Classic Poem

" Westward no! " comes ringing from the throat of " The Pioneer " —
A paper run by the railroads out on the great frontier.
Wanted, a mighty army to settle the rolling flat,
That lies, like a garden of Eden, along the beautiful Platte.

Wanted, women and children, bearded and stalwart men,
From stern New England hillside, from rugged and rocky glen;
From steeps of the Alleghanies, where bleak winds fiercely blow,
And down whose slopes of hard-pan roll storms of sleet and snow.

Wanted — to settle the prairies! and still the call is heard —
Irish, Norwegian, German — but Yankee blood preferred.
Wanted — and who would linger on patches stony and steep.
When a wide realm lies before him, with soil both rich and deep?

Good Pioneer, Sir Railroad, all that you say is true,
And wondrous fair the picture that you are holding up to view;
But is it straight and honest, and is it fair and right,
That only the good is shown us, and the bad left out of sight?

'Tis true, a careless mention of the " hopper " here is made,
As something rare and seldom, like fire, or Indian raid:
But naught of the summer droughts, and not the faintest breath
Concerning the western " blizzard, " that awful blast of death.

No record how the farmer, amid the rush and roar,
All blinded and bewildered, sinks down beside his door;
Sinks freezing at his threshold with unavailing moan —
For the voices of the tempest outspeak his dying groan —

If the half we are to credit of the shuddering settler's tale,
Of the tempest swift and sudden, of the icy, blinding veil,
Then, to a western blizzard, with its rush and its deadly sting,
A storm of the Alleghanies is the flap of a pigeon's wing.

A spectre stalks the prairies, a spectre gaunt and grim,
Scattering woe and famine, and waste of cheek and limb,
There is freezing, there is starving, while rings the cheery call,
" Wanted — five hundred thousand! " — Do they think us idiots all?