Volume 34, Number 4 - Spring 1995
The Bryant Mill
by 0. G. Harmon
Alas! that the progressive band
Intruding on the Ozark land
Who have all customs here defied
Cannot with that be satisfied,
But relics dear to every heart
Must yield to their destructive art.
Has not the final climax come
Or have ye all been smitten dumb
To learn, that now against our will,
They threaten the old Bryant mill
That faithfully ground wheat and corn
Long ‘ere our sires had yet been born,
And for some three score years and ten
Hath been a blessing unto men.
The water from that single spring
Still labors like a living thing;
And leaps from ofT that water-wheel
With all the joy that children feel
When tasks well done meet words of praise
Before commencing on their plays.
Three generations have been fed
From flour or meal made into bread,
Ground by the burr of stone or steel
Still driven by the water-wheel
That labored on for years before
The Ozarks heard the rumbling roar
Of locomotives hauling freight
Across their hills at rapid rate.
Oh! could that ancient water-wheel
Its great historic past reveal
What man of us would strike a blow
Or help to lay that relic low;
We now protest and ever will
At the destruction of our mill;
That wheel shall turn; that burr shall grind
Till children’s children have declined
And generations yet unborn,
Shall bring to it their wheat and corn,
And as they lead each tourist band
To scenes unique in Ozark land,
The most famed one on vale or hill
Shall ever be the Bryant Mill.
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