More Great Plains Poetry

Vachel Lindsay
Vachel Lindsay

The American poet, Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) was something of a mystic, and he once walked from his home in Illinois all the way to New Mexico preaching “the gospel of beauty.”  Why is it not surprising then that he spent most of that walk in the Great Plains?

Here is his poem, “The Flower-fed Buffaloes:”

In the days of long ago,
Ranged where the locomotives sing
And the prairie flowers lie low:—
The tossing, blooming, perfumed grass
Is swept away by the wheat,
Wheels and wheels and wheels spin by
In the spring that still is sweet.
But the flower-fed buffaloes of the spring
Left us, long ago.
They gore no more, they bellow no more,
They trundle around the hills no more:—
With the Blackfeet, lying low,
With the Pawnees, lying low,
Lying low.

And a bonus poem from Mr. Lindsay:  An Indian Summer Day on the Prairie

(IN THE BEGINNING)

The sun is a huntress young,
The sun is a red, red joy,
The sun is an Indian girl,
Of the tribe of the Illinois.

(MID-MORNING)

The sun is a smouldering fire,
That creeps through the high gray plain,
And leaves not a bush of cloud
To blossom with flowers of rain.

(NOON)

The sun is a wounded deer,
That treads pale grass in the skies,
Shaking his golden horns,
Flashing his baleful eyes.

(SUNSET)

The sun is an eagle old,
There in the windless west.
Atop of the spirit-cliffs
He builds him a crimson nest.

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