Should you ask me,
whence these stories?
Whence these legends and traditions,
With the odors of the forest
With the dew and damp of meadows,
With the curling smoke of wigwams,
With the rushing of great rivers,
With their frequent repetitions,
And their wild reverberations
As of thunder in the mountains?
I should answer, I should tell you,
"From the forests and the prairies,
From the great lakes of the Northland,
From the land of the Ojibways,
From the land of the Dacotahs,
From the mountains, moors, and fen-lands
Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Feeds among the reeds and rushes..."
(Longfellow)
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O! say can you see by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
(Francis Scott Key)
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
(Longfellow)
Things I saw today:
two crows, more than once,
flying close enough to hear the
whisper of their wings;
a red tailed hawk,
wings outspread,
tan against the blue;
snake-thin lightning
jumping from the midnight clouds
to the tops of the distant hills;
mesas and red rocks
and Indian ruins
that could only be seen
from the hilltop high above them;
a rainbows flickering colour
against a black wave of clouds;
dry washes,
where only the memory of water
moves in the dust,
and rivers, surrounded by
valleys of lush growth;
dusk, velvety and deep,
tinted a purple red
in the last rays of the sun.
This is a land of light;
badlands that not only reflect the sun,
but glow with an inner radiance
that makes the dark clouds gleam,
the red hills sing.
(de Lint)