Charles Badger Clark Poems

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