The Happy Hunting Grounds

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