AX' 
 
 University of California Berkeley 
 
 From the 
 
 FRANCIS P. FARQUHAR 
 EXPLORATION LIBRARY 
 
 Gift of 
 
 THE MARJORY BRIDGE FARQUHAR 
 1972 TRUST 
 
THE SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
THE SONG OF 
 HUGH GLASS 
 
 BY 
 JOHN G. NEIHARDT 
 
 fforfc 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 '915 
 
 All rtfkts restrvtd 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1915, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and elcctrotyped. Published October, 1915. 
 
 Nortoooti 
 
 J. 8. Gushing Co. Berwick <fe Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mas 8., U.S.A. 
 
TO SIGURD, SCARCELY THREE 
 
 When you are old enough to know 
 The joys of kite and boat and bow 
 And other suchlike splendid things 
 That boyhood's rounded decade brings, 
 I shall not give you tropes and rhymes ; 
 But, rising to those rousing times, 
 I shall ply well the craft I know 
 Of shaping kite and boat and bow, 
 For you shall teach me once again 
 The goodly art of being ten. 
 
 Meanwhile, as on a rainy day 
 
 When 'tis not possible to play, 
 
 The while you do your best to grow 
 
 I ply the other craft I know 
 
 And strive to build for you the mood 
 
 Of daring and of fortitude 
 
 With fitted word and shapen phrase, 
 
 Against those later wonder-days 
 
 When first you glimpse the world of men 
 
 Beyond the bleaker side of ten. 
 
NOTE 
 
 THE following narrative is based upon an episode taken 
 from that much neglected portion of our history, the era 
 of the American Fur Trade. My interest in that period 
 may be said to have begun at the age of six when, cling- 
 ing to the forefinger of my father, I discovered the Mis- 
 souri River from a bluff top at Kansas City. It was flood 
 time, and the impression I received was deep and lasting. 
 Even now I cannot think of that stream without a thrill 
 of awe and something of the reverence one feels for 
 mighty things. It was for me what the sea must have 
 been to the Greek boys of antiquity. And as those an- 
 cient boys must have been eager to hear of perils nobly 
 encountered on the deep and in the lands adjacent, so 
 was I eager to learn of the heroes who had travelled my 
 river as an imperial road. Nor was I disappointed in 
 what I learned of them ; for they seemed to me in every 
 way equal to the heroes of old. I came to think of them 
 with a sense of personal ownership, for any one of many 
 of them might have been my grandfather and so a little 
 of their purple fell on me. As I grew older and came 
 to possess more of my inheritance, I began to see that 
 what had enthralled me was, in fact, of the stuff of sagas, 
 
viii NOTE 
 
 a genuine epic cycle in the rough. Furthermore, I real- 
 ized that this raw material had been undergoing a process 
 of digestion in my consciousness, corresponding in a way 
 to the process of infinite repetition and fond elaboration 
 which, as certain scholars tell us, foreran the heroic nar- 
 ratives of old tune. 
 
 I decided that some day I would begin to tell these 
 hero tales in verse; and in 1908, as a preparation for 
 what I had in mind, I descended the Missouri in an 
 open boat, and also ascended the Yellowstone for a con- 
 siderable distance. On the upper river the country was 
 practically unchanged ; and for one familiar with what 
 had taken place there, it was no difficult feat of the 
 imagination to revive the details of that time the men, 
 the trails, the boats, the trading posts where veritable 
 satraps once ruled under the sway of the American Fur 
 Company. 
 
 The Hugh Glass episode is to be found in Chitten- 
 den's "History of the American Fur Trade" where it 
 is quoted from its three printed sources : the Missouri 
 Intelligencer, Sage's "Scenes in the Rocky Mountains," 
 and Cooke's "Scenes in the United States Army." The 
 present narrative begins after that military fiasco known 
 as the Leavenworth Campaign against the Aricaras, which 
 took place at the mouth of the Grand River in what is 
 
 now South Dakota. 
 
 J. G. N. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. GRAYBEARD AND GOLDHAIR .... 1 
 
 II. THE AWAKENING 26 
 
 III. THE CRAWL 37 
 
 IV. THE RETURN OF THE GHOST .... 94 
 V. JAMIE 109 
 
SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 I 
 
 GRAYBEARD AND GOLDHAIR 
 The year was eighteen hundred twenty three. 
 
 TWAS when the guns that blustered at the Ree 
 Had ceased to brag, and ten score martial clowns 
 Turned from the unwhipped Aricara towns, 
 Earning the scornful laughter of the Sioux. 
 A withering blast the arid South still blew, 
 And creeks ran thin beneath the glaring sky; 
 For 'twas a month ere honking geese would fly 
 Southward before the Great White Hunter's face : 
 And many generations of their race, 
 As bow-flung arrows, now have fallen spent. 
 
 It happened then that Major Henry went 
 With eighty trappers up the dwindling Grand, 
 Bound through the weird, unfriending barren-land 
 For where the Big Horn meets the Yellowstone ; 
 And old Hugh Glass went with them. 
 
 Large of bone, 
 
2 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Deep-chested, that his great heart might have 
 
 play, 
 
 Gray-bearded, gray of eye and crowned with gray 
 Was Glass. It seemed he never had been young; 
 And, for the grudging habit of his tongue, 
 None knew the place or season of his birth. 
 Slowly he 'woke to anger or to mirth ; 
 Yet none laughed louder when the rare mood 
 
 fell, 
 
 And hate in him was like a still, white hell, 
 A thing of doom not lightly reconciled. 
 What memory he kept of wife or child 
 Was never told ; for when his comrades sat 
 About the evening fire with pipe and chat, 
 Exchanging talk of home and gentler days, 
 Old Hugh stared long upon the pictured blaze, 
 And what he saw went upward in the smoke. 
 
 But once, as with an inner lightning stroke, 
 The veil was rent, and briefly men discerned 
 What pent-up fires of selfless passion burned 
 Beneath the still gray smoldering of him. 
 There was a rakehell lad, called Little Jim, 
 Jamieior Petit Jacques ; for scarce began 
 The downy beard to mark him for a man. 
 Blue-eyed was he and femininely fair. 
 A maiden might have coveted his hair 
 
GRAYBEARD AND GOLDHAIR 3 
 
 That trapped the sunlight in its tangled skein : 
 So, tardily, outflowered the wild blond strain 
 That gutted Rome grown overfat in sloth. 
 A Ganymedes haunted by a Goth 
 Was Jamie. When the restive ghost was laid, 
 He seemed some fancy-ridden child who played 
 At manliness 'mid all those bearded men. 
 The sternest heart was drawn to Jamie then. 
 But his one mood ne'er linked two hours together. 
 To schedule Jamie's way, as prairie weather, 
 Was to get fact by wedding doubt and whim ; 
 For very lightly slept that ghost in him. 
 No cloudy brooding went before his wrath 
 That, like a thunder-squall, recked not its path, 
 But raged upon what happened in its way. 
 Some called him brave who saw him on that day 
 When Ashley stormed a bluff town of the Ree, 
 And all save beardless Jamie turned to flee 
 For shelter from that steep, lead-harrowed slope. 
 Yet, hardly courage, but blind rage agrope 
 Inspired the foolish deed. 
 
 'Twas then old Hugh 
 Tore off the gray mask, and the heart shone 
 
 through. 
 
 For, halting in a dry, flood-guttered draw, 
 The trappers rallied, looked aloft and saw 
 
4 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 That travesty of war against the sky. 
 
 Out of a breathless hush, the old man's cry 
 
 Leaped shivering, an anguished cry and wild 
 
 As of some mother fearing for her child, 
 
 And up the steep he went with mighty bounds. 
 
 Long afterward the story went the rounds, 
 
 How old Glass fought that day. With gun for 
 
 club, 
 
 Grim as a grizzly fighting for a cub, 
 He laid about him, cleared the way, and so, 
 Supported by the firing from below, 
 Brought Jamie back. And when the deed was 
 
 done, 
 
 Taking the lad upon his knee: "My Son, 
 Brave men are not ashamed to fear," said Hugh, 
 "And I've a mind to make a man of you ; 
 So here's your first acquaintance with the law!" 
 Whereat he spanked the lad with vigorous paw 
 And, having done so, limped away to bed ; 
 For, wounded in the hip, the old man bled. 
 
 It was a month before he hobbled out, 
 And Jamie, like a fond son, hung about 
 The old man's tent and waited upon him. 
 And often would the deep gray eyes grow dim 
 With gazing on the boy ; and there would go 
 As though Spring-fire should waken out of snow 
 
GRAYBEARD AND GOLDHAIR 5 
 
 A wistful light across that mask of gray. 
 And once Hugh smiled his enigmatic way, 
 While poring long on Jamie's face, and said : 
 "So with their sons are women brought to bed, 
 Sore wounded !" 
 
 Thus united were the two : 
 
 And some would dub the old man 'Mother Hugh' ; 
 While those in whom all living waters sank 
 To some dull inner pool that teemed and stank 
 With formless evil, into that morass 
 Gazed, and saw darkly there, as in a glass, 
 The foul shape of some weakly envied sin. 
 For each man builds a world and dwells therein. 
 Nor could these know what mocking ghost of 
 
 Spring 
 
 Stirred Hugh's gray world with dreams of blossom- 
 ing 
 
 That wooed no seed to swell or bird to sing. 
 So might a dawn-struck digit of the moon 
 Dream back the rain of some old lunar June 
 And ache through all its craters to be green. 
 Little they know what life's one love can mean, 
 Who shrine it in a bower of peace and bliss : 
 Pang dwelling in a puckered cicatrice 
 More truly figures this belated love. 
 Yet very precious was the hurt thereof, 
 Grievous to bear, too dear to cast away. 
 
6 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Now Jamie went with Hugh ; but who shall say 
 
 If 'twas a warm heart or a wind of whim, 
 
 Love, or the rover's teasing itch in him, 
 
 Moved Jamie ? Howsoe'er, 'twas good to see 
 
 Graybeard and Goldhair riding knee to knee, 
 
 One age in young adventure. They who saw 
 
 Likened unto a February thaw 
 
 Hugh's mellow mood those days; and truly so, 
 
 For when the tempering Southwest wakes to blow 
 
 A phantom April over melting snow, 
 
 Deep in the North some new white wrath is 
 
 brewed. 
 
