Songnote: Inspired by Robert Frost’s “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening,” this song describes my melancholic contemplation of the early inhabitants of the 1880’s stone ruin in our pasture. Though their efforts to farm the upland prairie seem absurd today, what age does not passionately pursue its own, later discredited dreams?
Lyrics:
Whose stones these were I’ll never know
That built this homestead long ago
Who tried to farm this high plateau
Of soil too thin for crops to grow
Would they ever guess us stopping here
Close neighbors in a hundred years
To wonder how could time erase
The dreams that filled their old home place
My little horse must wonder why
We’ve stopped here with no cows nearby
To wander round this pile of stones
That’s always on our way back home
The chimney’s left – this window, too
Its outline frames the world they knew
Their sunrise lit with pinks and blues
Each day’s first hope too new to lose
These lines of rocks along the ground
An ancient barn now fallen down
The bones of creatures there within
Now feed the roots of tall bluestem
The little creek goes winding past
But summer dries it up too fast
Was that what broke their spirit down
To quit and move back to the town
Will someone pass our home some day
And wonder of its ruins that lay
What hopes and loves once lived within
Those rocks gone back to Earth again
Whose stones these were they’ll never know
Who built this home so long ago
And lived along this high plateau
Of prairie where the tallgrass grows