Wheat, wheat, wheat, wheat! States and continents and oceans and solar-systems of wheat! We poor ne'er-do-weels take our little part up there in the header half way between the sky and the earth, and in the evening going home, carrying Mister Stacker-Man in our barge, we sing Sweet Rosy O'Grady and the Battle Hymn of the Republic. And the most emphatic and unadulterated tramp among us harvesters, a giant Swiss fifty years old, gives the yodel he learned when a boy.
This is a German Catholic family for which I have been working. We have had grace before and after every meal, and we crossed ourselves before and after every meal, except the Swiss, who left the table early to escape being blest too much.
My employers are good folk, good as the Mennonites. My boss was absolutely on the square all the week, as kind as a hard-working man has time to be. It gave me great satisfaction to go to Mass with him this morning. Though some folks talk against religion, though it sometimes appears to be a nuisance, after weighing all the evidence of late presented, I prefer a religious farmer.
HERE'S TO THE SPIRIT OF FIRE
Here's to the spirit of fire, wherever the flame is unfurled,
In the sun, it may be, as a torch, to lead on and enlighten the world;
That melted the glacial streams, in the day that no memories reach,
That shimmered in amber and shell and weed on the earliest beach;
The genius of love and of life, the power that will ever abound,
That waits in the bones of the dead, who sleep till the judgment shall sound.
Here's to the spirit of fire, when clothed in swift music it comes,
The glow of the harvesting songs, the voice of the national drums;
The whimsical, various fire, in the rhymes and ideas of men,
Buried in books for an age, exploding and writhing again,
And blown a red wind round the world, consuming the lies in its mirth,
Then locked in dark volumes for long, and buried like coal in the earth.
Here's to the comforting fire in the joys of the blind and the meek,
In the customs of letterless lands, in the thoughts of the stupid and weak.
In the weariest legends they tell, in their cruellest, coldest belief,
In the proverbs of counter or till, in the arts of the priest or the thief.
Here's to the spirit of fire, that never the ocean can drown,
That glows in the phosphorent wave, and gleams in the sea-rose's crown;
That sleeps in the sunbeam and mist, that creeps as the wise can but know,
A wonder, an incense, a whim, a perfume, a fear and a glow,
Ensnaring the stars with a spell, and holding the earth in a net,
Yea, filling the nations with prayer, wherever man's pathway is set.
VI
The End of the Road; Moonshine; and Some Proclamations
August 1, 1912. Standing up at the Postoffice desk, Pueblo, Colorado.
Several times since going over the Colorado border I have had such a cordial reception for the Gospel of Beauty that my faith in this method of propaganda is reawakened. I confess to feeling a new zeal. But there are other things I want to tell in this letter.