Rhymes Of A Rolling Stone Part 13

Across the room there crept, so shadow soft, His sullen host, with naked knife a-gleam, (A gaunt and hairy man with wolfish eyes.) . . .

And as he lay, the sleeper dreamed a dream.

'Twas in a ruder land, a wilder day.

A rival princeling sat upon his throne, Within a dungeon, dark and foul he lay, With chains that bit and festered to the bone.

They haled him harshly to a vaulted room, Where One gazed on him with malignant eye; And in that devil-face he read his doom, Knowing that ere the dawn-light he must die.

Well, he was sorrow-glutted; let them bring Their prize a.s.sa.s.sins to the b.l.o.o.d.y work.

His kingdom lost, yet would he die a King, Fearless and proud, as when he faced the Turk.

Ah G.o.d! the glory of that great Crusade!

The bannered pomp, the gleam, the splendid urge!

The crash of reeking combat, blade to blade!

The reeling ranks, blood-avid and a-surge!

For long he thought; then feeling o'er him creep Vast weariness, he fell into a sleep.

The cell door opened; soft the headsman came, Within his hand a mighty axe a-gleam, (A gaunt and hairy man with wolfish eyes,) . . .

And as he lay, the sleeper dreamed a dream.

'Twas in a land unkempt of life's red dawn; Where in his sanded cave he dwelt alone; Sleeping by day, or sometimes worked upon His flint-head arrows and his knives of stone; By night stole forth and slew the savage boar, So that he loomed a hunter of loud fame, And many a skin of wolf and wild-cat wore, And counted many a flint-head to his name; Wherefore he walked the envy of the band, Hated and feared, but matchless in his skill.

Till lo! one night deep in that s.h.a.ggy land, He tracked a yearling bear and made his kill; Then over-worn he rested by a stream, And sank into a sleep too deep for dream.

Hunting his food a rival caveman crept Through those dark woods, and marked him where he lay; Cowered and crawled upon him as he slept, Poising a mighty stone aloft to slay -- (A gaunt and hairy man with wolfish eyes.) . . .

The great stone crashed. The Dreamer shrieked and woke, And saw, fear-blinded, in his dripping cell, A gaunt and hairy man, who with one stroke Swung a great ax of steel that flashed and fell . . .

So that he woke amid his bedroom gloom, And saw, hair-poised, a naked, thirsting knife, A gaunt and hairy man with eyes of doom -- And then the blade plunged down to drink his life . . .

So that he woke, wrenched back his robe, and looked, And saw beside his dying fire upstart A gaunt and hairy man with finger crooked -- A rifle rang, a bullet searched his heart . . .

The morning sky was sinister and cold.

Grotesque the Dreamer sprawled, and did not rise.

For long and long there gazed upon some gold _A GAUNT AND HAIRY MAN WITH WOLFISH EYES_.

At Thirty-Five

Three score and ten, the psalmist saith, And half my course is well-nigh run; I've had my flout at dusty death, I've had my whack of feast and fun.

I've mocked at those who prate and preach; I've laughed with any man alive; But now with sobered heart I reach The Great Divide of Thirty-five.

And looking back I must confess I've little cause to feel elate.

I've played the mummer more or less; I fumbled fortune, flouted fate.

I've vastly dreamed and little done; I've idly watched my brothers strive: Oh, I have loitered in the sun By primrose paths to Thirty-five!

And those who matched me in the race, Well, some are out and trampled down; The others jog with sober pace; Yet one wins delicate renown.

O midnight feast and famished dawn!

O gay, hard life, with hope alive!

O golden youth, forever gone, How sweet you seem at Thirty-five!

Each of our lives is just a book As absolute as Holy Writ; We humbly read, and may not look Ahead, nor change one word of it.

And here are joys and here are pains; And here we fail and here we thrive; O wondrous volume! what remains When we reach chapter Thirty-five?

The very best, I dare to hope, Ere Fate writes Finis to the tome; A wiser head, a wider scope, And for the gipsy heart, a home; A songful home, with loved ones near, With joy, with suns.h.i.+ne all alive: Watch me grow younger every year -- Old Age! thy name is Thirty-five!

The Squaw Man

The cow-moose comes to water, and the beaver's overbold, The net is in the eddy of the stream; The teepee stars the vivid sward with russet, red and gold, And in the velvet gloom the fire's a-gleam.

The night is ripe with quiet, rich with incense of the pine; From sanctuary lake I hear the loon; The peaks are bright against the blue, and drenched with sunset wine, And like a silver bubble is the moon.

Cloud-high I climbed but yesterday; a hundred miles around I looked to see a rival fire a-gleam.

As in a crystal lens it lay, a land without a bound, All lure, and virgin vast.i.tude, and dream.

The great sky soared exultantly, the great earth bared its breast, All river-veined and patterned with the pine; The heedless hordes of caribou were streaming to the West, A land of l.u.s.trous mystery -- and mine.

Yea, mine to frame my Odyssey: Oh, little do they know My conquest and the kingdom that I keep!

The meadows of the musk-ox, where the laughing gra.s.ses grow, The rivers where the careless conies leap.

Beyond the silent Circle, where white men are fierce and few, I lord it, and I mock at man-made law; Like a flame upon the water is my little light canoe, And yonder in the fireglow is my squaw.

A squaw man! yes, that's what I am; sneer at me if you will.

I've gone the grilling pace that cannot last; With bawdry, bridge and brandy -- Oh, I've drank enough to kill A dozen such as you, but that is past.

I've swung round to my senses, found the place where I belong; The City made a madman out of me; But here beyond the Circle, where there's neither right or wrong, I leap from life's straight-jacket, and I'm free.

Yet ever in the far forlorn, by trails of lone desire; Yet ever in the dawn's white leer of hate; Yet ever by the dripping kill, beside the drowsy fire, There comes the fierce heart-hunger for a mate.

There comes the mad blood-clamour for a woman's clinging hand, Love-humid eyes, the velvet of a breast; And so I sought the Bonnet-plumes, and chose from out the band The girl I thought the sweetest and the best.

O wistful women I have loved before my dark disgrace!

O women fair and rare in my home land!

Dear ladies, if I saw you now I'd turn away my face, Then crawl to kiss your foot-prints in the sand!

And yet -- that day the rifle jammed -- a wounded moose at bay -- A roar, a charge . . . I faced it with my knife: A shot from out the willow-scrub, and there the monster lay. . . .

Yes, little Laughing Eyes, you saved my life.

The man must have the woman, and we're all brutes more or less, Since first the male ape s.h.i.+nned the family tree; And yet I think I love her with a husband's tenderness, And yet I know that she would die for me.

Oh, if I left you, Laughing Eyes, and nevermore came back, G.o.d help you, girl! I know what you would do. . . .