And they crossed the eighty's line,
Where the spring of running waters
Gave envenomed purpose birth,
As he drank its bubbling offering
From the pulsing heart of earth.


32

Then, ascending from the hollow,
Full before his eyes appeared
Home--his home--the low-walled sodhouse
Which his toiling hands had reared.
Near the straw shed stood the wagon
He had brought from Wichita,
And beneath the grass-fringed gable
Hung his trusty crosscut saw.
In the dooryard, near the window,
Lay the broken homemade chair,
Where, at evening, love-born fancies
Revelled, as he rested there;
Love, whose scattered seed had fallen
On a mystic field of fate,
Where the tangled vine extending
Bore the bitter fruit of hate.


33

Hurrying nearer, he dismounted,