The Song of the Lark

The Song of the Lark is the second novel in Cather's Prairie Trilogy, following O Pioneers! (1913), preceding the third novel, My Ántonia (1918). Thea Kronborg is a talented singer who grew up in a small town in Colorado called Moonstone, during the period when the American West was booming with railroad expansion, and fast-growing Chicago nearby. [Featured painting by Jules Breton inspired the author's title, Song of the Lark, 1884, Art Institute of Chicago.]

"It was a wond'rous lovely storm that drove me!" -- Lenau's "Don Juan"

On uplands,
             At morning,
The world was young, the winds were free;
             A garden fair,
             In that blue desert air,
Its guest invited me to be.