St. Louis. June

Fat,
Flat,
Long as sight
Either way.

An immense country,
With a great river
Steaming it full of moist, unbearable heat.
The orchards are little quincunxes of Noah's Ark trees,
The plows and horses are children's toys tracing amusingly shallow lines upon an illimitable surface.
Great chunks of life to match the country,

Great lungs to breathe this hot, wet air.

But it is not mine.
Mine is a land of hills

Lying couchant in the angles of heraldic beasts
About white villages.
A land of singing elms and pine-trees.
A restless up and down land

Always mounting, dipping, slipping into a different contour,

Where the roads turn every hundred yards or so,
Where brooks rattle forgotten Indian names to tired farm-houses,
And faint spires of old meeting-houses
Flaunt their golden weather-cocks in a brave show of challenge at a sunset sky.

Here the heat stuffs down with the thickness of boiled feathers,

The river runs in steam.

There, lilacs are in bloom,

Cool blue-purples, wine-reds, whites,

Flying colour to quiet dooryards.

Grown year on year to a suddenness of old perfection,
Saying "Before! Before!" to each new Spring.
Here is "Now,"
But "Before" is mine with the lilacs,
With the white sea of everywhither,
With the heraldic, story-telling hills.