That 1 yet walk the narrow lane,
Whose end Is growing mighty plain,
And that 1 send them far away,
One word from Massachusetts, sod,
The blessings of their fathers God;
And tell them, too, an Eastern boy
Must make a man in Illinoi!"
The chimney wore plume of smoke,
The wife stood watching at the door,
Good-by old man, forever more.
come to tell the words he spoke,
And Jem, and John, and Jane are here!
1 bid the boys and girls good cheer
GOING WEST.
What wonder that the human drift
Is Westward ever for the gift?
The Magi travelling from the East,
Each robed and bearded Orient priest
Grew wiser a. he Westward went.
Who would have heard a breath of them
Had they not folded up their tent
And startled come TO Bethlehem
No man in all the ages faced
The West, and met that great athlete,
The Sun, bound East. His golden feet
Unwearied walk disastered waste,
Tread out the stars, in blossom every rood,
Like embers in a travelled street,
And make vast sky solitude
For hermit glory all his own,
This Westward going, ever-moving sun.
3. n. Taylor.