Dad's Favorite Ballads & Poems - Dave Horton (best book club books for discussion .txt) 📗

An introduction

My Father was a hard driving truck driver. He worked for minimal wages from before the sun came up in the morning till after midnight most days of the week. He was knoiwn as one of the most honest men in the small town we lived in so his word was his bond. I loved to go ride in the truck with him so he allowed that when school was out for the summer.

I recall him singing

"My old Man's a Dustman,
He wears a dustman's hat
He wears cor blimey trousers
And he lives in a council flat
He looks a proper narner
In his great big hobnail boots
He's got such a job to pull 'em up
That he calls them daisy roots

Some folk give tips at Christmas
And some of them forget
So when he picks their bins up
He spills some on the steps
Now one old man got nasty
And to the council wrote
Next time my old man went 'round there
He punched him up the throat

Oh, my old man's a dustman
He wears a dustman's hat...

He would start a poem about the boy who stood on the burning deck eating peanuts by the peck... It was a takeoff on Casabianca and he could rhyme off the real poem. He explained to us kids he had to learn these old favorites in school and he loved them so much he memorized them all. Here I have placed some of his favorites.

CASABIANCA

The boy stood on the burning deck
  Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
  Shone round him o'er the dead.

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
  As born to rule the storm;
A creature of heroic blood,
  A proud, though child-like form.

The flames rolled on -- he would not go
  Without his Father's word;
That father, faint in death below,
  His voice no longer heard.

He called aloud -- 'say, Father, say
  If yet my task is done?'
He knew not that the chieftain lay
  Unconscious of his son.

'Speak, father!' once again he cried,
  'If I may yet be gone!'
And but the booming shots replied,
  And fast the flames rolled on.

Upon his brow he felt their breath,
  And in his waving hair,
And looked from that lone post of death
  In still yet brave despair.

And shouted but once more aloud,
  'My father! must I stay?'
While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud,
  The wreathing fires made way.

They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,
  They caught the flag on high,
And streamed above the gallant child,
  Like banners in the sky.

There came a burst of thunder sound --
   The boy -- oh! where was he?
Ask of the winds that far around
  With fragments strewed the sea! --

With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,
  That well had borne their part --
But the noblest thing which perished there
  Was that young faithful heart.

FELICIA HEMANS (1793-1835)

MY SHADOW

By Robert Louis Stevenson

 

I HAVE a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

 

He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;

And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

 

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow-

Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;

 

For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,

And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.

 

He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,

And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.

 

He stays so close beside me, he's a coward, you can see;

I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

 

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,

I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;

 

But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepyhead,

Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed. 

 

 

Somebody's Mother

 - Mabel Down (Northam) Brine

 

THE woman was old and ragged and gray

And bent with the chill of the Winter's day.

The street was wet with a recent snow

And the woman's feet were aged and slow.

She stood at the crossing and waited long,

Alone, uncared for, amid the throng

Of human beings who passed her by

Nor heeded the glance of her anxious eyes.

Down the street, with laughter and shout,

Glad in the freedom of "school let out,"

Came the boys like a flock of sheep,

Hailing the snow piled white and deep.

Past the woman so old and gray

Hastened the children on their way.

Nor offered a helping hand to her --

So meek, so timid, afraid to stir

Lest the carriage wheels or the horses' feet

Should crowd her down in the slippery street.

At last came one of the merry troop,

The gayest laddie of all the group:

He paused beside her and whispered low,

"I'll help you cross, if you wish to go."

Her aged hand on his strong young arm

She placed, and so, without hurt or harm,

He guided the trembling feet along,

Proud that his own were firm and strong.

Then back again to his friends he went,

His young heart happy and well content.

"She's somebody's mother, boys, you know,

For all she's aged and poor and slow.

"And I hope some fellow will lend a hand

To help my mother, you understand,

"If ever she's poor and old and gray,

When her own dear boy is far away."

And "somebody's mother" bowed low her head

In her home that night, and the prayer she said

Was "God be kind to the noble boy,

Who is somebody's son, and pride and joy!"

 

The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

I took a contract to bury the body

Of blasphemous Bill MacKie,

Whenever, wherever or whatsoever

The manner of death he die --

Whether he die in the light o' day

Or under the peak-faced moon;

In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive,

Mucklucks or patent shoon;

On velvet tundra or virgin peak,

By glacier, drift or draw;

In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom,

By avalanche, fang or claw;

By battle, murder or sudden wealth,

By pestilence, hooch or lead --

I swore on the Book I would follow and look

Till I found my tombless dead.

 

For Bill was a dainty kind of cuss,

And his mind was mighty sot

On a dinky patch with flowers and grass

In a civilized bone-yard lot.

And where he died or how he died,

It didn't matter a damn

So long as he had a grave with frills

And a tombstone "epigram".

So I promised him, and he paid the price

In good cheechako coin

(Which the same I blowed in that very night

Down in the Tenderloin).

Then I painted a three-foot slab of pine:

"Here lies poor Bill MacKie",

And I hung it up on my cabin wall

And I waited for Bill to die.

 

Years passed away, and at last one day

Came a squaw with a story strange,

Of a long-deserted line of traps

'Way back of the Bighorn range;

Of a little hut by the great divide,

And a white man stiff and still,

Lying there by his lonesome self,

And I figured it must be Bill.

So I thought of the contract I'd made with him,

And I took down from the shelf

The swell black box with the silver plate

He'd picked out for hisself;

And I packed it full of grub and "hooch",

And I slung it on the sleigh;

Then I harnessed up my team of dogs

And was off at dawn of day.

 

You know what it's like in the Yukon wild

When it's sixty-nine below;

When the ice-worms wriggle their purple heads

Through the crust of the pale blue snow;

When the pine-trees crack like little guns

In the silence of the wood,

And the icicles hang down like tusks

Under the parka hood;

When the stove-pipe smoke breaks sudden off,

And the sky is weirdly lit,

And the careless feel of a bit of steel

Burns like a red-hot spit;

When the mercury is a frozen ball,

And the frost-fiend stalks to kill --

Well, it was just like that that day when I

Set out to look for Bill.

 

Oh, the awful hush that seemed to crush

Me down on every hand,

As I blundered blind with a trail to find

Through that blank and bitter land;

Half dazed, half crazed in the winter wild,

With its grim heart-breaking woes,

And the ruthless strife for a grip on life

That only the sourdough knows!

North by the compass, North I pressed;

River and peak and plain

Passed like a dream I slept to lose

And I waked to dream again.

River and plain and mighty peak --

And who could stand unawed?

As their summits blazed, he could stand undazed

At the foot of the throne of God.

 

North, aye, North, through a land accurst,

Shunned by the scouring brutes,

And all I heard was my own harsh word

And the whine of the malamutes,

Till at last I came to a cabin squat,

Built in the side of a hill,

And I burst in the door, and there on the floor,

Frozen to death, lay Bill.

Ice, white ice, like a winding-sheet,

Sheathing each smoke-grimed wall;

Ice on the