Parts of the following beautiful poem, written by John G. Whittier, published in the Atlantic Monthly for September, 1858, are inscribed on an obelisk in the cemetery at Trading Post:
"A blush as of roses
Where rose never grew!
Great drops on the bunch
grass,
But not of the dew!
A taint in the sweet air
for wild bees to
shun!
A stain that shall never
Bleach out in the sun!"
Back, steed of
the prairies!
Sweet song-bird, fly back!
Wheel hither, bald
vulture!
Gray wolf, call thy pack!
The foul human vultures
Have feasted
and fled;
The wolves of the Border
Have crept from the dead.
"In the
homes of their rearing,
Yet warm with their lives, Ye
wait the dead
only,
Poor children and wives!
Put out the red forge fire,
The smith
shall not come;
Unyoke the brown oxen,
The plowman lies dumb."
Wind
slow from the Swan's Marsh,
O dreary death-train,
With pressed lips as
bloodless
As lips of the slain!
Kiss down the young eyelids,
Smooth
down the gray hairs;
Let tears quench the curses
That burn through your
prayers.
"From the hearths of their cabins,
The fields of their
corn,
Unwarned and unweaponed,
The victims were torn -
By the whirlwind
of murder
Swooped up and swept on
To the low, reedy fen-lands,
The
Marsh of the Swan."
With a vain plea for mercy
No stout knee was
crooked;
In the mouths of the rifles
Right manly they looked.
How paled
the May sunshine,
Green Marais du Cygne,
When the death-smoke blew
over
Thy lonely ravine.
"Strong man of the prairies,
Mourn bitter and
wild!
Wail, desolate woman!
Weep, fatherless child!
But the grain of
God springs up
From ashes beneath,
And the crown of His harvest
Is life
out of death."
Not in vain on the dial
The shade moves along
To point
the great contrasts
right and of wrong;
Free homes and free altars
And
fields of ripe food;
The reeds of the Swan's marsh,
Whose bloom is of
blood.
"On the lintels of Kansas
That blood shall not dry,
Henceforth
the Bad Angel
Shall harmless go by;
Henceforth to the sunset,
Unchecked
on her way,
Shall liberty follow
The march of the day."