Robert James Campbell Stead Poems

SERGEANT BLUE of the Mounted Police was a so-so kind of a guy ;
He swore a bit, and he lied a bit, and he boozed a bit on the sly;
But he held the post at Snake Creek Bend for country and home and God,
...

Well, no, I 'm not superstitious, — at least, I don't call it that, —
But when some one spins a creepy yarn I don't deny it flat,
For a man who spends a lifetime with the throttle in his hand
...

They were running out the try-lines, they were staking out the grade;
Through the hills they had to measure, through the sloughs they had to wade;
They were piercing unknown regions, they were crossing nameless streams,
...

Who owns the land ?
The Duke replied,
' I own the land. My fathers died
In winning it from foreign hands,
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We have heard the night wind howling as we lay alone in bed ;
We have heard the grey goose honking as he journeyed overhead;
We have smelt the smoke-wraith flying in the hot October wind,
...

Feelin' kind of all run down ?
Mighty bad:
Sick and tired o' life in town ?
Don 't be sad :
...

Yes, I'm holdin' down the homestead here an' roughin' it a bit,
It seems the only kind o' life that I was built to fit,
For it's thirty years last summer since I staked my first preserve,
An' I reckon on the whole I've prospered more than I deserve;
...

In the dingy dust of his deerskin tent sat the chief of a dying race,
And the lake that lapt at his wigwam door threw back a frowning face,
And a sightless squaw at the centre-pole crooned low in a hybrid speech,
When a man of God swept round the point and landed on the beach.
...

Little Tim Trotter was born in the West,
Where the prairie lies sunny and brown;
Never was, surely, so welcome a guest
In the stateliest halls of the town;
...

When Lord Landseeker came out West to have a look around,
And spend a little money if the right thing could be found,
He hadn't breathed the prairie air more than a day or two
Until he was the centre of a philanthropic crew
...