We are in Illinois again. Two years ago

We went to Kansas, fifteen hundred miles

That summer, out by wagon in the spring,

And back in the late autumn, tired and poor.

I built a house there, and I broke the land

For corn, but nothing green came up that year.

The wind blew hard in Kansas, cruel gales

That punished farm and farmer senselessly.

Hay was a withered harvest, but I mowed

Even the short dry grass for winter feed,

And it was while I sweat in the flat field

That a whirling summer storm blew down my house,

Making a rubbish-heap of all we owned.

The children both escaped, but both were hurt,

And Lida grieves when she remembers now

Our wedding chinaware flung down and smashed.

In six weeks we were back in Illinois.

This is the place to farm. The rain comes right,

The soil is rich, and I have built a house.

The south wind blows tonight.

Come out to us. Our hearts and house have room.

You work the year round all your lives to die

There in the eastern mills.

You need not die beside the looms. I work

In summertime, and both my barns are full.

Tell all our friends they need not die indoors.

I think I shall not come back east again.

Sometimes I dream, and Lida says she dreams,

Of hills around Northampton, and the brook,

Stony and steep, beyond the wooden bridge,

But most of all, she says, the hills.

I think I shall not come back east again,

Or see my friends again this side of heaven.

Be faithful and be blest.

Or if you have not given your heart to God,

Do so at once. Delays are dangerous.

But if you come to farm this western land,

And see, as I have seen, the corn come up

On rolling acres green and all your own,

And feel the western sunlight and the rain

Giving you God's abundance for a crop,

And reap it under the infinite western sky,

You will not need my prayers.