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RIVER SONGS |
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THE MISSOURI
W
HEN the hollow void of Chaos By the sun's first flame was lit, And morning kissed the new earth's leaden sky, When the hand of God reached downward To the ocean's utmost pit And reared the ragged continents on high,
From the naked, dripping ranges
Of the Rocky's granite sweep, In a pathway through the quaking mud-plains torn,
Surged a waste of briny waters.
Roaring backward to the deep, And the great Missouri, king of floods, was born.
It was there when, dank and noisome,
On the primal beds of shale The fern and cycad forests fringed its shore,
And its depths have heaved in whirlpools
To the thresh of fin and tail As the monster sea-snakes closed in deadly war.
Foot by foot through crumbling valleys
It has fought the Glacial Drift As from out the North the rock-fanged moraines spread,
Hurling seas of thunderous waters
Through the slowly strangling rift Where the ice-floes ground and gritted in its bed. |
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