Poetry Thursday: AE Housman

Teen here with a few verses I just happen to like. Not the stuff of legends, but good solid stuff no less. All american poetry, mostly cowboy verse.

Horseback Men: From an excerpt in “The Oregon Journal” 1927.

The Horseback men were the freest men
From the days of the big ice pack,
When they first crawled out of their musty den
And followed a horse’s track.
The cave man crouched in the dark and died
But his son found out that the world is wide
When he climbed on a horse’s back.

Horseback men, O horseback men,
Bowlegged brave old crew!
Here’s to your kin where the free stars spin–
Cowpuncher, Cossack, and Bedoin,
Gaucho, Mongol, and Sioux!

The bold Goth spurred into lazy Rome;
Great Ghenges loped with his force;
Our westerner fought for his wild new home
Bestriding a bronc, of course.
New land, new freedom, or just the deuce–
Whenever the spirit of man broke loose
He went and straddled a horse.

Horseback men, O horseback men,
The weak hide under their roofs,
But only the strong to your tribe belong,
So history’s mostly a horseback song,
And set to the thud of the hoofs.

But the sword bows down to the monkey-wrench
And the saddle fades from the scene,
For the warrior squats in a miry trench,
Or charges by gasoline–
And grim Time, quitting his old horse jog,
Whirls us forward into the fog
On the wings of a swift machine.

Horseback men, O horseback men,
Your long day dims at last,
But your fame will climb to a myth subline
From the horse tracks think on the trail of Time
And the echo of hoofs from the past.

The Dreams of the East:

Men look to the East for the dawning things,
for the light of a rising sun;
But they look to the West, to the crimson West,
for the things that are done, are done!
The eastward sun is a new made hope from the
dark of the night distilled;
But the westward sun is a sunset sun, is the sun
of a hope fulfilled!

So out of the East they have always come,
the cradle that saw the birth
Of all the heart-warm hopes of man
and all of the hopes of earth;
For out of the East arose the Christ,
and out of the East has gleamed
The dearest dream and the dearest dream that
ever a prophet dreamed.

And into the waiting West they go with the
dream-child of the East.
And find that the hopes that they hoped of old are
a hundred-fold increased.
For here in the East we dream our dreams,
of the things that we hope to do.
And here in the West, the crimson West,
the dreams of the East come true!

And a cowboy poem because I can. Attributed to ‘C.B. Clark, Jr.” In an Oregon newspaper. With dialect.
Good -Bye old Forty-Five
The trails are safe: old foes forgot;
We’ve shook the law of gun and dirk.
The West has turned form blood to sweat
And put her fightin’ strength to work;
And now with outlaw, brave and scout,
Old Forty-Five, you’re goin’ out.

In old, old times, when things were raw,
You yelped the happy man’s delight;
You spoke the thunder of the law;
You howled red murder through the night.
For good or bad, for court or dive,
You had your word, old Forty-Five.

But when you plugged a good man’s vest,
I reckon you were just mislead—
I think about you at your best,
The way I would a pard that’s dead.
Though these new settlers snort and flout
Your virtues, now you’re goin’ out.

Remeberin’ that wild old land,
The long, lone nights, the weeks on end
When feelin’ you beneath my hand
Was like the hand-grip of a friend,
With all your sins I kain’t contrive
To cuss you, good old Forty-Five!

We’ve outgrowed simple shootin’ frays,
Yet still the fightin’ spirit serves;
Our battles spill less blood these days,
But strain some harder on the nerves.
The West still calls for hearts that’s stout,
Though you, old boy, are goin’ out.

In our new fights you kain’t belong,
Yet leave us what we learned from you—
The hand that’s steady, swift and strong,
The eye that’s quick and keen and true—
to help us ‘long the forward drive.
Goodbye old pard, old Forty-Five.

