The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1903-08-08
NEW SANTA FE POEM.

Sharlot NJ. Hall, who now lives on Or
chard ranch, Dewey, Arizona, is the
author of a new poem entitled THE
Santa Fe Trail" Miss Hall has start
led literary circles lately with her poems
which rank with the best of western
verse. Miss Hall is Kansas girl and
lived in various places in the state be-
fore going to Arizona.
THE SANTA FE TRAIL.
hung far the line of destny she went
brotherhood from sea. to sea
That long, gray tran Of dream and hope
marked mile by mile with graves that
keep.
heart lost in dreamless sleep.
Patience and faith and fortitude were
wtlled to 1t, and justified;
Stern, homely. virtues, plain and rude;
eternal as the sky and wide.
Nor ever Viking dared the sea in Drawer
birthriSht. half a continent.
Gay. hawk-eyed, dark-faced voyageurs.
of the rivers muddy tide,
Or drawn by, whispered, golden lures. or
These first, and lightly down the wind
their songs float backward as they
So light they go, nor leave behind scarce
one deep footprint on the grass.
And after them, lean, keen, and grim, one
The gray peak looking down on him knew
something kindred in the man.
Half prophet, seer, his eyes could trace. In
those lone wastes that seemed to wait.
The larger promise of his race, the germ
of many an unborn state.
Then Fremont, passing not alone; beside
him. silent, dim, unguessed,
Unheraidsd, to claim her own, the Soul
Behind. above the laundering herds of
,fear-swept bison. seemed to beat
pie of million feet
That long gray traill That path of fate!
For gain or loss; for life or death,
them to the latest breath;
1t broke them to its mighty mold; it scar
ed their weakness to the bone:
It stripped them stark TO sun and cold,
and Knocked at whimperer and drone.
And they were Men who bore its mark;
and they were Men its service made
Strong-s ouled to face the utter dark: and
watch with fear still unafraid;
Stern school of heroes unconfessed; IN
weighed for need of right or wrong;
By glib late-comers dispossessed of honors
that to them belong:
AS in the fire-tried furnace hour, strange
warning elements will fuse
To purpose unity and power, to truer
strength and nobler use:
Unconscious-save that here was life a
man might live as manhood meant
They wrought a nation from their strife
and shaped it with their discomfort.
No pulseless still-born hope was theirs
each man later Argonaut,
Who from great dreams and ceaseless care
out-wove the Golden fleece he sought;
And single-handed out of need made po-
tent opportunity;
Nor shamed the hour with laggard deed
nor quailed from naked Destiny.
/ They touched the wilderness to flower,
they gave the unvoiced solitudes
A tongue that spoke with trumpet power
the message of their iron moods;
But all the cost The hands that b1ed
The toll of heart-aches and of tearsi
The stern white face of the dead that
paved that highway through the years
The low gras hides the rutted trail where
| tracked those mighty caravans
Whose far-lit campfires low and pale eiude
howe'er the vision scans
That lost horizon, shrunk to fit the little
roads that come and go.
| BY easy ways (of greatness quit. that any
chance-drawn foot may know:
Light trails that traffic Ger the dust OF
them that were drawer breed
Forgotten in the careless lust for larger
gain and lesser deed.
| Mother of all the roads that hold the pow.
er Ger men that makes or mars!
/ These lead to cities. lands and gold: that
led to the eternal starsl
-sHARLOT NJ. HALL