Beautiful Rose

Off on the prairie, where the balmy air
Kisses the waving corn,
There lives a farmer, with a daughter fair-
Fair as a summer's morn!
She has a nature gentle as a dove,
Pure as the mountain snows;
Say! is it strange that everyone should love-
Love such a girl as Rose?
Beautiful Rose! lovely Rose!
Pride of the prairie bower!
Everybody loves her-everybody knows
She is the fairest flower.
Rose is a lady yet from early dawn,
Labors her skillful hand;
She is the housewife, now her mother's gone-
Gone to the better land.
Rose has the beauty-father has the gold-
Both will be hers one day;
For she is young, while he is growing old-
Old people pass away.
Clerks from the city, plowmen from the field,
Lords from a foreign land;
Each in their turn have very humbly kneeled-
Kneeled for her heart and hand.
But to them all she made the same reply-
Kindly but firmly, "No!"
And none but I can tell the reason why-
Why she should treat them so.