Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE SHEEP-HERDER, by CHARLES BADGER CLARK JR.


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE SHEEP-HERDER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: All day across the sagebrush flat
Last Line: Thank god! Here comes a man.
Alternate Author Name(s): Clark, Badger
Subject(s): Cowboys; Ranch Life; Sheep; Shepherds & Shepherdesses; Solitude; West (u.s.); Loneliness; Southwest; Pacific States


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—wagon! Hoot!
Thank God! here comes a man.





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