 Out of a dim-trailed inner solitude 
 The old man summoned many a stirring story, 
 Lived grimly once, but now shot through with 
 
 glory 
 Caught from the wondering eyes of him who 
 
 heard 
 
 Tales jagged with the bleak unstudied word, 
 Stark saga-stuff. "A fellow that I knew," 
 So nameless went the hero that was Hugh 
 A mere pelt merchant, as it seemed to him ; 
 Yet trailing epic thunders through the dim, 
 Whist world of Jamie's awe. 
 
 And so they went, 
 
 One heart, it seemed, and that heart well content 
 With tale and snatch of song and careless laughter. 
 
GRAYBEARD AND GOLDHAIR 7 
 
 Never before, and surely never after, 
 The gray old man seemed nearer to his youth 
 That myth that somehow had to be the truth, 
 Yet could not be convincing any more. 
 
 Now when the days of travel numbered four 
 And nearer drew the barrens with their need, 
 On Glass, the hunter, fell the task to feed 
 Those four score hungers when the game should 
 
 fail. 
 
 For no young eye could trace so dim a trail, 
 Or line the rifle sights with speed so true. 
 Nor might the wistful Jamie go with Hugh ; 
 "For," so Hugh chaffed, "my trick of getting 
 
 game 
 Might teach young eyes to put old eyes to 
 
 shame. 
 
 An old dog never risks his only bone." 
 ' Wolves prey in packs, the lion hunts alone * 
 Is somewhat nearer what he should have meant. 
 
 And so with merry jest the old man went; 
 And so they parted at an unseen gate 
 That even then some gust of moody fate 
 Clanged to betwixt them ; each a tale to spell 
 One in the nightmare scrawl of dreams from hell, 
 One in the blistering trail of days a-crawl, 
 
8 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Venomous footed. Nor might it ere befall 
 These two should meet in after days and be 
 Graybeard and Goldhair riding knee to knee, 
 Recounting with a bluff, heroic scorn 
 The haps of either tale. 
 
 'Twas early morn 
 
 When Hugh went forth, and all day Jamie rode 
 With Henry's men, while more and more the 
 
 goad 
 
 Of eager youth sore fretted him, and made 
 The dusty progress of the cavalcade 
 The journey of a snail flock to the moon ; 
 Until the shadow-weaving afternoon 
 Turned many fingers nightward then he fled, 
 Pricking his horse, nor deigned to turn his head 
 At any dwindling voice of reprimand ; 
 For somewhere in the breaks along the Grand 
 Surely Hugh waited with a goodly kill. 
 Hoofbeats of ghostly steeds on every hill, 
 Mysterious, muffled hoofs on every bluff! 
 Spurred echo horses clattering up the rough 
 Confluent draws ! These flying Jamie heard. 
 The lagging air droned like the drowsy word 
 Of one who tells weird stories late at night. 
 Half headlong joy and half delicious fright, 
 His day-dream's pace outstripped the plunging 
 
 steed's. 
 
GRAYBEARD AND GOLDHAIR 9 
 
 Lean galloper in a wind of splendid deeds, 
 Like Hugh's, he seemed unto himself, until, 
 Snorting, a-haunch above a breakneck hill, 
 The horse stopped short then Jamie was aware 
 Of lonesome flatlands fading skyward there 
 Beneath him, and, zigzag on either hand, 
 A purple haze denoted how the Grand 
 Forked wide 'twixt sunset and the polar star. 
 
 A-tiptoe in the stirrups, gazing far, 
 He saw no Hugh nor any moving thing, 
 Save for a welter of cawing crows, a- wing 
 About some banquet in the further hush. 
 One faint star, set above the fading blush 
 Of sunset, saw the coming night, and grew. 
 With hand for trumpet, Jamie gave halloo ; 
 And once again. For answer, the horse neighed. 
 Some vague mistrust now made him half afraid 
 Some formless dread that stirred beneath the will 
 As far as sleep from waking. 
 
 Down the hill, 
 
 Close-footed in the skitter of the shale, 
 The spurred horse floundered to the solid vale 
 And galloped to the northwest, whinnying. 
 The outstripped air moaned like a wounded thing; 
 But Jamie gave the lie unto his dread. 
 "The old man's camping out to-night," he said, 
 
io SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 " Somewhere about the forks, as like as not ; 
 And there'll be hunks of fresh meat steaming hot, 
 And fighting stories by a dying fire!" 
 
 The sunset reared a luminous phantom spire 
 That, crumbling, sifted ashes down the sky. 
 
 Now, pausing, Jamie sent a searching cry 
 
 Into the twilit river-skirting brush, 
 
 And in the vast denial of the hush 
 
 The champing of the snaffled horse seemed loud. 
 
 Then, startling as a voice beneath a shroud, 
 A muffled boom woke somewhere up the stream 
 And, like vague thunder hearkened in a dream, 
 Drawled back to silence. Now, with heart a- 
 
 bound, 
 
 Keen for the quarter of the perished sound, 
 The lad spurred gaily ; for he doubted not 
 His cry had brought Hugh's answering rifle shot. 
 The laggard air was like a voice that sang, 
 And Jamie half believed he sniffed the tang 
 Of woodsmoke and the smell of flesh a-roast ; 
 When presently before him, like a ghost, 
 Upstanding, huge in twilight, arms flung wide, 
 A gray form loomed. The wise horse reared and 
 
 shied, 
 
GRAYBEARD AND GOLDHAIR 11 
 
 Snorting his inborn terror of the bear ! 
 And in the whirlwind of a moment there, 
 Betwixt the brute's hoarse challenge and the 
 
 charge, 
 
 The lad beheld, upon the grassy marge 
 Of a small spring that bullberries stooped to scan, 
 A ragged heap that should have been a man, 
 A huddled, broken thing and it was Hugh ! 
 
 There was no need for any closer view. 
 
 As, on the instant of a lightning flash 
 
 Ere yet the split gloom closes with a crash, 
 
 A landscape stares with every circumstance 
 
 Of rock and shrub just so the fatal chance 
 
 Of Hugh's one shot, made futile with surprise, 
 
 Was clear to Jamie. Then before his eyes 
 
 The light whirled in a giddy dance of red ; 
 
 And, doubting not the crumpled thing was dead 
 
 That was a friend, with but a skinning knife 
 
 He would have striven for the hated life 
 
 That triumphed there : but with a shriek of fright 
 
 The mad horse bolted through the falling night, 
 
 And Jamie, fumbling at his rifle boot, 
 
 Heard the brush crash behind him where the brute 
 
 Came headlong, close upon the straining flanks. 
 
 But when at length low-lying river banks 
 
 White rubble in the gloaming glimmered near, 
 
12 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 A swift thought swept the mind of Jamie clear 
 Of anger and of anguish for the dead. 
 Scarce seemed the raging beast a thing to dread, 
 But some foul-playing braggart to outwit. 
 Now hurling all his strength upon the bit, 
 He sank the spurs, and with a groan of pain 
 The plunging horse, obedient to the rein, 
 Swerved sharply streamward. Sliddering in the 
 
 sand, 
 
 The bear shot past. And suddenly the Grand 
 Loomed up beneath and rose to meet the pair 
 That rode a moment upon empty air, 
 Then smote the water in a shower of spray. 
 And when again the slowly ebbing day 
 Came back to them, a-drip from nose to flank, 
 The steed was scrambling up the further bank, 
 And Jamie saw across the narrow stream, 
 Like some vague shape of fury in a dream, 
 The checked beast ramping at the water's rim. 
 Doubt struggled with a victor's thrill in him, 
 As, hand to buckle of the rifle-sheath, 
 He thought of dampened powder; but beneath 
 The rawhide flap the gun lay snug and dry. 
 Then as the horse wheeled and the mark went by 
 A patch of shadow dancing upon gray 
 He fired. A sluggish thunder trailed away; 
 The spreading smoke-rack lifted slow, and there, 
 
GRAYBEARD AND GOLDHAIR 13 
 
 Floundering in a seethe of foam, the bear 
 Hugged yielding water for the foe that slew ! 
 
 Triumphant, Jamie wondered what old Hugh 
 Would think of such a "trick of getting game" ! 
 "Young eyes" indeed ! And then that memory 
 
 came, 
 
 Like a dull blade thrust back into a wound. 
 One moment 'twas as though the lad had swooned 
 Into a dream-adventure, waking there 
 To sicken at the ghastly land, a-stare 
 Like some familiar face gone strange at last. 
 But as the hot tears came, the moment passed. 
 Song snatches, broken tales a troop forlorn, 
 Like merry friends of eld come back to mourn 
 Overwhelmed him there. And when the black 
 
 bulk churned 
 
 The star-flecked stream no longer, Jamie turned, 
 Recrossed the river and rode back to Hugh. 
 
 A burning twist of valley grasses threw 
 Blear light about the region of the spring. 
 Then Jamie, torch aloft and shuddering, 
 Knelt there beside his friend, and moaned : "O 
 
 Hugh, 
 
 If I had been with you just been with you ! 
 We might be laughing now and you are dead." 
 
14 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 With gentle hand he turned the hoary head 
 That he might see the good gray face again. 
 The torch burned out, the dark swooped back, and 
 
 then 
 
 His grief was frozen with an icy plunge 
 In horror. 'Twas as though a bloody sponge 
 Had wiped the pictured features from a slate ! 
 So, pillaged by an army drunk with hate, 
 Home stares upon the homing refugee. 
 A red gout clung where either brow should be ; 
 The haughty nose lay crushed amid the beard, 
 Thick with slow ooze, whence like a devil leered 
 The battered mouth convulsed into a grin. 
 
 Nor did the darkness cover, for therein 
 Some torch, unsnuffed, with blear funereal flare, 
 Still painted upon black that alien stare 
 To make the lad more terribly alone. 
 
 Then in the gloom there rose a broken moan, 
 Quick stifled; and it seemed that something 
 
 stirred 
 
 About the body. Doubting that he heard, 
 The lad felt, with a panic catch of breath, 
 Pale vagrants from the legendry of death 
 Potential in the shadows there. But when 
 The motion and the moaning came again, 
 
GRAYBEARD AND GOLDHAIR 15 
 
 Hope, like a shower at daybreak, cleansed the 
 
 dark, 
 
 And in the lad's heart something like a lark 
 Sang morning. Bending low, he crooned : 
 
 "Hugh, Hugh, 
 It's Jamie don't you know? I'm here with 
 
 you." 
 
 As one who in a nightmare strives to tell 
 Shouting across the gap of some dim hell 
 What things assail him ; so it seemed Hugh heard, 
 And flung some unintelligible word 
 Athwart the muffling distance of his swoon. 
 
