Henry Herbert Knibbs

Rating: 4.67
Rating: 4.67

Henry Herbert Knibbs Poems

Never twice in the world you find,
A lad whose heart is the gold you spend,
And his free hand of your heart, in kind,
...

I don't mind working to earn my bread,
And I'd just as soon keep straight;
I've listened to what the preacher said
About rams and sheep at the gate;
...

'Save your hoss for the hills ahead,' is the cowboy's placid song.
While his clear eyes follow the twinkling train as the Titan speeds along;
...

Now Mr. Boomer Johnson was a gettin' old in spots,
But you don't expect a bad man to go wrastlin' pans and pots;
...

Chinook, you're free: there's plenty pasture there:
Your gallant years have earned you more ... and
yet ..
...

The bronco's mighty wild and tough,
And full of outdoor feelin's:
His feet are quick, his ways are rough,
He's careless in his dealin's.
...

Little Bronc, I'm goin' to ride you—you a-hidin' in between
Blue and Baldy! Think you're bluffin'
With your snortin' and your puffin';
Quit! and save yourself a roughin',
...

My pony was standin' thinkin' deep;
Can hosses think? Well, I reckon so!
And I was squattin', half asleep,
When into the firelight stepped a Bo.
...

Sunlight, a colt from the ranges, glossy and gentle and strong,
Dazed by the multiple thunder of wheels and the thrust of the sea,
Fretted and chafed at the changes—ah, but the journey was long!
Officer's charger—a wonder—pick of the stables was he.
...

On, out in the West where the riders are ready,
They sing an old song and they tell an old tale,
And its moral is plain: Take it easy, go steady,
...

My pony knickers at the corral bars,
The fog drifts landward from the evening sea:
The trail we rode is dim beneath the stars...
...

Twenty abreast down the golden street, ten thousand riders marched;
Bow-legged boys in their swinging chaps, all clumsily keeping time;
...

A song of the range, an old-time song,
To the patter of pony's feet,
That he used to sing as we rode along,
In the hush of the noonday heat;
...

Once I heard a Hobo, singing by the tie-trail,
Squatting by the red rail rusty with the dew:
Singing of the firelight, singing of the high-trail
...

The rabbit's ears are flattened and he's squattin' scared and still,
Ag'inst the dripping cedar; and the quail below the hill
...

Did you ever wait for daylight
when the stars along the river
Floated thick and white as snowflakes
in the water deep and strange,
...

Only a few of us understood his ways and his outfit queer,
His saddle horse and his pack-horse, as lean as a winter steer,
...

On the silver edge of a vacant star near the trembling Pleiades,
A Hobo, lately arrived from earth sat rubbing his rusty chin,
...

The scattering sage stands thin and tense
As though afraid of the barbed-wire fence;
A windmill purrs in the lazy breeze
...

My dam was a mustang white and proud,
My sire was as black as a thunder cloud;
I was foaled on the mesas cold and high,
...

Henry Herbert Knibbs Biography

Henry Herbert Knibbs was born to American parents on October 24, 1874, in Clifton, Ontario (later known as Niagara Falls). He became fascinated by the fiddle and learned to play at an early age. He suffered from a respiratory ailment for most of his life. Knibbs never worked as a cowboy, but he wrote western short stories, novels and poems. His father, George Knibbs, was a bank clerk at Pierce, Howard and Co., Bankers in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Eventually the company failed, casting the family into hard times. Knibbs spent summer vacations at his grandparents' farm in Pennsylvania. On the farm, he developed a love of horses nearly as great as that for his fiddle. Though he never earned a college degree, Knibbs attended Woodstock College and Bishop Ridley College in Ontario and studied English at Harvard. Leaving college, he spent two years hoboing in the American Midwest. In 1899, he married Ida Julia Pfeifer and went to work for the railroad in Buffalo, N.Y. In 1910, he moved to California and wrote his first Western novel, Lost Farm Camp. He then left on a long trip through New Mexico, Arizona and California to soak up local color for his writing. In 1929, Knibbs left his wife to live with Turbesé Lummis Fiske. Ida refused to grant him a divorce and wrote him daily begging him to return home. Turbesé, whose father, Charles Lummis, was a Western writer, influenced and edited much of his later work. Knibbs wrote 13 novels and six books of poems. His novels are out of print and largely forgotten, but his poetry remains popular in cowboy poet circles. Among his best remembered poems are Boomer Johnson and When the Ponies Come to Drink. Seven films made between 1919 and 1930 were based on his stories and novels. Knibbs career as a Western write came to a sudden halt when he mistakenly gave the period of a mare's gestation as nine months in a story published in the Saturday Evening Post. He was crucified by his peers for the mistake. He certainly knew that the correct period was 11 months, but this slip of the pen cost him his writing career, as he was never able to get another piece published. He died in San Diego, California, on May 17, 1945, from respiratory illness.)

The Best Poem Of Henry Herbert Knibbs

Drink Deep

Never twice in the world you find,
A lad whose heart is the gold you spend,
And his free hand of your heart, in kind,
When the joy of each is to give, not lend:
Yes one shall tarry and one shall sleep,
So while you stand in the sun, drink deep.
Soon, too soon shall the sunlight pass,
And one shall mourn in the starless night,
As he snaps the stem of an empty glass,
That brimmed of old with a brave delight:
And one of you twain must the vigil keep,
So while you stand in the sun, drink deep.

Henry Herbert Knibbs Comments

John V 02 February 2020

trying to find a copy of H. H. Knibbs " he'll make a hand"

0 0 Reply
Clay Church 15 February 2019

While far-reaching WEB s the Kicker a few of Mr. knights lines touched a cord within me. I have decided to follow up on this whim and see if I can re-kindle my infatuation with his verse.

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