Charles Badger Clark Poems

I ride alone and hate the boys I meet.
Today, some way, their laughin' hurts me so.
I hate the mockin'-birds in the mesquite-
And yet I liked 'em just a week ago.
...

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

Trailing the last gleam after,
In the valleys emptied of light,
Ripples a whimsical laughter
Under the wings of the night.
...

(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
...

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.
...

Spanish is the lovin' tongue,
Soft as music, lights as spray.
'Twas a girl I learnt it from,
Livin' down Sonora way.
...

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-
...

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.
...

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
...

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.
...