Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/339

It is strange that one theme has still been neglected,
No gleam from the camp-fire upon it reflected,
 As story and song were passing around;
It is strange, it is sad, that the aids of endeavor
Are so easily dropped in the sea called Forever,
 And never recalled from their slumber profound.

It is time that a treacherous wrong should be righted,
And honor returned to a friend we have slighted
 In the songs that are sung and the tales that are told;
The mirage of the plains looms up as I ponder,
And away, far away, over Laramie yonder,
 Is a picture of something familiar of old.

It's the emigrant train, with wagon and wagon,
Gray-tented, a slow and mysterious dragon
 To the Sioux and Shawnee, as they circle afar
On their sable-maned coursers, and muttered and wondered
If the lands of their people were thus to be sundered
 By a mystery following the sun and star!

The eyes of the women are faded and weary,
The cries of the children are lonesome and dreary;
 And the men, with set lips, stalk on by their teams
As the endless white road goes winding and winding
Through wastes that are songless, with dust that is blinding,
 To Oregon, golden with argonaut dreams.

And yet, all the while, the oxen that bore them,
So sluggish, yet sure, to the dreamland before them,
 Are bowing scarred necks to the pitiless yoke—
So awkward and grim, so huge and ungainly,
And yet with a strength that was never called vainly—
 Who yet for these oxen a fitting word spoke?

When loosened at night, gaunt-flanked and deep-chested
They lay on the plain and moaned as they rested,
 All thankful for shadows on sad, purple eyes;
With never a dream or delusion to cheer them,