Oklahoma Sunshine

E-text prepared by David Starner, Carla Foust, Suzanne Lybarger, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
By Freeman E. Miller,
Author of Oklahoma and other Poems, Songs from the South-West Country, etc.
Stillwater, Oklahoma. The Advance Printing Company. 1905.
Copyright, 1905, By Freeman E. Miller. All Rights Reserved.
The Gospel of Sunshine is the one Supreme Evangel, the Religion of Love is Mankind's most Universal Creed. They hold in their divine Baptisms the Winning of the Heart to Happiness, the Wooing of the Soul to Heaven.
The Author.
Beginning with June 9, 1904, there was a column of verse and prose published in The Stillwater Advance under the caption Oklahoma Sunshine. These were written in the moments of a busy life, amid the crowding of sterner things, and many of them found a wide circulation in the fugitive publications of the day. So many persons have offered expressions of being pleased and helped by them that they are here presented in a more permanent form. The following comprise the year from June, 1904, to June, 1905.
O, ye who frame the sovereign law, And heal the hurts of ocean isles Till hid are savage tooth and claw And Peace above the battle smiles,— If Justice reigns and Mercy clings, What think ye, Masters, of these things?
The Father of the Waters greets Imperial sisters proud and great, And nation mighty nation meets At festal boards of lordly state: But one—one only,—maketh moan: Denied the Star, she weeps alone!
The cycles fly on eagled wings: A hundred years have run their quest Since he who bought and sold with kings An empire added to the West: And all his regions rulers are Save her alone who mourns the Star.
The wildness in a moment died; A garden bloomed and fruited full Across the plains and valleys wide At touch of hands invincible; But mute she stands where deserts were: The banner holds no Star for her!