Flash keen in the purple deep, The hollows and hills are empty; The desolate prairies sleep. III. RIVER SONGS [Illustration: 094] THE MISSOURI |WHEN the hollow void of Chaos By the sun's first flame was lit, And morning kissed the new earth's leaden sky, When the hand of God reached downward To the ocean's utmost pit And reared the ragged continents on high, From the naked, dripping ranges Of the Rocky's granite sweep, In a pathway through the quaking mud-plains torn, Surged a waste of briny waters, Roaring backward to the deep, And the great Missouri, king of floods, was born. It was there when, dank and noisome, On the primal beds of shale The fern and cycad forests fringed its shore, And its depths have heaved in whirlpools To the thresh of fin and tail As the monster sea-snakes closed in deadly war. Foot by foot through crumbling valleys It has fought the Glacial Drift As from out the North the rock-fanged moraines spread, Hurling seas of thunderous waters Through the slowly strangling rift Where the ice-floes ground and gritted in its bed. Huge of limb and tusked like tree-trunks, When the evening sun hung low Slugged the mammoths down to gambol in its tide, And 'twas there that, ringed and goaded By the cave-men's spears and bows, They fell in blinded agony and died. So, for dim, uncounted aeons Did the torrent sweep along, Rolling centuries like pebbles in its sands, And the prairies sprung and blossomed And the bison herds grew strong, And the red men camped and hunted through its lands. Till there came at last a season When a gaunt-limbed figure burst Through the woods that lipped the current's whirling foam, And the flint-lock that he shifted As he stooped to quench his thirst Told the wilderness the first white man was come! He, the white man, the magician, Searcher, soldier, settler, lord, Heir to all the crusted cycles of the past! What were endless, lagging eras While earth's wealth was being stored To the pageant of his power at the last? Came new visions to the river; Came the voyageur's swift canoe, Gliding ghost-like to the silent, dipping oar; And the blunt-bowed keel-boat harnessed To its brawny, sweating crew, As they trailed the long cordelle-rope up the shore. Came the block-house of the fur-trade, Where the trappers brought their spoil From bison-range and log-laced beaver fall; French and half-breed, Sioux and Yankee, Flinging out a season's toil For a week of drunken revelry and brawl. Up the swinging, bluff-bound reaches Where the lonely bittern boomed Throbbed a dull, insistent whisper, growing strong, As the steamboat, flame-winged herald To an age forespent and doomed,