Wisconsin in Story and Song. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
and the fearless king-bird, alone cry out in the ominous gloom cast by the rolling clouds of the tempest.
"Look out! here it comes!" calls the boss. The black cloud melts to form the gray veil of the falling rain, which blots out the plain as it sweeps on. Now it strikes the corn-field, sending a tidal wave rushing across it. Now it reaches the wind-break, and the spire-like poplars bow humbly to it. Now it touches the hay-field, and the caps of the cocks go flying; the long grass streams in the wind like a woman's hair. In an instant the day's work is undone and the hay is opened to the drenching rain.
As all hands rush for the house, the roaring tempest rides upon them like a regiment of demon cavalry. The lightning breaks forth from the blinding gray clouds of rain. As Lincoln looks up he sees the streams of fire go rushing across the sky like the branching of great red trees. A moment more, and the solid sheets of water fall upon the landscape, shutting it from view, and the thunder crashes out, sharp and splitting, in the near distance, to go deepening and bellowing off down the illimitable spaces of the sky and plain, enlarging, as it goes, like the rumor of war.
In the east is still to be seen a faint crescent of the sunny sky, rapidly being closed in as the rain sweeps eastward; but as that diminishes to a gleam, a similar window, faint, watery, and gray, appears in the west, as the clouds break away. It widens, grows yellow, and then red; and at last blazes out into an inexpressible glory of purple and crimson and gold, as the storm moves swiftly over. The thunder grows deeper, dies to a retreating mutter, and is lost. The clouds' dark presence passes away. The trees flame with light, the robins take up their songs again, the air is deliciously cool. The corn stands bent, as if still acknowledging the majesty of the wind. Everything is new-washed, clean of dust, and a faint, moist odor of green things fills the air.
Lincoln seizes the opportunity to take Owen's place in bringing the cattle, and mounting his horse gallops away. The road is wet and muddy, but the prairie is firm, and the pony is full of power. In full flower, fragrant with green grass and radiant with wild roses, sweet-williams, lilies, pinks, and pea-vines, the sward lies new washed by the rain, while over it runs a strong, cool wind from the west. The boy's heart swells with unutterable joy of life. The world is exaltingly beautiful. It is good to be alone, good to be a boy, and to be mounted on a swift horse.
AMONG THE CORN ROWS
From "MAIN TRAVELLED ROADS." Printed by permission of Harper Bros.
A corn-field in July is a sultry place. The soil is hot and dry; the wind comes across the lazily murmuring leaves laden with a warm, sickening smell drawn from the rapidly growing, broad-flung banners of the corn. The sun, nearly vertical, drops a flood of dazzling light upon the field over which the cool shadows run, only to make the heat seem the more intense.
Julia Peterson, faint with hunger, was toiling back and forth between the corn-rows, holding the handles of the double-shovel corn plow, while her little brother Otto rode the steaming horse. Her heart was full of bitterness, her face flushed with heat, and her muscles aching with fatigue. The heat grew terrible. The corn came to her shoulders, and not a breath seemed to reach her, while the sun, nearing the noon mark, lay pitilessly upon her shoulders, protected only by a calico dress. The dust rose under her feet, and as she was wet with perspiration it soiled her till with a woman's instinctive cleanliness, she shuddered. Her head throbbed dangerously. What matter to her that the king bird flitted jovially from the maple to catch a wandering blue bottle fly, that the robin was feeding her young, that the bobolink was singing. All these things, if she saw them, only threw her bondage to labor into greater relief.
Across the field, in another patch of corn, she could see her father—a big, gruff-voiced, wide-bearded Norwegian—at work also with a plow. The corn must be plowed, and so she toiled on, the tears dropping from the shadow of the ugly sun-bonnet she wore. Her shoes, coarse and square-toed, chafed her feet; her hands, large and strong, were browned, or, more properly, burnt, on the backs by the sun. The horse's harness "creak-cracked" as he swung steadily and patiently forward, the moisture pouring from his hide, his nostrils distended.
The field bordered on a road, and on the other side of the road ran a river—a broad, clear, shallow expanse at that point—and the eyes of the girl gazed longingly at the pond and the cool shadow each time that she turned at the fence.
This same contrast is expressed by Hamlin Garland in two poems presented here. The first, "Ploughing," sets forth the irksome toll to which the undeveloped boy was subjected. The second, "Ladrone," portrays the joy which the youth in the country acquires from association with the animals of the farm. These poems and all the following selections are taken from "Boy Life on the Prairie," and are here published by permission of the Macmillan Company.
PLOWING
A lonely task it is to plough!
All day the black and clinging soil
Rolls like a ribbon from the mould-board's
Glistening curve. All day the horses toil
Battling with the flies—and strain
Their creaking collars. All day
The crickets jeer from wind-blown shocks of grain.
October brings the frosty dawn,
The still, warm noon, the cold, clear night,
When torpid insects make no sound,
And wild-fowl in their southward flight
Go by in hosts—and still the boy
And tired team gnaw round by round,
At weather-beaten stubble, band by band,
Until at last, to their great joy,
The winter's snow seals up the unploughed land.
LADRONE
And, "What of Ladrone"—do you ask?
Oh! friend. I am sad at the name.
My splendid fleet roan!—The task
You require is a hard one at best.
Swift as the spectral coyote, as tame
To my voice as a sweetheart, an eye
Like a pool in the woodland asleep,
Brown, clear, and calm, with color down deep,
Where his brave, proud soul seemed to lie—
Ladrone! There's a spell in the word.
The city walls fade on my eye—the roar
Of its traffic grows dim
As the sound of the wind in a dream.
My spirit takes wing like a bird.
Once more I'm asleep on the plain,
The summer wind sings in my hair;
Once again I hear the wild crane
Crying out of the steaming air;
White clouds are adrift on the breeze,
The flowers nod under my feet,
And under my thighs, 'twixt my knees,
Again as of old I can feel
The roll of Ladrone's firm muscles, the reel
Of his chest—see the thrust of fore-limb
And hear the dull trample of heel.
We thunder behind the mad herd.
My