90 WITH EARTH AND SKY 
challenge of the morning is there, every yellow 
blossom standing tiptoe, waiting for the sunrise. 
The sunflower and the poppy, the prairie and the 
mountain, what resistless romancists these must 
ever be to such as have a dream-room in the 
soul. The prairie is the wide; and the mountain 
is the high; and when these two journey and 
look into each other’s faces, I am one who would 
pilgrim far to see the meeting. The prairie is so 
wide and so fertile: the mountain is so high and 
so barren. I see his stately climbing now in 
serrate ranges which, “Like a old lions’ whelk 
tooth,” as Browning so jaggedly puts it, cuts the 
sky again and again, barren peaks snow-capped 
or so steep in some sides that no snow can cling 
to the swift acclivity, so all winter long and 
through, when the world is white as vair the 
black mountainside frowns on the plains below. 
Barren, blistered, treeless, grassless, uninhabited, 
save of the wild mountain sheep who covet 
scanty pastures, being God’s born economists. 
The mountain builds no granary, seeing it would 
rot unprofited; for what boots a granary built 
if there be no corn? 
The barren mountain, but the fertile prairie! 
There the herds feed and lie down as of old 
amidst the green pastures. There the plow turns 
fertile glebe and harvests clap their ruddy hands 
and sing. The prairie is competent to feed the 
hunger of the world. And is the mountain surly 
and angry and set on making the race of men 
