THEY drive the helpless cattle in With oaths and cries and blows ... The train draws eastward while the dusk Is all a dying rose. Behind, our little waycar rides, Twin-lighted, while ahead The engine fires the gulfing gloom With burst on burst of red. Strange is the cargo that we bear: We've gleaned from pen and byre Leg-sprawling calfs and huddled sheep And swine that reek of mire, Wild, frightened steers from Western plains, That bellow, push, and lower— A Stockyard leaping through the night At forty miles an hour. |