 Now kindled by the yet unrisen moon, 
 The East went pale ; and like a naked thing 
 A little wind ran vexed and shivering 
 Along the dusk, till Jamie shivered too 
 And worried lest 'twere bitter cold where Hugh 
 Hung clutching at the bleak, raw edge of life. 
 So Jamie rose, and with his hunting-knife 
 Split wood and built a fire. Nor did he fear 
 The staring face now, for he found it dear 
 With the warm presence of a friend returned. 
 The fire made cozy chatter as it burned, 
 And reared a tent of light in that lone place. 
 Then Jamie set about to bathe the face 
 
16 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 With water from the spring, oft crooning low, 
 "It's Jamie here beside you don't you know ?" 
 Yet came no answer save the labored breath 
 Of one who wrestled mightily with Death 
 Where watched no referee to call the foul. 
 
 The moon now cleared the world's end, and the 
 
 owl 
 
 Gave voice unto the wizardry of light ; 
 While in some dim-lit chancel of the night, 
 Snouts to the goddess, wolfish corybants 
 Intoned their wild antiphonary chants 
 The oldest, saddest worship in the world. 
 
 And Jamie watched until the firelight swirled 
 Softly about him. Sound and glimmer merged 
 To make an eerie void, through which he urged 
 With frantic spur some whirlwind of a steed 
 That made the way as glass beneath his speed, 
 Yet scarce kept pace with something dear that fled 
 On, ever on just half a dream ahead : 
 Until it seemed, by some vague shape dismayed, 
 He cried aloud for Hugh, and the steed neighed 
 A neigh that was a burst of light, not sound. 
 And Jamie, sprawling on the dewy ground, 
 Knew that his horse was sniffing at his hair, 
 While, mumbling through the early morning air, 
 
GRAYBEARD AND GOLDHAIR 17 
 
 There came a roll of many hoofs and then 
 He saw the swinging troop of Henry's men 
 A-canter up the valley with the sun. 
 
 Of all Hugh's comrades crowding round, not one 
 But would have given heavy odds on Death ; 
 For, though the graybeard fought with sobbing 
 
 breath, 
 
 No man, it seemed, might break upon the hip 
 So stern a wrestler with the strangling grip 
 That made the neck veins like a purple thong 
 Tangled with knots. Nor might Hugh tarry long 
 There where the trail forked outward far and 
 
 dim; 
 
 Or so it seemed. And when they lifted him, 
 His moan went treble like a song of pain, 
 He was so tortured. Surely it were vain 
 To hope he might endure the toilsome ride 
 Across the barrens. Better let him bide 
 There on the grassy couch beside the spring. 
 And, furthermore, it seemed a foolish thing 
 That eighty men should wait the issue there ; 
 For dying is a game of solitaire 
 And all men play the losing hand alone. 
 
 But when at noon he had not ceased to moan, 
 And fought still like the strong man he had been, 
 
18 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 There grew a vague mistrust that he might win, 
 
 And all this be a tale for wondering ears. 
 
 So Major Henry called for volunteers, 
 
 Two men among the eighty who would stay 
 
 To wait on Glass and keep the wolves away 
 
 Until he did whatever he should do. 
 
 All quite agreed 'twas bitter bread for Hugh, 
 
 Yet none, save Jamie, felt in duty bound 
 
 To run the risk until the hat went round, 
 
 And pity wakened, at the silver's clink, 
 
 In Jules Le Bon. 
 
 'He would not have them think 
 That mercenary motives prompted him. 
 But somehow just the grief of Little Jim 
 Was quite sufficient not to mention Hugh. 
 He weighed the risk. As everybody knew, 
 The Rickarees were scattered to the West : 
 The late campaign had stirred a hornet's nest 
 To fill the land with stingers (which was so), 
 And yet ' 
 
 Three days a southwest wind may blow 
 False April with no drop of dew at heart. 
 So Jules ran on, while, ready for the start, 
 The pawing horses nickered and the men, 
 Impatient in their saddles, yawned. And then, 
 With brief advice, a round of bluff good-byes 
 
GRAYBEARD AND GOLDHAIR 19 
 
 And some few reassuring backward cries, 
 The troop rode up the valley with the day. 
 
 Intent upon his friend, with naught to say, 
 
 Sat Jamie ; while Le Bon discussed at length 
 
 The reasonable limits of man's strength 
 
 A self-conducted dialectic strife 
 
 That made absurd all argument for life 
 
 And granted but a fresh-dug hole for Hugh. 
 
 'Twas half like murder. Yet it seemed Jules knew 
 
 Unnumbered tales accordant with the case, 
 
 Each circumstantial as to time and place 
 
 And furnished with a death's head colophon. 
 
 Vivaciously despondent, Jules ran on. 
 'Did he not share his judgment with the rest ? 
 You see, 'twas some contusion of the chest 
 That did the trick heart, lungs and all that, 
 
 mixed 
 
 In such a way they never could be fixed. 
 A bear's hug ugh ! ' 
 
 And often Jamie winced 
 At some knife-thrust of reason that convinced 
 Yet left him sick with unrelinquished hope. 
 As one who in a darkened room might grope 
 For some beloved face, with shuddering 
 Anticipation of a clammy thing ; 
 
20 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 So in the lad's heart sorrow fumbled round 
 
 For some old joy to lean upon, and found 
 
 The stark, cold something Jamie knew was there. 
 
 Yet, womanlike, he stroked the hoary hair 
 
 Or bathed the face; while Jules found tales to 
 
 tell 
 Lugubriously garrulous. 
 
 Night fell. 
 
 At sundown, day-long winds are like to veer; 
 So, summoning a mood of relished fear, 
 Le Bon remembered dire alarms by night 
 The swoop of savage hordes, the desperate fight 
 Of men outnumbered : and, like him of old, 
 In all that made Jules shudder as he told, 
 His the great part a man by field and flood 
 Fate-tossed. Upon the gloom he limned in blood 
 Their situation's possibilities : 
 Two men against the fury of the Rees 
 A game in which two hundred men had failed ! 
 He pointed out how little it availed 
 To run the risk for one as good as dead ; 
 Yet, Jules Le Bon meant every word he said, 
 And had a scalp to lose, if need should be. 
 
 That night through Jamie's dreaming swarmed 
 
 the Ree. 
 Gray-souled, he wakened to a dawn of gray, 
 
GRAYBEARD AND GOLDHAIR 21 
 
 And felt that something strong had gone away, 
 
 Nor knew what thing. Some whisper of the will 
 
 Bade him rejoice that Hugh was living still ; 
 
 But Hugh, the real, seemed somehow otherwhere. 
 
 Jules, snug and snoring in his blanket there, 
 
 Was half a life the nearer. Just so, pain 
 
 Is nearer than the peace we seek in vain, 
 
 And by its very sting compelis belief. 
 
 Jules woke, and with a fine restraint of grief 
 
 Saw early dissolution. 'One more night, 
 
 And then the poor old man would lose the fight 
 
 Ah, such a man!' 
 
 A day and night crept by, 
 And yet the stubborn fighter would not die, 
 But grappled with the angel. All the while, 
 With some conviction, but with more of guile, 
 Jules colonized the vacancy with Rees ; 
 Till Jamie felt that looseness of the knees 
 That comes of oozing courage. Many men 
 May tower for a white-hot moment, when 
 The wild blood surges at a sudden shock ; 
 But when, insistent as a ticking clock, 
 Blind peril haunts and whispers, fewer dare. 
 Dread hovered in the hushed and moony air 
 The long night through ; nor might a fire be lit, 
 Lest some far-seeing foe take note of it. 
 And day-long Jamie scanned the blank sky rim 
 
22 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 For hoof-flung dust clouds ; till there woke in him 
 A childish anger dumb for ruth and shame 
 That Hugh so dallied. 
 
 But the fourth dawn came 
 And with it lulled the fight, as on a field 
 Where broken armies sleep but will not yield. 
 Or had one conquered ? Was it Hugh or Death ? 
 The old man breathed with faintly fluttering 
 
 breath, 
 
 Nor did his body shudder as before. 
 Jules triumphed sadly. 'It would soon be o'er; 
 So men grew quiet when they lost their grip 
 And did not care. At sundown he would slip 
 Into the deeper silence.' 
 
 Jamie wept, 
 
 Unwitting how a furtive gladness crept 
 Into his heart that gained a stronger beat. 
 So cities, long beleaguered, take defeat 
 Unto themselves half traitors. 
 
 Jules began 
 
 To dig a hole that might conceal a man ; 
 And, as his sheath knife broke the stubborn sod, 
 He spoke in kindly vein of Life and God 
 And Mutability and Rectitude. 
 The immemorial funerary mood 
 Brought tears, mute tribute to the mother-dust ; 
 And Jamie, seeing, felt each cutting thrust 
 Less like a stab into the flesh of Hugh. 
 
GRAYBEARD AND GOLDHAIR 23 
 
 The sun crept up and down the arc of blue 
 And through the air a chill of evening ran ; 
 But, though the grave yawned, waiting for the 
 
 man, 
 The man seemed scarce yet ready for the grave. 
 
 Now prompted by a coward or a knave 
 That lurked in him, Le Bon began to hear 
 Faint sounds that to the lad's less cunning ear 
 Were silence ; more like tremors of the ground 
 They were, Jules said, than any proper sound 
 Thus one detected horsemen miles away. 
 For many moments big with fate, he lay, 
 Ear pressed to earth; then rose and shook his 
 
 head 
 As one perplexed. "There's something wrong," 
 
 he said. 
 
 And as at daybreak whiten winter skies, 
 Agape and staring with a wild surmise 
 The lad's face whitened at the other's word. 
 Jules could not quite interpret what he heard ; 
 A hundred horse might noise their whereabouts 
 In just that fashion ; yet he had his doubts. 
 It could be bison moving, quite as well. 
 But if 'twere Rees there'd be a tale to tell 
 That two men he might name should never hear. 
 He reckoned scalps that Fall were selling dear, 
 
24 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 In keeping with the limited supply. 
 Men, fit to live, were not afraid to die ! 
 
 Then, in that caution suits not courage ill, 
 Jules saddled up and cantered to the hill, 
 A white dam set against the twilight stream; 
 And as a horseman riding in a dream 
 The lad beheld him ; watched him clamber up 
 To where the dusk, as from a brimming cup, 
 Ran over; saw him pause against the gloom, 
 Portentous, huge a brooder upon doom. 
 What did he look upon ? 
 
