Threads of Sky

Where they go, men carry with them fire.

Whole firmaments aspire

In smoke and flight of spark

To change the light, or counter dark.

Now comes, in the bowing fields of grain

Where unseen rain

Slants from the sun to bend down golden stalks,

Where prairie hawks

Fly astounded and ponies dance,

Now comes advance

Of the singing men with hammer and spike.

Into the wooden ties their irons strike.

Like threads of sky

The steel rails lie.

From powder and ball

The robbed Indians fall.

Silence forever master of the fields,

A silence of thunder and of creatures, yields

To the bring of chains and fiery furnace,

The shout of the one-eyed beast in harness

To pistons buckled and thrust by steam;

With cyclops gleam

In the sighing grasses of evening;

Horizon-plume of smoke fading, deadening

Under the plumy mid-American night.

The engines charge the mountains; a new might

Leaves the watery grain,

The wide-lain

Prairies, and the river-woven hills.

The railroad fills

The black-pine green and the shadow-blue

With white steam breath. Breaking through

The immemorial hush of stone,

The whistles moan.