One more that i have to type up from a book of mine. The poet didn’t title it, but my book calls it “califonrian gold”. Written during the gold rush. Contains some amazing chains of unbroken rhyme. And some words that even I puzzled at.
Come hither muse, and tell the news,
Nor be thou a deceiver.
But sing in plain poetic strain
The present “Yellow Fever.”
Not long ago I laid me down
To rest in quiet slumbers,
And whilst I slept I dreamed a dream
And coined into numbers.
I thought I saw on every hand
A mighty congregation—
A heterogenous mass of men
Of every name and nation—
And each pursued with keen delight
Some honest occupation,
Whilst rosy health, the laborer’s wealth,
Filled every situations.
And then I looked, and lo! i saw
A herald bright advancing!
A being form some other climb
On golden pinions dancing.
And as it neared the mighty crowd,
He made this proclamation,
In tones so clear, distinct, and loud,
It startled half the nation:
“Why do you labor here?” He cried,
“For merely life and pleasure,
When just beyond that mountain gray
Lies wealth beyond all measure!
The road is plain, the way is smooth,
‘Tis neither rough nor thorny;
Come leave this rugged glebe and go
with me to California!
There is choice to be had on every hand
And each may be partaker!
Where fifty tons of finest gold
Are dug from every acre!!!”
At sound of gold both young and old
Forsook their occupation,
And wild confusion seemed to rule,
In every situation.
An old cordwainer heard the news
And, though not much elated,
He left his pile of boots and shoes
And just evaporated.
The cooper left his tubs and pails,
His buckets and his piggins;
The sailor left his yards and sails
And started for the “diggin’s”.
The farmer left his plow and steers,
The merchant left his measures;
The tailor dropped his goose and shears
And went to gather treasures.
A pedagogue, attired incog.
Gave ear to what was stated,
Forsook his school, bestrode a mule,
And then absquatulated!
A boatman, too, forsook his crew,
Let fall his oar and paddle,
And stole his neighbor’s iron grey,
But went without a saddle.
The joiner dropped his square and jack,
The carpenter his chisel;
The peddler laid aside his pack,
And all prepared to “mizzle”.
The woodsman dropped his trusty axe;
The tanner left his leather;
The miller left his pile of sacks,
And all went off together.
The doctor cocked his yee askance,
The promised wealth descrying,
Then wheeled his horse and off he pranced,
And left his patients dying.
The preacher dropped the Holy Book
And grasped the mad illusion;
The herdsman left his flock and crook
Amid the wild confusion.
The judge consigned to cold neglect
The great judicial ermine;
But just which way his honor went
I could not well determine.
And then I saw, far in the rear
A prosperous attorney
Collect his last retaining fee
And start upon his journey.
And when each brain in that vast train
Was perfectly inverted,
My slumber broke and I awoke,
And found the place deserted.

Lastly, here’s a very different one indeed:
Evolution
By Langdon Smith

When you were a tadpole and I was a fish
In the Paleozoic time,
And side by side on the ebbing tide
We sprawled through the ooze and slime,
Or skittered with many a caudal flip
Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,
My heart was rife with the joy of life,
For I loved you even then.

Mindless we lived and mindless we loved
And mindless at last we died;
And deep in the rift of the Caradoc drift
We slumbered side by side.
The world turned on in the lathe of time,
The hot lands heaved amain,
Till we caught our breath from the womb of death
And crept into life again.

We were amphibians, scaled and tailed,
And drab as a dead man’s hand;
We coiled at ease ‘neath the dripping trees
Or trailed through the mud and sand.
Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet
Writing a language dumb,
With never a spark in the empty dark
To hint at a life to come.

Yet happy we lived and happy we loved,
And happy we died once more;
Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold
Of a Neocomian shore.
The eons came and the eons fled
And the sleep that wrapped us fast
Was riven away in a newer day
And the night of death was passed.

Then light and swift through the jungle trees
We swung in our airy flights,
Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms
In the hush of the moonless nights;
And oh! what beautiful years were there
When our hearts clung each to each;
When life was filled and our senses thrilled
In the first faint dawn of speech.

Thus life by life and love by love
We passed through the cycles strange,
And breath by breath and death by death
We followed the chain of change.
Till there came a time in the law of life
When over the nursing sod
The shadows broke and the soul awoke
In a strange, dim dream of God.

I was thewed like an Auroch bull
And tusked like the great cave bear;
And you, my sweet, from head to feet
Were gowned in your glorious hair.
Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave,
When the night fell o’er the plain
And the moon hung red o’er the river bed
We mumbled the bones of the slain.

I flaked a flint to a cutting edge
And shaped it with brutish craft;
I broke a shank from the woodland lank
And fitted it, head and haft;
Than I hid me close to the reedy tarn,
Where the mammoth came to drink;
Through the brawn and bone I drove the stone
And slew him upon the brink.

Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes,
Loud answered our kith and kin;
From west to east to the crimson feast
The clan came tramping in.
O’er joint and gristle and padded hoof
We fought and clawed and tore,
And cheek by jowl with many a growl
We talked the marvel o’er.

I carved that fight on a reindeer bone
With rude and hairy hand;
I pictured his fall on the cavern wall
That men might understand.
For we lived by blood and the right of might
Ere human laws were drawn,
And the age of sin did not begin
Til our brutal tusks were gone.

And that was a million years ago
In a time that no man knows;
Yet here tonight in the mellow light
We sit at Delmonico’s.
Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs,
Your hair is dark as jet,
Your years are few, your life is new,
Your soul untried, and yet —

Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay
And the scarp of the Purbeck flags;
We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones
And deep in the Coralline crags;
Our love is old, our lives are old,
And death shall come amain;
Should it come today, what man may say
We shall not live again?

God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds
And furnish’d them wings to fly;
He sowed our spawn in the world’s dim dawn,
And I know that it shall not die,
Though cities have sprung above the graves
Where the crook-bone men made war
And the ox-wain creaks o’er the buried caves
Where the mummied mammoths are.

Then as we linger at luncheon here
O’er many a dainty dish,
Let us drink anew to the time when you
Were a tadpole and I was a fish.

Thanks, Elaine’s Teen, for Evolution: that was a treat! (“I was thewed like an Auroch bull” is quite the line!)