Forgotten rhymes of a homesteader
May 02, 2014
A new project has required planting tons of flower seeds, and a poem about sunflowers in this collection caught my eye. Does anybody out there know about Elliott C. Lincoln? I bought this 1920 book ages ago at a flea market along Interstate 80. Lincoln's idea of homesteading is very "western", complete with old paint horses, which he mentions later in the book in lower case, not as a capitalized breed. A certain regret surrounding the side effects of progress rises to the surface in "Rhymes of A Homesteader", as later in the book, the automobile and barbed wire scar Lincoln's world. Publishers didn't spend a lot of money on cover design back in those days. Here is the first poem in this rare treasure:
The Sunflower Road
THERE'S a land of opal mountains, singing creeks,
and springing fountains,
A land of magic distances in hazy, lazy light,
Where the pastel greens, and yellows, amber
browns, and purple shadows,
Make a glory of the daytime, and it's dusty blue
at night.
When the summer sun is burning, there a friendly
road is turning.
Twisting, bending, rising, falling -- just a trail
among the hills;
But 'tis bordered by the graces of a million golden
faces,
And the laughter of the sunflowers frees the heart
of all its ills.
Now the winter snows are driven through the
land; the trail is hidden.
Desolate, the white hills glitter under skies of
turquoise blue.
But in June comes summer weather, and again
we'll ride together
On that friendly, glowing, happy road, just wide
enough for two.
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