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Writer's pictureLogan Drake

The Rose of Iowa

A Poem on Iowa's Natural Beauty

By Major SHM Byers (1897)


Hast seen the wild rose of the West,

The sweetest child of the morn?

Its feet the dewy fields have pressed,

It's breath is on the corn.

The gladsome prairie rolls and sweeps

Like billows to the sea,

While on its breast the red rose keeps

The white rose company.

The wild, wild rose whose fragrance dear

To every breeze is flung,

The same wild rose that blossomed here

When Iowa was young.


O, sons of heroes ever wear

The Wild rose on your shield

No other flower half so fair

In loves' immortal field.

Let others sing of mountain snows,

Or palms beside the sea,

The state whose emblem is the rose

The fairest far to me.

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