CICELY says you're a poet; maybe,-I ain't much on rhyme: I reckon you'd give me a hundred, and beat me every time. Poetry-that's the way some chaps puts up an idee, But I takes mine "straight without sugar," and that's what's the matter with me. Poetry-just look round you,-alkali, rock, and sage; Sun in the east at mornin', sun in the west at night, Poetry!-Well now-Polly! Polly, run to your mam; Ye noticed Polly,-the baby? A month afore she was born, Narvous she was, and restless, said that she "couldn't stay." Stay!—and the nearest woman seventeen miles away. But I fixed it up with the doctor, and he said he would be on hand, And I kinder stuck by the shanty, and fenced in that bit o' land. One night, the tenth of October,-I woke with a chill and a fright, For the door it was standing open, and Cicely warn't in sight, But a note was pinned on the blanket, which it said that she "couldn't stay," But had gone to visit her neighbour,-seventeen miles away! When and how she stampeded, I didn't wait for to see, the scent, For there warn't no track in the darkness to tell me the way she went. I've had some mighty mean moments afore I kem to this spot, Lost on the Plains in '50, drownded almost and shot; "Cicely! Cicely! Cicely!" I called, and I held my breath, And "Cicely!" came from the canyon,-and all was as still as death. And "Cicely! Cicely! Cicely!" came from the rocks below, And jest but a whisper of "Cicely!" down from them peaks of snow. I ain't what you call religious,-but I jest looked up to the sky, And this yer's to what I'm coming, and maybe ye think I lie : But up away to the east'ard, yaller and big and far, I saw of a suddent rising the singlerist kind of star. Big and yaller and dancing, it seemed to beckon to me : Over the brush and bowlders I stumbled and pushed ahead; Keeping the star afore me, I went wharever it led. It might hev been for an hour, when suddent and peart and nigh, Out of the yearth afore me thar riz up a baby's cry. Listen! thar's the same music; but her lungs they are stronger now Than the day I packed her and her mother, I'm derned if I jest know how. But the doctor kem the next minit, and the joke o' the whole thing is That Cis never knew what happened from that very night to this! |