Charles Badger Clark

The daybreak comes so pure and still.
He said that I was pure as dawn,
That day we climbed to Signal Hill.
...

No fresh green things in the Bad Lands bide;
It is all stark red and gray,
And strewn with bones that had lived and died
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We're the prairie pilgrim crew,
Sailin' with the sun,
Lookin' West to meet a great reward,
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Oh, days whoop by with swingin' lope
And days slip by a-sleepin',
And days must drag, with lazy rope,
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This I declare: As I trudge the road
Of pain-filled souls with a heavy load—
A pilgrim lad, with staff in hand, plodding along through the shifting sand;
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My father prayed as he drew a bead on the graycoats,
Back in those blazing years when the house was divided.
Bless his old heart! There never was truer or kinder;
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All mornin' in the mesa's glare
After his crouchin' back I clattered,
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You and I settled this section together;
Youthful and mettled and wild were we then.
You were the gladdest town out in the weather;
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I dread the break when I shall die—
Not from my human friends, for they
Are shifting shadows such as I
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Our town has history enough.
Across the railroad, on the bluff,
Prof. scans the records of our age
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Stop! there's the wild bunch to right of the trail,
Heads up and ears up and ready to sail,
Led by a mare with the green in her eyes,
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Fathers with eyes of ancient ire,
Old eagles shorn of flight,
Forget the breed of my blue-eyed sire
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Trailing the last gleam after,
In the valleys emptied of light,
Ripples a whimsical laughter
Under the wings of the night.
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(Written for Mother)

Oh Lord, I've never lived where churches
grow.
I love creation better as it stood
That day You finished it so long ago
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I rode across a valley range
I hadn't seen for years.
The trail was all so spoilt and strange
It nearly fetched the tears.
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Spanish is the lovin' tongue,
Soft as music, lights as spray.
'Twas a girl I learnt it from,
Livin' down Sonora way.
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Men of the older, gentler soil,
Loving the things that their fathers wrought-
Worn old fields of their father's toil,
Scarred old hills where their fathers fought-
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The wind is blowin' cold down the mountain tips of snow
And 'cross the ranges layin' brown and dead;
It's cryin' through the valley trees that wear the mistletoe
And mournin' with the gray clouds overhead.
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One time, 'way back where the year marks fade
God said: 'I see I must lose my West,
The place where I've always come to rest,
For the White Man grows till he fights for bread
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You've watched the ground-hog's shadow and the shiftin' weather signs
Till the Northern prairie starred itse'f with flowers;
You've seen the snow a-meltin' up among the Northern pines
And the mountain creeks a-roarin' with the showers.
...