Heaven send us a prophet with wit to teach
Our race, which to folly so fondly clings,
That all that is good is within our reach,
The cream of life is the common things.
We may have no turreted palaces piled
In high colonnade and pillar and cope,
But forever the mountains undefiled
For us thro' the roeseate azure slope.
There never was park like the prairie lawn,
Nor symphonies like the ocean's song,
Nor picture to match the amethyst dawn,--
These blessings to all of our kind belong!
No wine gives the fillip of frosty air;
No satin e'er came from a foreign loom
As white as the sheen of the lilies fair,
Wan acolytes lighting the woodland gloom.
Because the bright river is free to all,
To man and beast, to flower and tree,
And on every sinner the sunbeams fall,
The sun and the stream are dear to me.
We have winds that silver the dusky rill;
The forest of pines, with healing breath;
And friends and home, and love, and still
The best of all, our old neighbor Death.
