The Smoke-Blue Plains Poem by Charles Badger Clark

Kissed me from the saddle, and I still can feel it burning,
But he must have felt it cold, for ice was in my veins.
I shall always see him as he waved above the turning,
Riding down the canyon to the smoke-blue plains.
Oh, the smoke-blue plains! how I used to watch them sleeping,
Thinking peace had dimmed them with the shadow of her wings;
Now their gentle haze will seem a smoke of death a-creeping,
Drifted from the fighting in the country of the kings.

Joked me to the last, and in a voice without a quaver—
Man o' mine!—but underneath the brown his cheek was pale.
Never did the nation breed a kinder or a braver
Since our fathers landed from the long sea trail.
Oh, the long sea trail he must leave me here to follow—
He that never saw a ship—to dare its chances blind,
Out the deadly reaches where the sinking steamers wallow,
Back to trampled countries that his fathers left behind.

Down beyond the plains among the fighting and the dying,
God must watch his reckless foot and follow where it lights;
Guard the places where his blessed, tousled head is lying—
Head my shoulder pillowed through the warm safe nights!
Oh, the warm, safe nights, and the pine above the shingles!
Can I stand its crooning and the patter of the rains?
Oh, the sunny quiet and a bridle-bit that jingles,
Coming up the canyon from the smoke-blue plains!