Rhymes Of A Rolling Stone Part 15

Let my warmth and glow caress you, for your trails are grim and hard; Let my arms of comfort press you, hunger-hewn and battle-scarred: O my lovers! how I bless you with your lives so madly marred!

For you seek the silent s.p.a.ces, and their secret lore you glean: For you win the savage races, and the brutish Wild you wean; And I gladden desert places, where camp-fire has never been.

From the Pole unto the Tropics is there trail ye have not dared?

And because you hold death lightly, so by death shall you be spared, (As the sages of the ages in their pages have declared).

On the roaring Arkilinik in a leaky bark canoe; Up the cloud of Mount McKinley, where the avalanche leaps through; In the furnace of Death Valley, when the mirage glimmers blue.

Now a smudge of wiry willows on the weary Kuskoquim; Now a flare of gummy pine-knots where Vancouver's scaur is grim; Now a gleam of sunny ceiba, when the Cuban beaches dim.

Always, always G.o.d's Great Open: lo! I burn with keener light In the corridors of silence, in the vestibules of night; 'Mid the ferns and gra.s.ses gleaming, was there ever gem so bright?

Not for weaklings, not for women, like my brother of the hearth; Ring your songs of wrath around me, I was made for manful mirth, In the l.u.s.ty, gusty greatness, on the bald spots of the earth.

Men, my masters! men, my lovers! ye have fought and ye have bled; Gather round my ruddy embers, softly glowing is my bed; By my heart of solace dreaming, rest ye and be comforted!

III

I am dying, O my masters! by my fitful flame ye sleep; My purple plumes of glory droop forlorn.

Grey ashes choke and cloak me, and above the pines there creep The stealthy silver moccasins of morn.

There comes a countless army, it's the Legion of the Light; It tramps in gleaming triumph round the world; And before its jewelled lances all the shadows of the night Back in to abysmal darknesses are hurled.

Leap to life again, my lovers! ye must toil and never tire; The day of daring, doing, brightens clear, When the bed of spicy cedar and the jovial camp-fire Must only be a memory of cheer.

There is hope and golden promise in the vast portentous dawn; There is glamour in the glad, effluent sky: Go and leave me; I will dream of you and love you when you're gone; I have served you, O my masters! let me die.

A little heap of ashes, grey and sodden by the rain, Wind-scattered, blurred and blotted by the snow: Let that be all to tell of me, and glorious again, Ye things of greening gladness, leap and glow!

A black scar in the suns.h.i.+ne by the palm-leaf or the pine, Blind to the night and dead to all desire; Yet oh, of life and uplift what a symbol and a sign!

Yet oh, of power and conquest what a destiny is mine!

A little heap of ashes -- Yea! a miracle divine, The foot-print of a G.o.d, all-radiant Fire.

Her Letter

"I'm taking pen in hand this night, and hard it is for me; My poor old fingers tremble so, my hand is stiff and slow, And even with my gla.s.ses on I'm troubled sore to see. . . .

You'd little know your mother, boy; you'd little, little know.

You mind how brisk and bright I was, how straight and trim and smart; 'Tis weariful I am the now, and bent and frail and grey.

I'm waiting at the road's end, lad; and all that's in my heart, Is just to see my boy again before I'm called away."

"Oh well I mind the sorry day you crossed the gurly sea; 'Twas like the heart was torn from me, a waeful wife was I.

You said that you'd be home again in two years, maybe three; But nigh a score of years have gone, and still the years go by.

I know it's cruel hard for you, you've bairnies of your own; I know the siller's hard to win, and folks have used you ill: But oh, think of your mother, lad, that's waiting by her lone!

And even if you canna come -- _JUST WRITE AND SAY YOU WILL_."

"Aye, even though there's little hope, just promise that you'll try.

It's weary, weary waiting, lad; just say you'll come next year.

I'm thinking there will be no 'next'; I'm thinking soon I'll lie With all the ones I've laid away . . . but oh, the hope will cheer!

You know you're all that's left to me, and we are seas apart; But if you'll only _SAY_ you'll come, then will I hope and pray.

I'm waiting by the grave-side, lad; and all that's in my heart Is just to see my boy again before I'm called away."

The Man Who Knew

The Dreamer visioned Life as it might be, And from his dream forthright a picture grew, A painting all the people thronged to see, And joyed therein -- till came the Man Who Knew, Saying: "'Tis bad! Why do ye gape, ye fools!

He painteth not according to the schools."

The Dreamer probed Life's mystery of woe, And in a book he sought to give the clue; The people read, and saw that it was so, And read again -- then came the Man Who Knew, Saying: "Ye witless ones! this book is vile: It hath not got the rudiments of style."

Love smote the Dreamer's lips, and silver clear He sang a song so sweet, so tender true, That all the market-place was thrilled to hear, And listened rapt -- till came the Man Who Knew, Saying: "His technique's wrong; he singeth ill.

Waste not your time." The singer's voice was still.

And then the people roused as if from sleep, Crying: "What care we if it be not Art!

Hath he not charmed us, made us laugh and weep?

Come, let us crown him where he sits apart."

Then, with his picture spurned, his book unread, His song unsung, they found their Dreamer -- _DEAD_.

The Logger

In the moonless, misty night, with my little pipe alight, I am sitting by the camp-fire's fading cheer; Oh, the dew is falling chill on the dim, deer-haunted hill, And the breakers in the bay are moaning drear.

The toilful hours are sped, the boys are long abed, And I alone a weary vigil keep; In the sightless, sullen sky I can hear the night-hawk cry, And the frogs in frenzied chorus from the creek.

And somehow the embers' glow brings me back the long ago, The days of merry laughter and light song; When I sped the hours away with the gayest of the gay In the giddy whirl of fas.h.i.+on's festal throng.

Oh, I ran a grilling race and I little recked the pace, For the l.u.s.t of youth ran riot in my blood; But at last I made a stand in this G.o.d-forsaken land Of the pine-tree and the mountain and the flood.

And now I've got to stay, with an overdraft to pay, For pleasure in the past with future pain; And I'm not the chap to whine, for if the chance were mine I know I'd choose the old life once again.

With its woman's eyes a-s.h.i.+ne, and its flood of golden wine; Its fever and its frolic and its fun; The old life with its din, its laughter and its sin -- And chuck me in the gutter when it's done.

Ah, well! it's past and gone, and the memory is wan, That conjures up each old familiar face; And here by fortune hurled, I am dead to all the world, And I've learned to lose my pride and keep my place.

My ways are hard and rough, and my arms are strong and tough, And I hew the dizzy pine till darkness falls; And sometimes I take a dive, just to keep my heart alive, Among the gay saloons and dancing halls.

In the distant, dinful town just a little drink to drown The cares that crowd and canker in my brain; Just a little joy to still set my pulses all a-thrill, Then back to brutish labour once again.

And things will go on so until one day I shall know That Death has got me cinched beyond a doubt; Then I'll crawl away from sight, and morosely in the night My weary, wasted life will peter out.

Then the boys will gather round, and they'll launch me in the ground, And pile the stones the timber wolf to foil; And the moaning pine will wave overhead a nameless grave, Where the black snake in the suns.h.i.+ne loves to coil.

And they'll leave me there alone, and perhaps with softened tone Speak of me sometimes in the camp-fire's glow, As a played-out, broken chum, who has gone to Kingdom Come, And who went the pace in England long ago.