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Frontier Ballads
Huge of limb and tusked like tree-trunks,
When the evening sun hung low Slugged the mammoths down to gambol in its tide,
And 'twas there that, ringed and goaded
By the cave-men's spears and bows, They fell in blinded agony and died.
So, for dim, uncounted aeons
Did the torrent sweep along, Rolling centuries like pebbles in its sands,
And the prairies sprung and blossomed
And the bison herds grew strong, And the red men camped and hunted through its lands.
Till there came at last a season
When a gaunt-limbed figure burst Through the woods that lipped the current's whirling foam,
And the flint-lock that he shifted
As he stooped to quench his thirst Told the wilderness the first white man was come!
He, the white man, the magician,
Searcher, soldier, settler, lord, Heir to all the crusted cycles of the past!
What were endless, lagging eras
While earth's wealth was being stored To the pageant of his power at the last?
Came new visions to the river;
Came the voyageur's swift canoe, Gliding ghost-like to the silent, dipping oar;
And the blunt-bowed keel-boat harnessed
To its brawny, sweating crew, As they trailed the long cordelle-rope up the shore.
Came the block-house of the fur-trade,
Where the trappers brought their spoil From bison-range and log-laced beaver fall;
French and half-breed, Sioux and Yankee,
Flinging out a season's toil For a week of drunken revelry and brawl. |
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