If I had a bit of money and all my debts were paid, I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade. I'd buy that place and fix it up the way that it used to be, And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.
Now a new home standing empty with staring window and door Looks idle perhaps and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store, But there's nothing mournful about it, it cannot be sad and lone For the lack of something within it that it has never known.
But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life, That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife, A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and helped up his stumbling feet, Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.
So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back, Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart, For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.
Like liquid gold the wheat field lies, A marvel of yellow and russet and green, That ripples and runs, that floats and flies, With the subtle shadows, the change, the sheen, That play in the golden hair of a girl,-- A ripple of amber--a flare Of light sweeping after--a curl In the hollows like swirling feet Of fairy waltzers, the colors run To the western sun Through the deeps of the ripening wheat.
Broad as the fleckless, soaring sky, Mysterious, fair as the moon-led sea, The vast plain flames on the dazzled eye Under the fierce sun's alchemy. The slow hawk stoops To his prey in the deeps; The sunflower droops To the lazy wave; the wind sleeps-- Then swirling in dazzling links and loops, A riot of shadow and shine, A glory of olive and amber and wine, To the westering sun the colors run Through the deeps of the ripening wheat.
O glorious land! My western land, Outspread beneath the setting sun! Once more amid your swells, I stand, And cross your sod-lands dry and dun. I hear the jocund calls of men Who sweep amid the ripened grain With swift, stern reapers; once again The evening splendor floods the plain, The crickets' chime Makes pauseless rhyme, And toward the sun, The colors run Before the wind's feet In the wheat!