Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, JEFF HART, by CHARLES BADGER CLARK JR.


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

JEFF HART, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Jeff hart rode out of the gulch to war
Last Line: Next morning the world came in.
Alternate Author Name(s): Clark, Badger
Subject(s): Belgium; Cowboys; War


Jeff Hart rode out of the gulch to war
When the low sun yellowed the pines.
He waved to his folks in the cabin door
And yelled to the men at the mines.
The gulch kept watch till he dropped from sight—
Neighbors and girl and kin.
Jeff Hart rode out of the gulch one night;
Next morning the world came in.

His dad went back to the clinking drills
And his mother cooked for the men;
The pines branched black on the eastern hills,
Then black to the west again.
But never again, by dusk or dawn,
Were the days in the gulch the same,
For back up the trail Jeff Hart had gone
The trample of millions came.

Then never a clatter of dynamite
But echoed the guns of the Aisne,
And the coyote's wail in the woods at night
Was bitter with Belgium's pain.
We heard the snarl of a savage sea
In the pines when the wind went through,
And the strangers Jeff Hart fought to free
Grew folks to the folks he knew.

Jeff Hart has drifted for good and all,
To the ghostly bugles blown,
But the far French valley that saw him fall
Blood kin to the gulch is grown;
And his foreign folks are ours by right—
The friends that he died to win.
Jeff Hart rode out of the gulch one night;
Next morning the world came in.





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