“Once more ’twas spring! The meadow-lark gave note
About his grassy nest, and builders hummed
Old songs while sod on sod their houses rose.
Through widening strips of field all rusty-black,
The first fine blades of corn sprang laughingly, –
And men had joy of neighbors. Fellowship
Budded and blossomed into a schoolhouse-church
Just where the Carico swings a wooded arm
Across wide meadows to the upland slope.
Twenty-five settlers brought their families
And built as brothers build. Log after log,
Strong hand to hand was helpful. Last, a feast
Summoned the hearty workers.
All roads meet
At the schoolhouse-church; it gives to Fairview Ridge
A rallying sign, a name, a bond. Upgrows,
Enveloping this jangling human group,
The personality of neighborhood.
Who and whence were the neighbors? Illinois
Sent grimy miners from the smothering pits
To steep themselves in sunshine; and thin clerks
Came from great cities, asking health and strength
From the open prairie; renters from New York
And Pennsylvania; the Georgia cracker;
Old-soldier farmers out of Iowa;
Hoe-wielders from the Indiana clay;
A sunburnt plainsman who had fought the tribes;
Lumberjacks from the camps in Michigan;
Soft-voiced plantation-lords – aristocrats
Unbowed by loss of slaves; hill-billy fiddlers
Full of the music of the mountain brooks;
A gold-seeker who dropped the battered sledge;
A faro dealer with long curly hair
And soft and guileless eye; gray schoolteachers;
Carpenters out of cities in the east;
Broken-down cowboys singing of the range;
A widower dentist, spoken of as “”Doc””,
And called about to heal the countryside;
A bankrupt grocer; men from over sea,
Danes, Germans, Swedes, and Irish, marrying wit
To words misfashioned.
As a group, these men
Scarce matched in vigor and resource the first
Old pioneers who set adventurous feet
In lonely wildernesses. Straggled in
The empty-handed, weary with long years
Of gainless toil; and the land-hungry came
Like thirsty cattle to the shadowy pools.
On hand and knee, young strength and old goodwill
Combed through the matted grass for corner stones;
And many a bold-heart brought his family,
Their faces brightening like prairie flowers,
To own a home.
Once more the world was new.
It sunned itself in kindness and good will:
Old women’s gossip, chats by road and door;
Singings and frolics; weddings, funerals;
While love strode in to lighten evil days,
And souls grew large with human sympathy.
If eyes in solitary jealousies
Burned, or men in their natural desires
Should buzz like hornets to the tune of spite,
Sad neighbors they.
A good world in the main.
Jack borrowed here a horse or lent a plough;
Saw pipes relighted while his summery mood
Tongued his life story into friendly ears.
Bess heard loud hoofbeats in the deepening dusk
Bearing an eager lover, or she saw
The hushed room, the white-aproned woman, all
A mother’s generosity of love
Answering six months’ acquaintance.
A new world!
Once more began for worthy and unfit
The shaking of the sieve that sorts to size.
Men held up heads to a society
Expectant of backbone. Who won the place
Of underling had just himself to thank,
Blame as he might his neighbors and his wife.
Chance could not keep men equal; it could give
More strength to all,-yet unto him that hath -.
Spring on the land, and meadow-larks a-singing!
On Fairview Ridge, the joy of human neighbors,-
And boys and girls with wonderful May weather
In brave young hearts! Spring on the blossoming land!
(Edwin Ford Piper)”
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Based on Topics: Love Poems, Man Poems, World Poems, Sadness Poems, Joy & Excitement Poems, Youth Poems, Place Poems, Name Poems, Flowers Poems, Home Poems, Spring PoemsBased on Keywords: sunned, fiddlers, pennsylvania, hornets, settlers, swedes, chats, dentist, rallying, iowa, empty-handed
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