 Some moments passed ; 
 Then suddenly it seemed as though a blast 
 Of wind, keen-cutting with the whips of sleet, 
 Smote horse and rider. Haunched on huddled feet, 
 The steed shrank from the ridge, then, rearing, 
 
 wheeled 
 And took the rubbly incline fury-heeled. 
 
 Those days and nights, like seasons creeping slow, 
 Had told on Jamie. Better blow on blow 
 Of evil hap, with doom seen clear ahead, 
 Than that monotonous, abrasive dread, 
 Blind gnawer at the soul-thews of the blind. 
 Thin-worn, the last heart-string that held him 
 kind; 
 
GRAYBEARD AND GOLDHAIR 25 
 
 Strung taut, the final tie that kept him true 
 Now snapped in Jamie, as he saw the two 
 So goaded by some terrifying sight. 
 Death riding with the vanguard of the Night, 
 Life dwindling yonder with the rear of Day ! 
 What choice for one whom panic swept away 
 From moorings in the sanity of will ? 
 
 Jules came and summed the vision of the hill 
 In one hoarse cry that left no word to say : 
 "Rees ! Saddle up ! We've got to get away !" 
 
 Small wit had Jamie left to ferret guile, 
 But fumblingly obeyed Le Bon ; the while 
 Jules knelt beside the man who could not flee : 
 For big hearts lack not time for charity 
 However thick the blows of fate may fall. 
 Yet, in that Jules Le Bon was practical, 
 He could not quite ignore a hunting knife, 
 A flint, a gun, a blanket gear of life 
 Scarce suited to the customs of the dead ! 
 
 And Hugh slept soundly in his ample bed, 
 Star-canopied and blanketed with night, 
 Unwitting how Venality and Fright 
 Made hot the westward trail of Henry's men. 
 
II 
 
 THE AWAKENING 
 
 No one may say what time elapsed, or when 
 
 The slumberous shadow lifted over Hugh : 
 
 But some globose immensity of blue 
 
 Enfolded him at last, within whose light 
 
 He seemed to float, as some faint swimmer might, 
 
 A deep beneath and overhead a deep. 
 
 So one late plunged into the lethal sleep, 
 
 A spirit diver fighting for his breath, 
 
 Swoops through the many-fathomed glooms of 
 
 death, 
 Emerging in a daylight strange and new. 
 
 Rousing a languid wonder, came on Hugh 
 The quiet, steep-arched splendor of the day. 
 Agrope for some dim memory, he lay 
 Upon his back, and watched a lucent fleece 
 Fade in the blue profundity of peace 
 As did the memory he sought in vain. 
 Then with a stirring of mysterious pain, 
 26 
 
THE AWAKENING 27 
 
 Old habit of the body bade him rise; 
 But when he would obey, the hollow skies 
 Broke as a bubble punctured, and went out. 
 
 Again he woke, and with a drowsy doubt, 
 
 Remote unto his horizontal gaze 
 
 He saw the world's end kindle to a blaze 
 
 And up the smoky steep pale heralds run. 
 
 And when at length he knew it for the sun, 
 
 Dawn found the darkling reaches of his mind, 
 
 Where in the twilight he began to find 
 
 Strewn shards and torsos of familiar things. 
 
 As from the rubble in a place of kings 
 
 Men school the dream to build the past anew, 
 
 So out of dream and fragment builded Hugh, 
 
 And came upon the reason of his plight : 
 
 The bear's attack the shot and then the 
 
 night 
 Wherein men talked as ghosts above a grave. 
 
 Some consciousness of will the memory gave : 
 He would get up. The painful effort spent 
 Made the wide heavens billow as a tent 
 Wind-struck, the shaken prairie sag and roll. 
 Some moments with an effort at control 
 He swayed, half raised upon his arms, until 
 The dizzy cosmos righted, and was still. 
 
28 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Then would he stand erect and be again 
 The man he was : an overwhelming pain 
 Smote him to earth, and one unruly limb 
 Refused the weight and crumpled under him. 
 
 Sickened with torture he lay huddled there, 
 Gazing about him with a great despair 
 Proportioned to the might that felt the chain. 
 Far-flung as dawn, collusive sky and plain 
 Stared bleak denial back. 
 
 Why strive at all ? 
 That vacancy about him like a wall, 
 Yielding as light, a granite scarp to climb ! 
 Some little waiting on the creep of time, 
 Abandonment to circumstance ; and then 
 
 Here flashed a sudden thought of Henry's men 
 Into his mind and drove the gloom away. 
 They would be riding westward with the day ! 
 How strange he had forgot ! That battered leg 
 Or some scalp wound, had set his wits a-beg f 
 Was this Hugh Glass to whimper like a squaw ? 
 Grimly amused, he raised his head and saw 
 The empty distance : listened long and heard 
 Naught but the twitter of a lonely bird 
 That emphasized the hush. 
 
 Was something wrong ? 
 
THE AWAKENING 29 
 
 'Twas not the Major's way to dally long, 
 
 And surely they had camped not far behind. 
 
 Now woke a query in his troubled mind 
 
 Where was his horse ? Again came creeping back 
 
 The circumstances of the bear's attack. 
 
 He had dismounted, thinking at the spring 
 
 To spend the night and then the grisly thing 
 
 Of course the horse had bolted ; plain enough ! 
 
 But why was all the soil about so rough 
 
 As though a herd of horses had been there ? 
 
 The riddle vexed him till his vacant stare 
 
 Fell on a heap of earth beside a pit. 
 
 What did that mean ? He wormed his way to it, 
 
 The newly wakened wonder dulling pain. 
 
 No paw of beast had scooped it that was plain. 
 
 'Twas squared; indeed, 'twas like a grave, he 
 
 thought. 
 
 A grave a grave the mental echo wrought 
 Sick fancies ! Who had risen from the dead ? 
 Who, lying there, had heard above his head 
 The ghostly talkers deaf unto his shout ? 
 
 Now searching all the region round about, 
 As though the answer were a lurking thing, 
 He saw along the margin of the spring 
 An ash-heap and the litter of a camp. 
 Suspicion, like a little smoky lamp 
 
30 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 That daubs the murk but cannot fathom it, 
 Flung blear grotesques before his groping wit. 
 Had Rees been there ? And he alive ? Who 
 
 then ? 
 
 And were he dead, it might be Henry's men ! 
 How many suns had risen while he slept ? 
 The smoky glow flared wildly, and he crept, 
 The dragged limb throbbing, till at length he 
 
 found 
 
 The trail of many horses westward bound ; 
 And in one breath the groping light became 
 A gloom-devouring ecstasy of flame, 
 A dazing conflagration of belief! 
 
 Plunged deeper than the seats of hate and grief, 
 He gazed about for aught that might deny 
 Such baseness : saw the non-committal sky, 
 The prairie apathetic in a shroud, 
 The bland complacence of a vagrant cloud 
 World-wide connivance ! Smilingly the sun 
 Approved a land wherein such deeds were done; 
 And careless breezes, like a troop of youth, 
 Unawed before the presence of such truth, 
 Went scampering amid the tousled brush. 
 Then bye and bye came on him with a rush 
 His weakness and the consciousness of pain, 
 While, with the chill insistence of a rain 
 
THE AWAKENING 31 
 
 That pelts the sodden wreck of Summer's end, 
 His manifest betrayal by a friend 
 Beat in upon him. Jamie had been there; 
 And Jamie Jamie Jamie did not care ! 
 
 What no man yet had witnessed, the wide sky 
 Looked down and saw ; a light wind idling by 
 Heard what no ear of mortal yet had heard : 
 For he whose name was like a magic word 
 To conjure the remote heroic mood 
 Of valiant deed and splendid fortitude, 
 Wherever two that shared a fire might be, 
 Gave way to grief and wept unmanfully. 
 Yet not as they for whom tears fall like dew 
 To green a frosted heart again, wept Hugh. 
 So thewed to strive, so engined to prevail 
 And make harsh fate the zany of a tale, 
 His own might shook and tore him. 
 
 For a span 
 
 He lay, a gray old ruin of a man 
 With all his years upon him like a snow. 
 And then at length, as from the long ago, 
 Remote beyond the other side of wrong, 
 The old love came like some remembered song 
 Whereof the strain is sweet, the burden sad. 
 A retrospective vision of the lad 
 Grew up in him, as in a foggy night 
 
32 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 The witchery of semilunar light 
 
 Mysteriously quickens all the air. 
 
 Some memory of wind-blown golden hair, 
 
 The boyish laugh, the merry eyes of blue, 
 
 Wrought marvelously in the heart of Hugh, 
 
 As under snow the daemon of the Spring. 
 
 And momently it seemed a little thing 
 
 To suffer ; nor might treachery recall 
 
 The miracle of being loved at all, 
 
 The privilege of loving to the end. 
 
 And thereupon a longing for his friend 
 
 Made life once more a struggle for a prize 
 
 To look again upon the merry eyes, 
 
 To see again the wind-blown golden hair. 
 
 Aye, one should lavish very tender care 
 
 Upon the vessel of a hope so great, 
 
 Lest it be shattered, and the precious freight, 
 
 As water on the arid waste, poured out. 
 
 Yet, though he longed to live, a subtle doubt 
 
 Still turned on him the weapon of his pain : 
 
 Now, as before, collusive sky and plain 
 
 Outstared his purpose for a puny thing. 
 
 Praying to live, he crawled back to the spring, 
 With something in his heart like gratitude 
 That by good luck his gun might furnish food, 
 His blanket, shelter, and his flint, a fire. 
 
THE AWAKENING 33 
 
 For, after all, what thing do men desire 
 To be or have, but these condition it ? 
 These with a purpose and a little wit, 
 And howsoever smitten, one might rise, 
 Push back the curtain of the curving skies, 
 And come upon the living dream at last. 
 
 Exhausted, by the spring he lay and cast 
 Dull eyes about him. What did it portend ? 
 Naught but the footprints of a fickle friend, 
 A yawning grave and ashes met his eyes ! 
 Scarce feeling yet the shock of a surprise, 
 He searched about him for his flint and knife ; 
 Knew vaguely that his seeking was for life, 
 And that the place was empty where he sought. 
 No food, no fire, no shelter ! Dully wrought 
 The bleak negation in him, slowly crept 
 To where, despite the pain, his love had kept 
 A shrine for Jamie undefiled of doubt. 
 Then suddenly conviction, like a shout, 
 Aroused him. Jamie Jamie was a thief! 
 The very difficulty of belief 
 Was fuel for the simmering of rage, 
 That grew and grew, the more he strove to gage 
 The underlying motive of the deed. 
 Untempered youth might fail a friend in need ; 
 But here had wrought some devil of the will, 
 
34 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Some heartless thing, too cowardly to kill, 
 That left to Nature what it dared not do ! 
 
