8.+CREATING+A+RELATIONSHIP+WITH+NATURE+-+SONGS+and+POEMS+of+the+AMERICAN+WEST

=**LESSONS, POEMS AND SONGS ABOUT THE AMERICAN WEST**=

=**Entire Social Studies Unit of Study for the American Wild West:**= =****= = =

=**"Don't Fence Me In" Lesson Plans": http://www.clover.okstate.edu/fourh/aitc/lessons/intermed/fence.pdf**= =**"DON'T FENCE ME IN" - 1934**=

Oh, give me land, Lots of land under starry skies above, Don't fence me in, Let me ride through The wide open country that I love, Don't fence me in. Let me be by myself In the evening breeze, Listen to the murmur Of the cottonwood trees, Send me off forever, But I ask you please, Don't fence me in.

Just turn me loose, Let me straddle my old saddle Underneath the western skies, On my cay-use Let me wander over yonder Till I see the mountains rise. I want to ride to the ridge Where the West commences, Gaze at the moon Till I lose my senses; Can't look at hobbles And I can't stand fences, Don't fence me in.

=**"MENDING WALL" Lesson Plans:**= =**http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id**= =**Compare "Don't Fence Me In" to "Mending Wall"**= =**HEAR ROBERT FROST reading his poems: http://town.hall.org/Archives/radio/IMS/HarperAudio/012294_harp_ITH.html**= =**"Mending Wall" Quiz: http://www.funtrivia.com/playquiz/quiz283201206c380.html**=

=**"MENDING WALL" - Robert Frost**=

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun, And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: 'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!' We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of out-door game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: 'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me~ Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

=**"Out Where the West Begins" - by Arthur Chapman - 1919**= =The poem was set to music by Estelle Philleo and published in 1920.=

That's where the West begins.
=**"HOME ON THE RANGE" - original**=
 * =**Dr. Brewster Higley (1876)**= ||  ||   ||

Forever in azures so bright.
||

="HOME ON THE RANGE" - John A. Lomax (1910)=

**Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam**
=** Where the deer and the antelope play, **= =** Where seldom is heard a discouraging word **= =** And the skies are not cloudy all day. **= =** //Chorus//: Home, home on the range, **= =** Where the deer and the antelope play; **= =** Where seldom is heard a discouraging word **= =** And the skies are not cloudy all day. **= =** Where the air is so pure, the zephyrs so free, **= =** The breezes so balmy and light, **= =** That I would not exchange my home on the range **= =** For all of the cities so bright. **= =** //Chorus:// The red man was pressed from this part of the West **= =** He's likely no more to return, **= =** To the banks of Red River where seldom if ever **= =** Their flickering camp-fires burn.//'// **= =** //Chorus:// How often at night when the heavens are bright **= =** With the light from the glittering stars **= =** Have I stood here amazed and asked as I gazed **= =** If their glory exceeds that of ours. **= =** //Chorus:// Oh, I love these wild prairies where I roam **= =** The curlew I love to hear scream, **= =** And I love the white rocks and the antelope flocks **= =** That graze on the mountain-tops green. **= =** //Chorus:// Oh, give me a land where the bright diamond sand **= =** Flows leisurely down the stream; **= =** Where the graceful white swan goes gliding along **= =** Like a maid in a heavenly dream. **=

=**"Once By The Pacific" - Robert Frost**=

=**Text of the poem and The Wave together:**= =**http://katebenedict.com/sonnetsillustrated/RobertFrostOncebythePacif.html**=



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**Before God's last Put out the Light was spoken.**
(1. Frost was very big in his life on people being in harmony with nature, and this poem could be interpreted as nature releasing it's wrath on us for our mistreatment of it. 2.The Biblical aspect is that "put out the light" is a twisted form of "and then there was light", what God said in Genesis when creating the world. The idea would be that God said "put out the light" one last time, signaling the end of the world, which would make this poem apocalyptic. This is the most popular interpretation. 3. The lesser known interpretation could be that "put out the light" is a quote from Shakespeare's play "Othello", in which a man is convinced by a jealous man that his wife was cheating on him, so he killed his wife. Just before he suffocated her, he said "put out the light", therefore giving the poem a possible meaning of murder. The huge storm is in reference to God's wrath for a murder committed.)

=**SONG OF HIAWATHA - Henry Wordsworth Longfellow - excerpt**= =**and full text: http://poetry.eserver.org/song-of-hiawatha.txt**=



code Ye who love the haunts of Nature,

Love the sunshine of the meadow,

Love the shadow of the forest,

Love the wind among the branches,

And the rain-shower and the snow-storm,

And the rushing of great rivers

Through their palisades of pine-trees,

And the thunder in the mountains,

Whose innumerable echoes

Flap like eagles in their eyries;-

Listen to these wild traditions,

To this Song of Hiawatha!

code

code The Song of Hiawatha is based on the legends and stories of many North American Indian tribes, but especially those of the Ojibway Indians of northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. They were collected by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, the reknowned historian, pioneer explorer, and geologist. He was superintendent of Indian affairs for Michigan from 1836 to 1841.

Schoolcraft married Jane, O-bah-bahm-wawa-ge-zhe-go-qua (The Woman of the Sound Which the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky), Johnston. Jane was a daughter of John Johnston, an early Irish fur trader, and O-shau-gus-coday-way-qua (The Woman of the Green Prairie), who was a daughter of Waub-o-jeeg (The White Fisher), who was Chief of the Ojibway tribe at La Pointe, Wisconsin.

Jane and her mother are credited with having researched, authenticated, and compiled much of the material Schoolcraft included in his Algic Researches (1839) and a revision published in 1856 as The Myth of Hiawatha. It was this latter revision that Longfellow used as the basis for The Song of Hiawatha.

Longfellow began Hiawatha on June 25, 1854, he completed it on March 29, 1855, and it was published November 10, 1855. As soon as the poem was published its popularity was assured. However, it also was severely criticized as a plagiary of the Finnish epic poem Kalevala. Longfellow made no secret of the fact that he had used the meter of the Kalevala; but as for the legends, he openly gave credit to Schoolcraft in his notes to the poem. code

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