<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=532762" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Illinois Village</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">O you who lose the art of hope, <br>Whose temples seem to shrine a lie, <br>Whose sidewalks are but stones of fear, <br>Who weep that Liberty must die, <br>Turn to the little prairie towns, <br>Your higher hope shall yet begin. <br>On every side awaits you there <br>Some gate where glory enters in. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet when I see the flocks of girls, <br>Watching the Sunday train go thro' <br>(As tho' the whole wide world went by) <br>With eyes that long to travel too, <br>I sigh, despite my soul made glad <br>By cloudy dresses and brown hair, <br>Sigh for the sweet life wrenched and torn <br>By thundering commerce, fierce and bare. <br>Nymphs of the wheat these girls should be: <br>Kings of the grove, their lovers strong. <br>Why are they not inspired, aflame? <br>This beauty calls for valiant song — </div><div style="margin:10px 0">For men to carve these fairy-forms <br>And faces in a fountain-frieze; <br>Dancers that own immortal hours; <br>Painters that work upon their knees; <br>Maids, lovers, friends, so deep in life, <br>So deep in love and poet's deeds, <br>The railroad is a thing disowned, <br>The city but a field of weeds. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who can pass a village church <br>By night in these clean prairie lands <br>Without a touch of Spirit-power? <br>So white and fixed and cool it stands — <br>A thing from some strange fairy-town, <br>A pious amaranthine flower, <br>Unsullied by the winds, as pure <br>As jade or marble, wrought this hour: — <br>Rural in form, foursquare and plain, <br>And yet our sister, the new moon, <br>Makes it a praying wizard's dream. <br>The trees that watch at dusty noon <br>Breaking its sharpest lines, veil not <br>The whiteness it reflects from God, <br>Flashing like Spring on many an eye, <br>Making clean flesh, that once was clod. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who can pass a district school <br>Without the hope that there may wait <br>Some baby-heart the books shall flame <br>With zeal to make his playmates great, <br>To make the whole wide village gleam <br>A strangely carved celestial gem, <br>Eternal in its beauty-light, <br>The Artist's town of Bethlehem!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Vachel+Lindsay">Vachel Lindsay</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=532762" data-title="The Illinois Village de Vachel Lindsay" data-description="O you who lose the art of hope, Whose temples seem to shrine a lie, Whose sidewalks are but stones of fear, Who weep that Liberty must die, Turn to the little prairie towns, Your higher hope shall yet begin. On every side awaits you there S..."></div> </div> </div>

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