Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1886-06-12

By &. ). DENNIS.

By Il. J. DENNIS.
The following posm, descriptive of Kansas il
1855 and 1885, by H. j. Dennis state Librarian
viii be read with interest by not only Kansas but
those who have travelled through the state in the
years named. The pictures presented are true
Ones were true of the periods named. Mr.
Dennis has happily expressed the scenes 80 fami.
liar to.the majority of the Kansas people, who
came to the state when it seemed almost impos-
sible to live here, and when the principal crops
on the plains was buffalo bones:
KANsAs-A. D. 1885.
Here halt, JOSE in Gods name let us rest,
If rest we may in this intolerable heat,
Here on this high dividing crest
greet.
How like blazing ball of fire
The sun pours out upon baking world
The biistering rays of his hot ire,
Til every leaf and of grass is furled.
How the air shimmers DER the barren hills.
No green oasis greets the straining sight,
No streams with messy banks, no trinkling rills,
No leafy dash of shade but only shriveling
blight
See that aged buffalo, monarch of the plain,
Banned from his kind and wounded sore,
Standing at bay, tossing his bris:ling name
At wolves close pressing, thirsting for his gore
While overhead the harpies of the air
Sail round and round on poised wings and
Hungrily watching for the doubtful share
Oh the red feast preparing there below.
But note the west; rain ciond dark and wide
Comes rolling up; deep muttered thunder
Follows the lightning, flashing its rough side
Into foam OF white mist, tossing under.
The hot, pulsating air stands still, and sounds
Are hushe 4 save of the rushing storm;
How grandly DER the plain it leads and bounds
Like stately ships, majestic in its form.
Here comes the breeze! Now surely Wen hav,
rain.
False hope. Upon the black sands holland DIR!
A few drops patter--the cloud again 90
Dissolves to rainless mist and drifts in vapo
by.
Strange sight forsooth- a vast storm swallowed
quite
In the fiery NAV of th'all devouring air.
A phantom cloud! Lo. There! Lo! Nov
nowhere.
Again the sun its blazing face outflashes,
Its rays more fierce and hotter than before
Smite down in smothering waves and dashes,
Like Simoon's breath along a Lybion shore.
Here naught can thrive nor beast nor vegetation
Here no birds sing, no flowers bloom;
A land of silence, death and desolation,
Vast, dark and wide, 1T seems all natures
Lead on Jose, guide to some other scene
Where moisture dwells, and leaves and grassy
Brighten the ills; hunger for the green,
And thirst for cooling brooks babbling through
the glades.
Is this mirage? Jose, this is the spot,
Where twenty years ago we halted, is it not?
Where the wolves and the harpies, and the buf
falo at bay,
We're the only living things seen on that disma
day.
When the storm was swallowed up by hot ant
hungry air,
And the SIMS rays smote us with blistering
When we fled in dismay from this desert tree
From the death and desolation stretching out OIL
What change! What change! Such maig
here is wrought
As the pen hath never written and the brain new
thought
Now nowhere hath the sky such cerulean blue
Nowhere hath the grass such tender, changing
hue.
The trees dot the plains with grateful coolin.
shade,
While from miles of blooming hedge the voca
serenade
OF the bobolink and thrush cheers the travele
on his way,
And lends to ali the summer the charm of bud
ding May.
Here, as in Temples vale Though beyond com
The wanderer seems marching through the mos
pellucid air;
And with their merry pistils fusilade him will
perfume,
From the microscopic bulb to the dewy daffodil
From the soft green OF the vale, to the rainbow
tinted hill,
They swarm in leglons round utod him. ma thel
While above them all the sunfower waves hel
queenly head!
Behold the inland seas Of waving, resting grain
That bespeak the generous soil, and the fertiliz
ing rain,
See the fruits crowding out on every branch ant
The horn of plenty here is full and splitting at tn
And the Corn! All, the Corn; Corn; Corn; fa
1t losses - the breeze like the ever restless tide
And its waves rolling high send back mutfiec
Till far away it seems to bring upon some dis
While a trailing cloud of smoke as from steam
on the main,
MarkS Ule IusIunS eouiSV u Oh Ah''i-o@o"A
train!
Church spires glisten in the suns declining
And thriving hamlets nestle in their shadows
below.
From you shade-embowered hall bursts a sudden
jolly shout 9,
OF hundred happy boys, It's apparent school
And following come tripping as many blooming
The tint of health upon the cheeks, the suns
CLINT in their curls.
All! happy country! happy state! through danger
and through pain
Thou hast come to be the fairest OF all the queen
Upon thy dear head appraised from the lowest
The hand of Providence hath offered special
benediction.
The cause, do you ask, what the potent, magic
That in two decades repeats natures seeming
steadfast laws Ill,
And transmutss barren waste to garden rich
And nlants hundred years of life and culture
IT'S the pillow, Jose, the plow-man's earliest best
The homeiy, humble plow, patient, faithful to
Ev.rv good thing in life follows in the train
OF the rain; but the plow with its burrows guides
the rain!
OLD BENDER's DEN.