“The ridge is open to all moody weather:
The bruisings of the blizzard leave it numb;
From the scorched south the waves swirn over, over,
Tireless; late afterglow brings stars and dews
Like motherly caresses; and black clouds
Deep bellowing lash its face with gusty rain.
From the crest Allen’s soddy won a view
Of wide slopes rich with grasses brown and gray,
And scattered little fields, and far-spaced groups
Of mud-brown dots that mark a fellow farm,-
Two miles the nearest. Yet on calm days, smoke,
From some deep wrinkle rising, promised plain
A nearer neighbor.
Two rooms, Allen’s house.
Yellow clay hillocked the convenient cave;
Round the sod stable crouched the cribs and stacks
Girt with a barbed wire fence, and over all
Stood sentinel the windmill.
Allen’s wife
Found loneliness the lord of this great plain:
Impalpable, a spirit serpent wise;
Thin shadows in the daylight; in the dark
A misty lurker marching o’er the ridge
From his wild canyon fastness. He rules thought,
Bids the ear listen, the eye watch and weary,
While the strained nerve pleads that it is not eased
By the querulous sighs, nor by that whistling drone
Like to the far-off wail of long lost souls
Rolled dull and thin, the voices of the wind
Waving the green grass, waving still the gray.
Her life was blunt with sameness: house and hens
And garden and the wind’s voice. Few and prized,
The trips to town, to church, the visit changed,
Grew to misfit proportions. Was she frayed?
Twas not with toil. Her body was depressed
By what wore down her mind. The livelong day,
Except at meal time, was her husband gone
About his labors. At the first she sang
To dull her mood, but this grew rare and rare;
Her voice forewent its tune, she scarcely hummed;
Her set eyes found in fixed melancholy
The lingering patches of the snow in March
And the autumnal drifts of goldenrod
Dappling the prairie, while from listless hands
Her sewing fell, and in the silences
A cricket’s chirping shook with pain the nerves
That had been fearless. Then she longed to be
Where children’s prattle once might ease her ears
And children’s faces feed her hungry eyes.
Her husband noted how the songs were stilled;
Was troubled over the unvarying gaze,
The lines about the mouth, and the head poised
Like one whose body lifts a grievous weight,
Yet may not ease its burden. The last year
His counsel that she visit her old home
The winter through while work was slack had been
Denied for his sake. Now the care for health,
Urged firmly, won assent. Assent once made.
She brightened visibly, thought to recall
Her word of going. Allen would not hear.
He knew how stark a spell fhe prairie wrought
In league with loneliness quite to disrank
Wits, fancies, memory.
His final word
At the station, “”Bring some cousin back with you,
Kidnap an aunt or grandmother. Goodbye.””
It was late February with the sun
Glinting from the fresh snow when Allen stood
Again at the frowsy little station. All
The futile uglinesses of the place
Wore shining beauty.
When the noisy wheels
Ceased grinding, Mollie led down by the hand
A rosy boy of seven, diffident
To Allen’s hearty welcome. Very soon
The farmer’s wagon lumbered out of town
With easy joltings while the drowsy lad
On straw and comforts gathered childish dreams.
Then Mollie filled in the particulars
Her letters had but sketched. To. her home town
Came boys and girls some fifty in a group,
Orphans from New York City. Those in charge
Granted them only unto chosen folk
On surety of good home and loving care.
And little Robert’s father and mother, both
Fine people, had been dead for two whole years.
Then he lived with an aunt, and she was dead,
Scarcely five months. There was no property.
So the home-finders took him in their charge.
“”He reads and writes, and ciphers cleverly.
Plenty of spirit, mischief too, and fun.
He wakes at morning with a charming smile,
And when he puts his arms about your neck,
And warms you in the laughter of his eyes,
You can’t refuse his askings. Lively? Yes.
A healthy growing boy, and only once
Found crying over memories.””
Spring waxed glad,
And summer’s bounteous promises increased.
The house was full of singing, gay with notes
Of childish laughter. Now the little lad
Knew which end first a cow or horse would rise;
Had watched their noisy browsings while the dew
Glinted so rich under the level sun;
Had given a name to every colt and calf
As it moved staggering on awkward legs
With eyes too young for wonder. He could ride
The big, mouse-colored mare, shrug as she might;
Could hold the lines; now chasing in the field
The chittering ground-squirrel, now in the shade
Of the house gable busy with mud pies,
Or stick and knife and string and board and nail.
For him life held surprises: he had come
Into a wondrous land, and every day
Gladdened with gazings.
Loneliness, the lurker,
Impalpable, untiring, serpent wise,
Scared by the rippling of a childish laugh
Skulks into canyon fastnesses, and scouts
For easier victims. He has lost the ridge.
(Edwin Ford Piper)”
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