All day across the sagebrush flat Beneath the sun of June, My sheep they loaf and feed and blat Their never changin' tune. And then at night time, when they lay As quiet as a stone, I hear the gray wolf far away; "Alo-one!" he says, "Alo-one!" A-a! m-a! ba-a! eh-eh-eh! The tune the woollies sing; It's rasped my ears, it seems, for years, Though really just since spring; And nothin', far as I kin see Around the circle's sweep, But sky and plains, my dreams and me And them infernal sheep. I've got one book—it's poetry— A bunch of pretty wrongs An Eastern lunger gave to me; He said 'twas "shepherd songs." But though that poet sure is deep And has sweet things to say, He never seen a herd of sheep, Or smelt them, anyway. A-a! ma-a! ba-a! eh-eh-eh! My woollies greasy gray, An awful change has hit the range Since that old poet's day. For you're just silly, on'ry brutes And I look like distress And my pipe ain't the kind that toots And there's no "shepherdess." Yet 'way down home in Kansas State, Bliss Township, Section Five, There's one that promised me to wait, The sweetest girl alive. That's why I salt my wages down And mend my clothes with strings, While others blow their pay in town For booze and other things. A-a! ma-a! ba-a! eh-eh-eh! My Minnie, don't be sad; Next year we'll lease that splendid piece That corners on your dad. We'll drive to "literary," dear, The way we used to do And turn my lonesome workin' here To happiness for you. Suppose, down near that rattlers' den, While I sit here and dream, I'd see a bunch of ugly men And hear a woman scream. Suppose I'd let my rifle shout And drop the men in rows. And then the woman should turn out— My Minnie!—just suppose. A-a! m-a! ba-a! eh-eh-eh! The tune would then be gay; There is, I mind, a parson kind Just forty miles away. Why Eden would come back again With sage and sheep corrals, And I could swing a singin' pen To write her "pastorals." I pack a rifle on my arm And jump at flies that buzz; There's nothin' here to do me harm I sometimes wish there was. If through that brush above the pool A red should creep—and creep— Wah! cut down on 'im! Stop, you fool! That's nothin' but a sheep. A-a! ma-a! ba-a!—Hell! Oh, sky and plain and bluff! Unless my mail comes up the trail I'm locoed, sure enough. What's that?—a dust-whiff near the butte Right where my last trail ran, A movin' speck, a—@3wagon!@1 Hoot! Thank God! here comes a man. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ON THE EVE OF DEPARTURE FROM O-- by MATILDA BARBARA BETHAM-EDWARDS WOOD MAGIC by FRANCES HALLEY BROCKETT THE WANDERER: 2. IN FRANCE: SORCERY by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON THE OLD VERMONT FARM by DANIEL LEAVENS CADY DIVINA COMMEDIA: PURGATORIO. THE CELESTIAL PILOT by DANTE ALIGHIERI |