_O, I have walked in Kansas Through many a harvest field And piled the sheaves of glory there And down the wild rows reeled:_ _Each sheaf a little yellow sun, A heap of hot-rayed gold; Each binder like Creation's hand To mould suns, as of old._ _Straight overhead the orb of noon Beat down with brimstone breath: The desert wind from south and west Was blistering flame and death._ _Yet it was gay in Kansas, A-fighting that strong sun; And I and many a fellow-tramp Defied that wind and won._ _And we felt free in Kansas From any sort of fear, For thirty thousand tramps like us There harvest every year._ _She stretches arms for them to come, She roars for helpers then, And so it is in Kansas That tramps, one month, are men._ _We sang in burning Kansas The songs of Sabbath-school, The "Day Star" flashing in the East, The "Vale of Eden" cool._ _We sang in splendid Kansas "The flag that set us free"-- That march of fifty thousand men With Sherman to the sea._ _We feasted high in Kansas And had much milk and meat. The tables groaned to give us power Wherewith to save the wheat._ _Our beds were sweet alfalfa hay Within the barn-loft wide. The loft doors opened out upon The endless wheat-field tide._ _I loved to watch the wind-mills spin And watch that big moon rise. I dreamed and dreamed with lids half-shut, The moonlight in my eyes._ _For all men dream in Kansas By noonday and by night, By sunrise yellow, red and wild And moonrise wild and white._ _The wind would drive the glittering clouds, The cottonwoods would croon, And past the sheaves and through the leaves Came whispers from the moon._ V _In Kansas: the Second and Third Harvest_ Two miles north of Great Bend. In the heart of the greatest wheat country in America, and in the midst of the harvest-time, Sunday, July 7, 1912. I am meditating on the ways of Destiny. It seems to me I am here, not altogether by chance. But just why I am here, time must reveal. Last Friday I had walked the ten miles from Ellinwood to Great Bend by 9 A.M. I went straight to the general delivery, where a package of tracts and two or three weeks' mail awaited me. I read about half through the letter-pile as I sat on a rickety bench in the public square. Some very loud-mouthed negroes were playing horse-shoe obstreperously. I began to wish Flynn had whipped Johnson. I was thinking of getting away from there, when two white men, evidently harvesters, sat down near me and diluted the color scheme.