From the Omaha Daily Bee, April 21, 1914.
Nature is no distant dame
All aloofness in her mien;
Mistress Nature is the same
Unto peasant, unto queen—
Yea, the sun of summer sweet
Shuttered from a sheltered crown
Kisses little children’s feet
That are bravely bare and brown.
They who seek her need not fare
Over dim, mysterious hills;
Always she is sitting there
On our dusty window sills.
When the traffic hesitates
Where the human river pours
Nature creeps through city gates
Knocking at our city doors.
Nature plants courageous grass
In the cobbled market place
Where the weary thousands pass
Bent of form and sad of face.
She comes creeping, creeping so
From the country unawares,
With her roses in a row
And her ivy on the stairs.
Only just a little way,
Alley first and avenue,
Out a road of sturdy clay
Mistress Nature beckons you.
Very near the busy mart,
Very near the huts of men,
Nature waits with merry heart—
Let her make you glad again.