Читать книгу Buffalo Land - William Edward Webb - Страница 1

There's a wonderful land far out in the West,

Well worthy a visit, my friend;

There, Puritans thought, as the sun went to rest,

Creation itself had an end.

'T is a wild, weird spot on the continent's face,

A wound which is ghastly and red,

Where the savages write the deeds of their race

In blood that they constantly shed.

The graves of the dead the fair prairies deface,

And stamp it the kingdom of dread.

The emigrant trail is a skeleton path;

You measure its miles by the bones;

There savages struck, in their merciless wrath,

And now, after sunset, the moans,

When tempests are out, fill the shuddering air,

And ghosts flit the wagons beside,

And point to the skulls lying grinning and bare

And beg of the teamsters a ride;

Sometimes 't is a father with snow on his hair,

Again, 't is a youth and his bride.

What visions of horror each valley could tell,

If Providence gave it a tongue!

How often its Eden was changed to a hell,

In which a whole train had been flung;

How death cry and battle-shout frightened the birds,

And prayers were as thick as the leaves,

And no one to catch the poor dying one's words

But Death, as he gathered his sheaves:

You see the bones bleaching among the wild herds,

In shrouds that the field spider weaves.

That era is passing—another one comes,

The era of steam and the plow,

With clangor of commerce and factory hums,

Where only the wigwam is now.

Like mist of the morning before the bright sun,

The cloud from the land disappears;

The Spirit of Murder his circle has run

And fled from the march of the years;

The click of machine drowns the click of the gun,

And day hides the night time of tears.