The Song of the Lark

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The Song of the Lark (1915)
by Willa Sibert Cather

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Generally considered to be the second novel in Cather's Prairie Trilogy, following O Pioneers! (1913) and preceding My Ántonia (1918). The book tells the story of a talented artist, Thea Kronborg, born in a small town in Colorado who discovers and develops her singing voice. Her story is told against the backdrop of the burgeoning American West in which she was born in a town along the rail line, of fast-growing Chicago near the turn of the twentieth century, and of the audience for singers of her skills in the US compared to Europe. The title comes from a painting of the same name by Jules Breton in 1884 and part of the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

One morning, as she was standing upright in the pool, splashing water between her shoulder-blades with a big sponge, something flashed through her mind that made her draw herself up and stand still until the water had quite dried upon her flushed skin. The stream and the broken pottery: what was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself, ...

2081212The Song of the Lark1915Willa Sibert Cather

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THE SONG OF
THE LARK

BY

WILLA SIBERT CATHER

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

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY WILLA SIBERT CATHER

Published October 1915

                TO
        Isabelle McClung

              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.

CONTENTS

Part I.	Friends of Childhood	1
II.	The Song of the Lark	159
III.	Stupid Faces	247
IV.	The Ancient People	293
V.	Doctor Archie's Venture	343
VI.	Kronborg	383
	Epilogue	481

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.

The longest-living author of this work died in 1947, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 76 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

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