Classic Poem

(SIERRAS)

We checked our pace, the red road sharply rounding;
We heard the troubled flow
Of the dark olive depths of pines resounding
A thousand feet below.

Above the tumult of the canyon lifted,
The gray hawk breathless hung,
Or on the hill a winged shadow drifted
Where furze and thorn-bush clung;

Or where half-way the mountain side was furrowed
With many a seam and scar;
Or some abandoned tunnel dimly burrowed —
A mole-hill seen so far.

We looked in silence down across the distant
Unfathomable reach:
A silence broken by the guide's consistent
And realistic speech.

" Walker of Murphy's blew a hole through Peters
For telling him he lied;
Then up and dusted out of South Homitos
Across the Long Divide.

" We ran him out of Strong's, and up through Eden,
And 'cross the ford below,
And up this canyon (Peters' brother leadin').
And me and Clark and Joe.

" He fou't us game: somehow I disremember
Jest how the thing kem round;
Some say 'twas wadding some a scattered ember
From fires on the ground.

" But in one minute all the hill below him
Was just one sheet of flame;
Guardin' the crest, Sam Clark and I called to him,
And, — well, the dog was gamel.

" He made no sign: the fires of hell were round him,
The pit of hell below
We sat and waited, but we never found him;
And then we turned to go.

" And then — you see that rock that's grown so bristly
With chapparal and tan —
Suthin crep' out: it might hev been a grizzly
It might hev been a man;

" Suthin that howled, and gnashed its teeth, and shouted
In smoke and dust and flame;
Suthin that sprang into the depths about it,
Grizzly or man, — but gamel.

" That's all Well, yes, it does look rather risky,
And kinder makes one queer
And dizzy looking down. A drop of whiskey
Ain't a bad thing right here! "