 So bellowsed, all the kindled soul of Hugh 
 Became a still white hell of brooding ire, 
 And through his veins regenerating fire 
 Ran, driving out the lethargy of pain. 
 Now once again he scanned the yellow plain, 
 Conspirant with the overbending skies ; 
 And lo, the one was blue as Jamie's eyes, 
 The other of the color of his hair 
 Twin hues of falseness merging to a stare, 
 As though such guilt, thus visibly immense, 
 Regarded its effect with insolence I 
 
 Alas for those who fondly place above 
 The act of loving, what they chance to love; 
 Who prize the goal more dearly than the way ! 
 For time shall plunder them, and change betray, 
 And life shall find them vulnerable still. 
 
 A bitter-sweet narcotic to the will, 
 Hugh's love increased the peril of his plight ; 
 But anger broke the slumber of his might, 
 Quickened the heart and warmed the blood that 
 
 ran 
 Defiance for the treachery of Man, 
 
THE AWAKENING 35 
 
 Defiance for the meaning of his pain, 
 Defiance for the distance of the plain 
 That seemed to gloat, 'You can not master me/ 
 And for one burning moment he felt free 
 To rise and conquer in a wind of rage. 
 But as a tiger, conscious of the cage, 
 A-smoulder with a purpose, broods and waits, 
 So with the sullen patience that is hate's 
 Hugh taught his wrath to bide expedience. 
 
 Now cognizant of every quickened sense, 
 Thirst came upon him. Leaning to the spring, 
 He stared with fascination on a thing 
 That rose from giddy deeps to share the draught 
 A face, it was, so tortured that it laughed, 
 A ghastly mask that Murder well might wear; 
 And while as one they drank together there, 
 It was as though the deed he meant to do 
 Took shape and came to kiss the lips of Hugh, 
 Lest that revenge might falter. Hunger woke ; 
 And from the bush with leafage gray as smoke, 
 Wherein like flame the bullberries glinted red 
 (Scarce sweeter than the heart of him they fed), 
 Hugh feasted. 
 
 And the hours of waiting crept, 
 A-gloom, a-glow ; and though he waked or slept, 
 The pondered purpose or a dream that wrought, 
 
36 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 By night, the murder of his waking thought, 
 Sustained him till he felt his strength returned. 
 And then at length the longed-for morning burned 
 And beckoned down the vast way he should crawl 
 That waste to be surmounted as a wall, 
 Sky-rims and yet more sky-rims steep to climb 
 That simulacrum of enduring Time 
 The hundred empty miles 'twixt him and where 
 The stark Missouri ran ! 
 
 Yet why not dare ? 
 
 Despite the useless leg, he could not die 
 One hairsbreadth farther from the earth and sky, 
 Or more remote from kindness. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE CRAWL 
 
 STRAIGHT away 
 
 Beneath the flare of dawn, the Ree land lay, 
 And through it ran the short trail to the goal. 
 Thereon a grim turnpikeman waited toll : 
 But 'twas so doomed that southering geese should 
 
 flee 
 
 Nine times, ere yet the vengeance of the Ree 
 Should make their foe the haunter of a tale. 
 
 Midway to safety on the northern trail 
 The scoriae region of a hell burned black 
 Forbade the crawler. And for all his lack, 
 Hugh had no heart to journey with the suns : 
 No suppliant unto those faithless ones 
 Should bid for pity at the Big Horn's mouth. 
 
 The greater odds for safety in the South 
 Allured him ; so he felt the midday sun 
 Blaze down the coulee of a little run 
 37 
 
38 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 That dwindled upward to the watershed 
 Whereon the feeders of the Moreau head 
 Scarce more than deep-carved runes of vernal 
 
 rain. 
 
 The trailing leg was like a galling chain, 
 And bound him to a doubt that would not pass. 
 Defiant clumps of thirst-embittered grass 
 That bit parched earth with bared and fang-like 
 
 roots ; 
 
 Dwarf thickets, jealous for their stunted fruits, 
 Harsh-tempered by their disinheritance 
 These symbolized the enmity of Chance 
 For him who, with his fate unreconciled, 
 Equipped for travel as a weanling child, 
 Essayed the journey of a mighty man. 
 
 Like agitated oil the heat-waves ran 
 
 And made the scabrous gulch appear to shake 
 
 As some reflected landscape in a lake 
 
 Where laggard breezes move. A taunting reek 
 
 Rose from the grudging seepage of the creek, 
 
 Whereof Hugh drank and drank, and still would 
 
 drink. 
 
 And where the mottled shadow dripped as ink 
 From scanty thickets on the yellow glare, 
 The crawler faltered with no heart to dare 
 Again the torture of that toil, until 
 
THE CRAWL 39 
 
 The master-thought of vengeance 'woke the will 
 
 To goad him forth. And when the sun quiesced 
 
 Amid ironic heavens in the West 
 
 The region of false friends Hugh gained a rise 
 
 Whence to the fading cincture of the skies 
 
 A purpling panorama swept away. 
 
 Scarce farther than a shout might carry, lay 
 
 The place of his betrayal. He could see 
 
 The yellow blotch of earth where treachery 
 
 Had digged his grave. O futile wrath and toil ! 
 
 Tucked in beneath yon coverlet of soil, 
 
 Turned back for him, how soundly had he slept ! 
 
 Fool, fool ! to struggle when he might have crept 
 
 So short a space, yet farther than the flight 
 
 Of swiftest dreaming through the longest night, 
 
 Into the quiet house of no false friend. 
 
 Alas for those who seek a journey's end 
 They have it ever with them like a ghost : 
 Nor shall they find, who deem they seek it most, 
 But crave the end of human ends as Hugh. 
 
 Now swoopingly the world of dream broke through 
 The figured wall of sense. It seemed he ran 
 As wind above the creeping ways of man, 
 And came upon the place of his desire, 
 Where burned, far-luring as a beacon-fire, 
 
40 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 The face of Jamie. But the vengeful stroke 
 Bit air. The darkness lifted like a smoke 
 And it was early morning. 
 
 Gazing far, 
 
 From where the West yet kept a pallid star 
 To thinner sky where dawn was wearing through, 
 Hugh shrank with dread, reluctant to renew 
 The war with that serene antagonist. 
 More fearsome than a smashing iron fist 
 Seemed that vast negativity of might ; 
 Until the frustrate vision of the night 
 Came moonwise on the gloom of his despair. 
 And lo, the foe was naught but yielding air, 
 A vacancy to fill with his intent ! 
 So from his spacious bed he 'rose and went 
 Three-footed ; and the vision goaded him. 
 
 All morning southward to the bare sky rim 
 The rugged coulee zigzagged, mounting slow; 
 And ever as it 'rose, the lean creek's flow 
 Dwindled and dwindled steadily, until 
 At last a scooped-out basin would not fill ; 
 And thenceforth 'twas a way of mocking dust. 
 But, in that Hugh still kept the driving lust 
 For vengeance, this new circumstance of fate 
 Served but to brew more venom for his hate, 
 And nerved him to avail the most with least. 
 
THE CRAWL 41 
 
 Ere noon the crawler chanced upon a feast 
 Of bread-root sunning in a favored draw. 
 A sentry gopher from his stronghold saw 
 Some three-legged beast, bear-like, yet not a bear, 
 With quite misguided fury digging where 
 No hapless brother gopher might be found. 
 And while, with striped nose above his mound, 
 The sentinel chirped shrilly to his clan 
 Scare-tales of that anomaly, the man 
 Devoured the chance-flung manna of the plains 
 That some vague reminiscence of old rains 
 Kept succulent, despite the burning drouth. 
 
 So with new vigor Hugh assailed the South, 
 His pockets laden with the precious roots 
 Against that coming traverse, where no fruits 
 Of herb or vine or shrub might brave the land 
 Spread rooflike 'twixt the Moreau and the Grand. 
 
 The coulee deepened ; yellow walls flung high, 
 Sheer to the ragged strip of blinding sky, 
 Dazzled and sweltered in the glare of day. 
 Capricious draughts that woke and died away 
 Into the heavy drowse, were breatht as flame. 
 And midway down the afternoon, Hugh came 
 Upon a little patch of spongy ground. 
 His thirst became a rage. He gazed around, 
 
42 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Seeking a spring ; but all about was dry 
 
 As strewn bones bleaching to a desert sky ; 
 
 Nor did a clawed hole, bought with needed 
 
 strength, 
 
 Return a grateful ooze. And when at length 
 Hugh sucked the mud, he spat it in disgust. 
 It had the acrid tang of broken trust, 
 The sweetish, tepid taste of feigning love ! 
 
 Still hopeful of a spring somewhere above, 
 He crawled the faster for his taunted thirst. 
 More damp spots, no less grudging than the first, 
 Occurred with growing frequence on the way, 
 Until amid the purple wane of day 
 The crawler came upon a little pool ! 
 Clear as a friend's heart, 'twas, and seeming cool 
 A crystal bowl whence skyey deeps looked up. 
 So might a god set down his drinking cup 
 Charged with a distillation of haut skies. 
 As famished horses, thrusting to the eyes 
 Parched muzzles, take a long-sought water-hole, 
 Hugh plunged his head into the brimming bowl 
 As though to share the joy with every sense. 
 And lo, the tang of that wide insolence 
 Of sky and plain was acrid in the draught ! 
 How ripplingly the lying water laughed ! 
 How like fine sentiment the mirrored sky 
 
THE CRAWL 43 
 
 Won credence for a sink of alkali ! 
 So with false friends. And yet, as may accrue 
 From specious love some profit of the true, 
 One gift of kindness had the tainted sink. 
 Stripped of his clothes, Hugh let his body drink 
 At every thirsting pore. Through trunk and 
 
 limb 
 
 The elemental blessing solaced him ; 
 Nor did he rise till, vague with stellar light, 
 The lone gulch, buttressing an arch of night, 
 Was like a temple to the Holy Ghost. 
 As priests in slow procession with the Host, 
 A gusty breeze intoned now low, now loud, 
 And now, as to the murmur of a crowd, 
 Yielding the dim-torched wonder of the nave. 
 Aloft along the dusky architrave 
 The wander-tale of drifting stars evolved ; 
 And Hugh lay gazing till the whole resolved 
 Into a haze. 
 
 It seemed that Little Jim 
 Had come to share a merry fire with him, 
 And there had been no trouble 'twixt the two. 
 And Jamie listened eagerly while Hugh 
 Essayed a tangled tale of bears and men, 
 Bread-root and stars. But ever now and then 
 The shifting smoke-cloud dimmed the golden hair, 
 The leal blue eyes ; until with sudden flare 
 
44 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 The flame effaced them utterly and lo, 
 The gulch bank-full with morning ! 
 
 Loath to go, 
 
 Hugh lay beside the pool and pondered fate. 
 He saw his age-long pilgrimage of hate 
 Stretch out a fool's trail ; and it made him 
 
 cringe ; 
 
 For still amid the nightly vision's fringe 
 His dull wit strayed, companioned with regret. 
 But when the sun, a tilted cauldron set 
 Upon the gulch rim, poured a blaze of day, 
 He rose and bathed again, and went his way, 
 Sustaining wrath returning with the toil. 
 
 At noon the guich walls, hewn in lighter soil, 
 Fell back ; and coulees dense with shrub and vine 
 Climbed zigzag to the sharp horizon line, 
 Whence one might choose the pilotage of crows. 
 He labored upward through the noonday doze. 
 Of breathless shade, where plums were turning 
 
 red 
 
 In tangled bowers, and grapevines overhead 
 Purpled with fruit to taunt the crawler's thirst. 
 With little effort Hugh attained the first; 
 The latter bargained sharply ere they sold 
 Their luscious clusters for the hoarded gold 
 Of strength that had so very much to buy. 
 
THE CRAWL 45 
 
 Now, having feasted, it was sweet to lie 
 Beneath a sun-proof canopy ; and sleep 
 Came swiftly. 
 
 Hugh awakened to some deep 
 Star-snuffing well of night. Awhile he lay 
 And wondered what had happened to the day 
 And where he was and what were best to do. 
 But when, fog-like, the drowse dispersed, he knew 
 How from the rim above the plain stretched far 
 To where the evening and the morning are, 
 And that 'twere better he should crawl by night, 
 Sleep out the glare. With groping hands for 
 
 sight, 
 
 Skyward along the broken steep he crawled, 
 And saw at length, immense and purple-walled 
 Or sensed the dusky mystery of plain. 
 Gazing aloft, he found the capsized Wain 
 In mid-plunge down the polar steep. Thereto 
 He set his back; and far ahead there grew, 
 As some pale blossom from a darkling root, 
 The star-blanched summit of a lonely butte, 
 And thitherward he dragged his heavy limb. 
 
 It seemed naught moved. Time hovered over 
 
 him, 
 
 An instant of incipient endeavor. 
 'Twas ever thus, and should be thus forever 
 
46 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 This groping for the same armful of space, 
 An insubstantial essence of one place, 
 Extentless on a weird frontier of sleep. 
 Sheer deep upon unfathomable deep 
 The flood of dusk bore down without a sound, 
 As ocean on the spirits of the drowned 
 Awakened headlong leagues beneath the light. 
 
 So lapsed the drowsy aeon of the night 
 A strangely tensile moment in a trance. 
 And then, as quickened to somnambulance, 
 The heavens, imperceptibly in motion, 
 Were altered as the upward deeps of ocean 
 Diluted with a seepage of the moon. 
 The butte-top, late a gossamer balloon 
 In mid-air tethered hovering, grew down 
 And rooted in a blear expanse of brown, 
 That, lifting slowly with the ebb of night, 
 Took on the harsh solidity of light 
 And day was on the prairie like a flame. 
 
 Scarce had he munched the hoarded roots, when 
 
 came 
 
 A vertigo of slumber. Snatchy dreams 
 Of sick pools, inaccessible cool streams, 
 Lured on through giddy vacancies of heat 
 In swooping flights ; now hills of roasting meat 
 
THE CRAWL 47 
 
 Made savory the oven of the world, 
 Yet kept remote peripheries and whirled 
 About a burning center that was Hugh. 
 Then all were gone, save one, and it turned blue 
 And was a heap of cool and luscious fruit, 
 Until at length he knew it for the butte 
 Now mantled with a weaving of the gloam. 
 
 It was the hour when cattle straggle home. 
 Across the clearing in a hush of sleep 
 They saunter, lowing ; loiter belly-deep 
 Amid the lush grass by the meadow stream. 
 How like the sound of water in a dream 
 The intermittent tinkle of yon bell. 
 A windlass creaks contentment from a well, 
 And cool deeps gurgle as the bucket sinks. 
 Now blowing at the trough the plow-team drinks ; 
 The shaken harness rattles. Sleepy quails 
 Call far. The warm milk hisses in the pails 
 There in the dusky barn-lot. Crickets cry. 
 The meadow twinkles with the glowing fly. 
 One hears the horses munching at their oats. 
 The green grows black. A veil of slumber floats 
 Across the haunts of home-enamored men. 
 
 Some freak of memory brought back again 
 
 The boyhood world of sight and scent and sound : 
 
 It perished, and the prairie ringed him round, 
 
48 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Blank as the face of fate. In listless mood 
 
 Hugh set his face against the solitude 
 
 And met the night. The new moon, low and 
 
 far, 
 
 A frail cup tilted, nor the high-swung star, 
 It seemed, might glint on any stream or spring 
 Or touch with silver any toothsome thing. 
 The kiote voiced the universal lack. 
 As from a nether fire, the plain gave back 
 The swelter of the noon-glare to the gloom. 
 In the hot hush Hugh heard his temples boom. 
 Thirst tortured. Motion was a languid pain. 
 Why seek some further nowhere on the plain ? 
 Here might the kiotes feast as well as there. 
 So spoke some loose-lipped spirit of despair; 
 And still Hugh moved, volitionless a weight 
 Submissive to that now unconscious hate, 
 As darkling water to the hidden moon. 
 
 Now when the night wore on in middle swoon, 
 The crawler, roused from stupor, was aware 
 Of some strange alteration in the air. 
 To breathe became an act of conscious will. 
 The starry waste was ominously still. 
 The far-off kiote's yelp came sharp and clear 
 As through a tunnel in the atmosphere 
 A ponderable, resonating mass. 
 
THE CRAWL 49 
 
 The limp leg dragging on the sun-dried grass 
 Produced a sound unnaturally loud. 
 
 Crouched, panting, Hugh looked up but saw no 
 
 cloud. 
 
 An oily film seemed spread upon the sky 
 Now dully staring as the open eye 
 Of one in fever. Gasping, choked with thirst, 
 A childish rage assailed Hugh, and he cursed : 
 'Twas like a broken spirit's outcry, tossed 
 Upon hell's burlesque sabbath for the lost, 
 And briefly space seemed crowded with the voice. 
 
 To wait and die, to move and die what 
 
 choice ? 
 Hugh chose not, yet he crawled; though more 
 
 and more 
 
 He felt the futile strife was nearly o'er. 
 And as he went, a muffled rumbling grew, 
 More felt than heard ; for long it puzzled Hugh. 
 Somehow 'twas coextensive with his thirst, 
 Yet boundless ; swollen blood-veins ere they burst 
 Might give such warning, so he thought. And 
 
 still 
 
 The drone seemed heaping up a phonic hill 
 That towered in a listening profound. 
 Then suddenly a mountain peak of sound 
 
50 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Came toppling to a heaven-jolting fall ! 
 The prairie shuddered, and a raucous drawl 
 Ran far and perished in the outer deep. 
 
 As one too roughly shaken out of sleep, 
 Hugh stared bewildered. Still the face of night 
 Remained the same, save where upon his right 
 The moon had vanished 'neath the prairie rim. 
 Then suddenly the meaning came to him. 
 He turned and saw athwart the northwest sky, 
 Like some black eyelid shutting on an eye, 
 A coming night to which the night was day ! 
 Star-hungry, ranged in regular array, 
 The lifting mass assailed the Dragon's lair, 
 Submerged the region of the hounded Bear, 
 Out-topped the tall Ox-Driver and the Pole. 
 And all the while there came a low-toned roll, 
 Less sound in air than tremor in the earth, 
 From where, like flame upon a windy hearth, 
 Deep in the further murk sheet-lightning flared. 
 And still the southern arc of heaven stared, 
 A half-shut eye, near blind with fever rheum ; 
 And still the plain lay tranquil as a tomb 
 Wherein the dead reck not a menaced world. 
 
 What turmoil now ? Lo, ragged columns hurled 
 Pell-mell up stellar slopes ! Swift blue fires leap 
 
THE CRAWL 51 
 
 Above the wild assailants of the steep ! 
 
 Along the solid rear a dull boom runs ! 
 
 So light horse squadrons charge beneath the guns. 
 
 Now once again the night is deathly still. 
 
 What ghastly peace upon the zenith hill, 
 
 No longer starry ? Not a sound is heard. 
 
 So poised the hush, it seems a whispered word 
 
 Might loose all noises in an avalanche. 
 
 Only the black mass moves, and far glooms blanch 
 
 With fitful flashes. The capricious flare 
 
 Reveals the butte-top tall and lonely there 
 
 Like some gray prophet contemplating doom. 
 
 But hark ! What spirits whisper in the gloom ? 
 
 What sibilation of conspiracies 
 
 Ruffles the hush or murmuring of trees, 
 
 Ghosts of the ancient forest or old rain, 
 
 In some hallucination of the plain, 
 
 A frustrate phantom mourning ? All around, 
 
 That e'er evolving, ne'er resolving sound 
 
 Gropes in the stifling hollow of the night. 
 
 Then once twice thrice a blade of 
 
 blinding light 
 
 Ripped up the heavens, and the deluge came 
 A burst of wind and water, noise and flame 
 That hurled the watcher flat upon the ground. 
 
52 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 A moment past Hugh famished ; Ynow, half 
 
 drowned, 
 He gasped for breath amid the hurtling drench. 
 
 So might a testy god, long sought to quench 
 A puny thirst, pour wassail, hurling after 
 The crashing bowl with wild sardonic laughter 
 To see man wrestle with his answered prayer ! 
 
