Clyde C. Adams,  “The Meadow Lark”

Where skip the saucy breezes o'er the tiny blades of grass, To ruffle up the tidy green, and muss things as they pass, A stem of weed, a thistle stalk, a blade of vagrant rye Are there to bow and laugh with them as they go romping by; And out upon a bunch of grass, a-swinging in the sun, The meadow lark is laughing, too, and thinks it heaps of fun. He with the breeze and vagrant rye and grass and stalk and weed, Will frolic all the summer day upon the open mead. There is no hour he is not here, through all the cheerful day— And when the breezes quiet down, he calls them back to play. He swings from place to place and darts above the waving grass, And when the winds are blowing fierce, he fights them as they pass! He takes a strenuous love in life—the open fields are his; He feels that life is being free, and lives because it is; He must not pass like other game from off the Western plains— (God help the prairie dog!)—and so he carols free and reigns Supreme in field and Western vale, and vies with breeze and grass, And laughs with them thro' all the years, the while the seasons pass.