Classic Poem

All day across the sagebrush flat,
Beneath the sun of June,
My sheep they loaf and feed and bleat
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! ma-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 can see
Around the circle's sweep,
But sky and plain, 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's 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 lonely workin' here
To happiness for you.

Suppose, down near that rattlers' den,
While I sit here and dream,
I'd spy 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! ma-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.