 Prone to the roaring flaw and ceaseless flare, 
 The man drank deeply with the drinking grass; 
 Until it seemed the storm would never pass 
 But ravin down the painted murk for aye. 
 When had what dreamer seen a glaring sky 
 And leagues of prairie pantingly aquiver ? 
 Flame, flood, wind, noise and darkness were a 
 
 river 
 Tearing a cosmic channel to no sea. 
 
 The tortured night wore on ; then suddenly 
 Peace fell. Remotely the retreating Wrath 
 Trailed dull, reluctant thunders in its path, 
 And up along a broken stair of cloud 
 The Dawn came creeping whitely. Like a 
 
 shroud 
 
 Gray vapors clung along the sodden plain. 
 Up rose the sun to wipe the final stain 
 
THE CRAWL 53 
 
 Of fury from the sky and drink the mist. 
 Against a flawless arch of amethyst 
 The butte soared, like a soul serene and white 
 Because of the katharsis of the night. 
 
 All day Hugh fought with sleep and struggled on 
 Southeastward ; for the heavy heat was gone 
 Despite the naked sun. The blank Northwest 
 Breathed coolly; and the crawler thought it best 
 To move while yet each little break and hollow 
 And shallow basin of the bison-wallow 
 Begrudged the earth and air its dwindling store. 
 But now that thirst was conquered, more and 
 
 more 
 
 He felt the gnaw of hunger like a rage. 
 And once, from dozing in a clump of sage, 
 A lone jackrabbit bounded. As a flame 
 Hope flared in Hugh, until the memory came 
 Of him who robbed a sleeping friend and fled. 
 Then hate and hunger merged ; the man saw red, 
 And momently the hare and Little Jim 
 Were one blurred mark for murder unto him 
 Elusive, taunting, sweet to clutch and tear. 
 The rabbit paused to scan the crippled bear 
 That ground its teeth as though it chewed a 
 
 root. 
 But when, in witless rage, Hugh drew his boot 
 
54 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 And hurled it with a curse, the hare loped off, 
 Its critic ears turned back, as though to scoff 
 At silly brutes that threw their legs away. 
 
 Night like a shadow on enduring day 
 
 Swooped by. The dream of crawling and the 
 
 act 
 
 Were phases of one everlasting fact : 
 Hugh woke, and he was doing what he dreamed. 
 The butte, outstripped at eventide, now seemed 
 Intent to follow. Ever now and then 
 The crawler paused to calculate again 
 What dear-bought yawn of distance dwarfed the 
 
 hill. 
 
 Close in the rear it soared, a Titan still, 
 Whose hand-in-pocket saunter kept the pace. 
 
 Distinct along the southern rim of space 
 A low ridge lay, the crest of the divide. 
 What rest and plenty on the other side ! 
 Through what lush valleys ran what crystal 
 
 brooks ! 
 
 And there in virgin meadows wayside nooks 
 With leaf and purple cluster dulled the light ! 
 
 All day it seemed that distant Pisgah Height 
 Retreated, and the tall butte dogged the rear. 
 
THE CRAWL 55 
 
 At eve a striped gopher chirping near 
 Gave Hugh an inspiration. Now, at least, 
 No thieving friend should rob him of a feast. 
 His great idea stirred him as a shout. 
 Off came a boot, a sock was ravelled out. 
 The coarse yarn, fashioned to a running snare, 
 He placed about the gopher's hole with care, 
 And then withdrew to hold the yarn and wait. 
 The nightbound moments, ponderous with fate, 
 Crept slowly by. The battered gray face leered 
 In expectation. Down the grizzled beard 
 Ran slaver from anticipating jaws. 
 Evolving twilight hovered to a pause. 
 The light wind fell. Again and yet again 
 The man devoured his fancied prey : and then 
 Within the noose a timid snout was thrust. 
 His hand unsteadied with the hunger lust, 
 Hugh jerked the yarn. It broke. 
 
 Down swooped the night, 
 A shadow of despair. Bleak height on height, 
 It seemed, a sheer abyss enclosed him round. 
 Clutching a strand of yarn, he heard the sound 
 Of some infernal turmoil under him. 
 Grimly he strove to reach the ragged rim 
 That snared a star, until the skyey space 
 Was darkened with a roof of Jamie's face, 
 
56 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 And then the yarn was broken, and he fell. 
 A-tumble like a stricken bat, his yell 
 Woke hordes of laughers down the giddy yawn 
 Of that black pit and suddenly 'twas dawn. 
 
 Dream-dawn, dream-noon, dream-twilight ! Yet, 
 
 possest 
 By one stern dream more clamorous than the 
 
 rest, 
 
 Hugh headed for a gap that notched the hills, 
 Wherethrough a luring murmur of cool rills, 
 A haunting smell of verdure seemed to creep. 
 By fits the wild adventure of his sleep 
 Became the cause of all his waking care, 
 And he complained unto the empty air 
 How Jamie broke the yarn. 
 
 The sun and breeze 
 
 Had drunk all shallow basins to the lees, 
 But now and then some gully, choked with mud, 
 Retained a turbid relict of the flood. 
 Dream-dawn, dream-noon, dream-night! And 
 
 still obsessed 
 
 By that one dream more clamorous than the rest, 
 Hugh struggled for the crest of the divide. 
 And when at length he saw the other side, 
 'Twas but a rumpled waste of yellow hills ! 
 
THE CRAWL 57 
 
 The deep-sunk, wiser self had known the rills 
 And nooks to be the facture of a whim ; 
 Yet had the pleasant lie befriended him, 
 And now the brutal fact had come to stare. 
 
 Succumbing to a langorous despair, 
 
 He mourned his fate with childish uncontrol 
 
 And nursed that deadly adder of the soul, 
 
 Self-pity. Let the crows swoop down and feed, 
 
 Aye, batten on a thing that died of need, 
 
 A poor old wretch betrayed of God and Man ! 
 
 So peevishly his broken musing ran, 
 
 Till, glutted with the luxury of woe, 
 
 He turned to see the butte, that he might know 
 
 How little all his striving could avail 
 
 Against ill-luck. And lo, a finger-nail, 
 
 At arm-length held, could blot it out of space! 
 
 A goading purpose and a creeping pace 
 
 Had dwarfed the Titan in a haze of blue ! 
 
 And suddenly new power came to Hugh 
 
 With gazing on his masterpiece of will. 
 
 So fare the wise on Pisgah. 
 
 Down the hill, 
 
 Unto the higher vision consecrate, 
 Now sallied forth the new triumvirate 
 A Weariness, a Hunger and a Glory 
 
58 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Against tyrannic Chance. As in a story 
 
 Some higher Hugh observed the baser part. 
 
 So sits the artist throned above his art, 
 
 Nor recks the travail so the end be fair. 
 
 It seemed the wrinkled hills pressed in to stare, 
 
 The arch of heaven was an eye a-gaze. 
 
 And as Hugh went, he fashioned many a phrase 
 
 For use when, by some friendly ember-light, 
 
 His tale of things endured should speed the night 
 
 And all this gloom grow golden in the sharing. 
 
 So wrought the old evangel of high daring, 
 
 The duty and the beauty of endeavor, 
 
 The privilege of going on forever, 
 
 A victor in the moment. 
 
 Ah, but when 
 
 The night slipped by and morning came again, 
 The sky and hill were only sky and hill 
 And crawling but an agony of will. 
 So once again the old triumvirate, 
 A buzzard Hunger and a viper Hate 
 Together with the baser part of Hugh, 
 Went visionless. 
 
 That day the wild geese flew, 
 Vague in a gray profundity of sky ; 
 And on into the night their muffled cry 
 Haunted the moonlight like a far farewell. 
 It made Hugh homesick, though he could not tell 
 
THE CRAWL 59 
 
 For what he yearned; and in his fitful sleeping 
 The cry became the sound of Jamie weeping, 
 Immeasurably distant. 
 
 Morning broke, 
 
 Blear, chilly, through a fog that drove as smoke 
 Before the booming Northwest. Sweet and sad 
 Came creeping back old visions of the lad 
 Some trick of speech, some merry little lilt, 
 The brooding blue of eyes too clear for guilt, 
 The wind-blown golden hair. Hate slept that 
 
 day, 
 
 And half of Hugh was half a life away, 
 A wandering spirit wistful of the past ; 
 And half went drifting with the autumn blast 
 That mourned among the melancholy hills ; 
 For something of the lethargy that kills 
 Came creeping close upon the ebb of hate. 
 Only the raw wind, like the lash of Fate, 
 Could have availed to move him any more. 
 At last the buzzard beak no longer tore 
 His vitals, and he ceased to think of food. 
 The fighter slumbered, and a maudlin mood 
 Foretold the dissolution of the man. 
 He sobbed, and down his beard the big tears ran. 
 And now the scene is changed ; the bleak wind's 
 
 cry 
 Becomes a flight of bullets snarling by 
 
60 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 From where on yonder summit skulk the Rees. 
 Against the sky, in silhouette, he sees 
 The headstrong Jamie in the leaden rain. 
 And now serenely beautiful and slain 
 The dear lad lies within a gusty tent. 
 
 Thus vexed with doleful whims the crawler went 
 
 Adrift before the wind, nor saw the trail; 
 
 Till close on night he knew a rugged vale 
 
 Had closed about him ; and a hush was there, 
 
 Though still a moaning in the upper air 
 
 Told how the gray-winged gale blew out the day. 
 
 Beneath a clump of brush he swooned away 
 
 Into an icy void ; and waking numb, 
 
 It seemed the still white dawn of death had come 
 
 On this, some cradle-valley of the soul. 
 
 He saw a dim, enchanted hollow roll 
 
 Beneath him, and the brush thereof was fleece ; 
 
 And, like the body of the perfect peace 
 
 That thralled the whole, abode the break of day. 
 
 It seemed no wind had ever come that way, 
 
 Nor sound dwelt there, nor echo found the place. 
 
 And Hugh lay lapped in wonderment a space, 
 
 Vexed with a snarl whereof the ends were lost, 
 
 Till, shivering, he wondered if a frost 
 
 Had fallen with the dying of the blast. 
 
 So, vaguely troubled, listlessly he cast 
 
THE CRAWL 6l 
 
 A gaze about him : lo, above his head 
 
 The gray-green curtain of his chilly bed 
 
 Was broidered thick with plums ! Or so it seemed, 
 
 For he was half persuaded that he dreamed ; 
 
 And with a steady stare he strove to keep 
 
 That treasure for the other side of sleep. 
 
