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

stove-pipe, ice on the bed,

Ice gleaming over all;

Sparkling ice on the dead man's chest,

Glittering ice in his hair,

Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart,

Ice in his glassy stare;

Hard as a log and trussed like a frog,

With his arms and legs outspread.

 

I gazed at the coffin I'd brought for him,

And I gazed at the gruesome dead,

And at last I spoke: "Bill liked his joke;

But still, goldarn his eyes,

A man had ought to consider his mates

In the way he goes and dies."

Have you ever stood in an Arctic hut

In the shadow of the Pole,

With a little coffin six by three

And a grief you can't control?

Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse

That looks at you with a grin,

And that seems to say: "You may try all day,

But you'll never jam me in"?

I'm not a man of the quitting kind,

But I never felt so blue

As I sat there gazing at that stiff

And studying what I'd do.

 

Then I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs

That were nosing round about,

And I lit a roaring fire in the stove,

And I started to thaw Bill out.

Well, I thawed and thawed for thirteen days,

But it didn't seem no good;

His arms and legs stuck out like pegs,

As if they was made of wood.

Till at last I said: "It ain't no use --

He's froze too hard to thaw;

He's obstinate, and he won't lie straight,

So I guess I got to -- saw."

So I sawed off poor Bill's arms and legs,

And I laid him snug and straight

In the little coffin he picked hisself,

With the dinky silver plate;

And I came nigh near to shedding a tear

As I nailed him safely down;

Then I stowed him away in my Yukon sleigh,

And I started back to town.

 

So I buried him as the contract was

In a narrow grave and deep,

And there he's waiting the Great Clean-up,

When the Judgment sluice-heads sweep;

And I smoke my pipe and I meditate

In the light of the Midnight Sun,

And sometimes I wonder if they was,

The awful things I done.

And as I sit and the parson talks,

Expounding of the Law,

I often think of poor old Bill --

And how hard he was to saw.

 

by Robert Service

 

 

THE BAREFOOT BOY

Blessings on thee, little man,

Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!

With thy upturned pantaloons,

And thy merry whistled tunes;

With thy red lip, redder still

Kissed by strawberries on the hill;

With the sunshine on thy face,

Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace;

From my heart I give thee joy-

I was once a barefoot boy!

Prince thou art-the grown-up man

Only is republican.

Let the million-dollared ride!

Barefoot, trudging at his side,

Thou hast more than he can buy

In the reach of ear and eye-

Outward sunshine, inward joy:

Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!

O for boyhood's painless play,

Sleep that wakes in laughing day,

Health that mocks the doctor's rules,

Knowledge never learned of schools:

Of the wild bee's morning chase,

Of the wild flower's time and place,

Flight of fowl and habitude

Of the tenants of the wood;

How the tortoise bears his shell,

How the woodchuck digs his cell,

And the ground-mole sinks his well;

How the robin feeds her young,

How the oriole's nest is hung;

Where the whitest lilies blow,

Where the freshest berries grow,

Where the groundnut trails its vine,

Where the wood-grape's clusters shine;

Of the black wasp's cunning way,

Mason of his walls of clay,

And the architectural plans

Of gray hornet artisans!-

For, eschewing books and tasks,

Nature answers all he asks;

Hand in hand with her he walks,

Face to face with her he talks,

Part and parcel of her joy-

Blessings on the barefoot boy!

O for boyhood's time of June,

Crowding years in one brief moon,

When all things I heard or saw,

Me, their master, waited for.

I was rich in flowers and trees,

Humming-birds and honey-bees;

For my sport the squirrel played,

Plied the spouted mole his spade;

For my taste the blackberry cone

Purpled over hedge and stone;

Laughed the brook for my delight

Through the day and through the night,

Whispering at the garden wall,

Talked with me from fall to fall;

Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,

Mine the walnut slopes beyond,

Mine, on bending orchard trees,

Apples of Hesperides!

Still, as my horizon grew,

Larger grew my riches, too;

All the world I saw or knew

Seemed a complex Chinese toy,

Fashioned for a barefoot boy!

O for festal dainties spread,

Like my bowl of milk and bread_

Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,

On the door-stone, gray and rude!

O'er me like a regal tent,

Cloudy ribbed, the sunset bent,

Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,

Looped in many a wind-swung fold;

While for music came the play

Of the pied frogs' orchestra;

And, to light the noisy choir,

Lit the fly his lamp of fire.

I was monarch: pomp and joy

Waited on the barefoot boy!

Cheerily, then, my little man,

Live and laugh as boyhood can!

Though the flinty slopes be hard,

Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,

Every morn shall lead thee through

Fresh baptisms of the dew;

Every evening from thy feet

Shall the cool wind kiss the heat

All too soon these feet must hide

In the prison cells of pride,

Lose the freedom of the sod,

Like a colt's for work be shod,

Made to tread the mills of toil,

Up and down in ceaseless moil:

Happy if their track be found

Never on forbidden ground;

Happy if they sink not in

Quick and treacherous sands of sin.

Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,

Ere it passes, barefoot boy!

 

by Whittier

 

 

 

The Children's Hour

Between the dark and the daylight,

When the night is beginning to lower,

Comes a pause in the day's occupations,

That is known as the Children's Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me

The patter of little feet,

The sound of a door that is opened,

And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,

Descending the broad hall stair,

Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,

And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence:

Yet I know by their merry eyes

They are plotting and planning together

To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,

A sudden raid from the hall!

By three doors left unguarded

They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret

O'er the arms and back of my chair;

If I try to escape, they surround me;

They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,

Their arms about me entwine,

Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen

In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,

Because you have scaled the wall,

Such an old moustache as I am

Is not a match for you all!

I have you fast in my fortress,

And will not let you depart,

But put you down into the dungeon

In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,

Yes, forever and a day,

Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,

And moulder in dust away!

 

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

 

The Cremation of Sam McGee

Robert W. Service (1874-1958)

 

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;

 

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

 

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee,
where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam
'round the Pole, God only knows.

 

He was always cold, but the land of gold
seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way
that 'he'd sooner live in hell.'

 

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way
over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold
it stabbed like a driven nail.

 

If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze
till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one
to whimper was Sam McGee.

 

And that very night, as we lay packed tight
in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead
were dancing heel and toe,

 

He turned to me, and 'Cap', says he,
'I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you
won't refuse my last request.'

 

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no;
then he says with a sort of moan:
'It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold,
till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.

 

Yet 'tain't being dead -- it's my awful dread
of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you swear that, foul or fair,
you'll cremate my last remains.'

 

A pal's last need is a thing to heed,
so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn;
but God! he looked ghastly pale.

 

He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day
of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all
that was left of Sam McGee.

 

There wasn't a breath in that land of death,
and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid,
because of a promise given.

 

It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say:
'You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you,
to cremate those last remains.'

 

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid,
and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb,
in my heart how I cursed that load.

 

In the long, long night, by the lone firelight,
while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows --
Oh God! how I loathed the thing.

 

And every day that quiet clay
seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent
and the grub was getting low;

 

The trail was bad, and I felt half mad,
but I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing,
and it harkened with a grin.

 

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge,