Page:Poems by Frances Fuller Victor.djvu/55

 Years passed. Fate placed my feet upon

The self-same way those women trode;

On me the prairie sunshine shone,

With eager steps I pressed the road

Which they, first of my sex and race

To pass the Rockies' stony wall,

Had honored, passing to their place

Among the immortals. I recall

The wonder that I felt to find

The deepened ruts with roses lined.

Alas, not marked by these alone,

The weary way from shore to shore;

But a white line of bleaching bone

Of worn-out oxen stretched before,

With lonely wayside graves. 'Twas thus

That first I learned the fearful price

The nation gave to dower us

With this fair land; the sacrifice

Of hecatombs of beasts and men,

By weariness, want, and foes in ambush slain.

This by the way. I stood, in time,

By Walla Walla's gentle stream,

In Wa-ii-lat-pu's vale, where crime

Struck down a good man, and his dream.

But, ah, no sign of that career 49