Into the rose gold westland, its yellow prairies roll, <br />World of the bison's freedom, home of the Indian's soul. <br />Roll out, O seas! in sunlight bathed, <br />Your plains wind-tossed, and grass enswathed. <br /> <br />Farther than vision ranges, farther than eagles fly, <br />Stretches the land of beauty, arches the perfect sky, <br />Hemm'd through the purple mists afar <br />By peaks that gleam like star on star. <br /> <br />Fringing the prairie billows, fretting horizon's line, <br />Darkly green are slumb'ring wildernesses of pine, <br />Sleeping until the zephyrs throng <br />To kiss their silence into song. <br /> <br />Whispers freighted with odour swinging into the air, <br />Russet needles as censers swing to an altar, where <br />The angels' songs are less divine <br />Than duo sung twixt breeze and pine. <br /> <br />Laughing into the forest, dimples a mountain stream, <br />Pure as the airs above it, soft as a summer dream, <br />O! Lethean spring thou'rt only found <br />Within this ideal hunting ground. <br /> <br />Surely the great Hereafter cannot be more than this, <br />Surely we'll see that country after Time's farewell kiss. <br />Who would his lovely faith condole? <br />Who envies not the Red-skin's soul, <br /> <br />Sailing into the cloud land, sailing into the sun, <br />Into the crimson portals ajar when life is done? <br />O! dear dead race, my spirit too <br />Would fain sail westward unto you.<br /><br />Emily Pauline Johnson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-happy-hunting-grounds/
