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Frontier ballads
Small things to a Nation embattled,
But great to the pioneer band Who are blazing the roads of the future
Through the wastes of a wilderness land.
We plod past the desolate coulees
In the sweltering afternoon heat. While the far ridges shine in a waving blue line
Where the earth and the brazen sky meet.
No sound save the hoofs of the column
As they swish through the dry prairie grass,
No life anywhere save a hawk, high in air, Gazing down as we wearily pass.
There is never a foe we may grapple
In the heat of a steel-clashing fray, For the quarry we hunt is a shadow in front
That flits, and comes never to bay;
A feather of smoke to the zenith,
The print of a hoof in the sod, A shot from the grass where the far flankers pass
Sending one more poor comrade to God.
Would we rest when the day's work is over And the stars twinkle out in the sky?
There is double patrol round the lean water-hole And the picketed horses hard by.
Breast-down in the rain-rutted gully,
With muskets clutched close in our hands,
The hours of night drag their heavy-winged flight Like Eternity's slow falling sands.
While the Great Dipper, pinned to the Pole Star, Swings low in the dome of the North
And, faint through the dark, sounds the prairie wolf's bark Or a snake from the weeds rustles forth. |
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