 Returning hunger bade him rise; in vain 
 
 He struggled with a fine-spun mesh of pain 
 
 That trammelled him, until a yellow stream 
 
 Of day flowed down the white vale of a dream 
 
 And left it disenchanted in the glare. 
 
 Then, warmed and soothed, Hugh rose and 
 
 feasted there, 
 And thought once more of reaching the Moreau. 
 
 To southward with a painful pace and slow 
 He went stiff-jointed ; and a gnawing ache 
 In that hip-wound he had for Jamie's sake 
 Oft made him groan nor wrought a tender 
 
 mood : 
 
 The rankling weapon of ingratitude 
 Was turned again with every puckering twinge. 
 
 Far down the vale a narrow winding fringe 
 Of wilted green betokened how a spring 
 There sent a little rill meandering ; 
 
62 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 And Hugh was greatly heartened, for he knew 
 What fruits and herbs might flourish in the 
 
 slough, 
 And thirst, henceforth, should torture not again. 
 
 So day on day, despite the crawler's pain, 
 All in the windless, golden autumn weather, 
 These two, as comrades, struggled south to- 
 gether 
 
 The homeless graybeard and the homing rill : 
 And one was sullen with the lust to kill, 
 And one went crooning of the moon-wooed 
 
 vast; 
 
 For each the many-fathomed peace at last, 
 But oh the boon of singing on the way ! 
 So came these in the golden fall of day 
 Unto a sudden turn in the ravine, 
 Wherefrom Hugh saw a flat of cluttered green 
 Beneath the further bluffs of the Moreau. 
 
 With sinking heart he paused and gazed below 
 Upon the goal of so much toil and pain. 
 Yon green had seemed a paradise to gain 
 The while he thirsted where the lonely butte 
 Looked far and saw no toothsome herb or fruit 
 In all that yellow barren dim with heat. 
 But now the wasting body cried for meat, 
 
THE CRAWL 63 
 
 And sickness was upon him. Game should pass, 
 Nor deign to fear the mighty hunter Glass, 
 But curiously sniffing, pause to stare. 
 
 Now while thus musing, Hugh became aware 
 Of some low murmur, phasic and profound, 
 Scarce risen o'er the border line of sound. 
 It might have been the coursing of his blood, 
 Or thunder heard remotely, or a flood 
 Flung down a wooded valley far away. 
 Yet that had been no weather-breeding day; 
 'Twould frost that night; amid the thirsty land 
 All streams ran thin; and when he pressed a 
 
 hand 
 On either ear, the world seemed very still. 
 
 The deep- worn channel of the little rill 
 Here fell away to eastward, rising, rough 
 With old rain-furrows, to a lofty bluff 
 That faced the river with a yellow wall. 
 Thereto, perplexed, Hugh set about to crawl, 
 Nor reached the summit till the sun was low. 
 Far-spread, shade-dimpled in the level glow, 
 The still land told not whence the murmur grew; 
 But where the green strip melted into blue 
 Far down the winding valley of the stream, 
 Hugh saw what seemed the tempest of a dream 
 
64 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 At mimic havoc in the timber-glooms. 
 
 As from the sweeping of gigantic brooms, 
 
 A dust cloud deepened down the dwindling river ; 
 
 Upon the distant tree-tops ran a shiver 
 
 And huddled thickets writhed as in a gale. 
 
 On creeps the windless tempest up the vale, 
 The while the murmur deepens to a roar, 
 As with the wider yawning of a door. 
 And now the agitated green gloom gapes 
 To belch a flood of countless dusky shapes 
 That mill and wrangle in a turbid flow 
 Migrating myriads of the buffalo 
 Bound for the winter pastures of the Platte ! 
 
 Exhausted, faint with need of meat, Hugh sat 
 And watched the mounting of the living flood. 
 Down came the night, and like a blot of blood 
 The lopped moon weltered in the dust-bleared 
 
 East. 
 
 Sleep came and gave a Barmecidal feast. 
 About a merry flame were simmering 
 Sweet haunches of the calving of the Spring, 
 And tender tongues that never tasted snow, 
 And marrow bones that yielded to a blow 
 Such treasure ! Hugh awoke with gnashing teeth, 
 And heard the mooing drone of cows beneath, 
 
THE CRAWL 65 
 
 The roll of hoofs, the challenge of the bull. 
 So sounds a freshet when the banks are full 
 And bursting brush-jams bellow to the croon 
 Of water through green leaves. The ragged 
 
 moon 
 
 Now drenched the valley in an eerie rain : 
 Below, the semblance of a hurricane ; 
 Above, the perfect calm of brooding frost, 
 Through which the wolves in doleful tenson 
 
 tossed 
 
 From hill to hill the ancient hunger-song. 
 In broken sleep Hugh rolled the chill night long, 
 Half conscious of the flowing flesh below. 
 And now he trailed a bison in the snow 
 That deepened till he could not lift his feet. 
 Again, he battled for a chunk of meat 
 With some gray beast that fought with icy 
 
 fang. 
 
 And when he woke, the wolves no longer sang ; 
 White dawn athwart a white world smote the 
 
 hill, 
 And thunder rolled along the valley still. 
 
 Morn, wiping up the frost as with a sponge, 
 Day on the steep and down the nightward plunge, 
 And Twilight saw the myriads moving on. 
 Dust to the westward where the van had gone, 
 F 
 
66 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 And dust and muffled thunder in the east ! 
 Hugh starved while gazing on a Titan feast. 
 The tons of beef, that eddied there and swirled, 
 Had stilled the crying hungers of the world, 
 Yet not one little morsel was for him. 
 
 The red sun, pausing on the dusty rim, 
 Induced a panic aspect of his plight : 
 The herd would pass and vanish in the night 
 And be another dream to cling and flout. 
 Now scanning all the summit round about, 
 Amid the rubble of the ancient drift 
 He saw a bowlder. 'Twas too big to lift, 
 Yet he might roll it. Painfully and slow 
 He worked it to the edge, then let it go 
 And breathlessly expectant watched it fall. 
 It hurtled down the leaning yellow wall, 
 And bounding from a brushy ledge's brow, 
 It barely grazed the buttocks of a cow 
 And made a moment's eddy where it struck. 
 
 In peevish wrath Hugh cursed his evil luck, 
 
 And seizing rubble, gave his fury vent 
 
 By pelting bison till his strength was spent : 
 
 So might a child assail the crowding sea ! 
 
 Then, sick at heart and musing bitterly, 
 
 He shambled down the steep way to the creek, 
 
 And having stayed the tearing buzzard beak 
 
THE CRAWL 67 
 
 With breadroot and the waters of the rill, 
 Slept till the white of morning o'er the hill 
 Was like a whisper groping in a hush. 
 The stream's low trill seemed loud. The tumbled 
 
 brush 
 
 And rumpled tree-tops in the flat below, 
 Upon a fog that clung like spectral snow, 
 Lay motionless ; nor any sound was there. 
 No frost had fallen, but the crystal air 
 Smacked of the autumn, and a heavy dew 
 Lay hoar upon the grass. There came on Hugh 
 A picture, vivid in the moment's thrill, 
 Of martialed corn-shocks marching up a hill 
 And spiked fields dotted with the pumpkin's 
 
 gold. 
 
 It vanished ; and, a-shiver with the cold, 
 He brooded on the mockeries of Chance, 
 The shrewd malignity of Circumstance 
 That either gave too little or too much. 
 
 Yet, with the fragment of a hope for crutch, 
 His spirit rallied, and he rose to go, 
 Though each stiff joint resisted as a foe 
 And that old hip-wound battled with his will. 
 So down along the channel of the rill 
 Unto the vale below he fought his way. 
 The frore fog, rifting in the risen day, 
 
68 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Revealed the havoc of the living flood 
 The river shallows beaten into mud, 
 The slender saplings shattered in the crush, 
 All lower leafage stripped, the tousled brush 
 Despoiled of fruitage, winter-thin, aghast. 
 And where the avalanche of hoofs had passed 
 It seemed nor herb nor grass had ever been. 
 And this the hard-won paradise, wherein 
 A food-devouring plethora of food 
 Had come to make a starving solitude! 
 
 Yet hope and courage mounted with the sun. 
 Surely, Hugh thought, some ill-begotten one 
 Of all that striving mass had lost the strife 
 And perished in the headlong stream of life 
 A feast to fill the bellies of the strong, 
 That still the weak might perish. All day long 
 He struggled down the stricken vale, nor saw 
 What thing he sought. But when the twilight 
 
 awe 
 
 Was creeping in, beyond a bend arose 
 A din as though the kiotes and the crows 
 Fought there with shrill and raucous battle cries. 
 
 Small need had Hugh to ponder and surmise 
 What guerdon beak and fang contended for. 
 Within himself the oldest cause of war 
 
THE CRAWL 69 
 
 Brought forth upon the instant fang and beak. 
 He too would fight ! Nor had he far to seek 
 Amid the driftwood strewn about the sand 
 For weapons suited to a brawny hand 
 With such a purpose. Armed with club and 
 
 stone 
 
 He forged ahead into the battle zone, 
 And from a screening thicket spied his foes. 
 
 He saw a bison carcass black with crows, 
 And over it a welter of black wings, 
 And round about, a press of tawny rings 
 That, like a muddy current churned to foam 
 Upon a snag, flashed whitely in the gloam 
 With naked teeth; while close about the prize 
 Red beaks and muzzles bloody to the eyes 
 Betrayed how worth a struggle was the feast. 
 
 Then came on Hugh the fury of the beast 
 To eat or to be eaten ! Better so 
 To die contending with a living foe, 
 Than fight the yielding distance and the lack. 
 Masked by the brush he opened the attack, 
 And ever where a stone or club fell true, 
 About the stricken one an uproar grew 
 And brute tore brute, forgetful of the prey, 
 Until the whole pack tumbled in the fray 
 
70 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 With bleeding flanks and lacerated throats. 
 Then, as the leader of a host who notes 
 The cannon-wrought confusion of the foe, 
 Hugh seized the moment for a daring blow. 
 
 The wolfs a coward, who, in goodly packs, 
 May counterfeit the courage that he lacks 
 And with a craven's fury crush the bold. 
 But when the disunited mass that rolled 
 In suicidal strife, became aware 
 How some great beast that shambled like a bear 
 Bore down with roaring challenge, fell a hush 
 Upon the pack, some slinking to the brush 
 With tails a-droop ; while some that whined in pain 
 Writhed off on reddened trails. With bristled 
 
 mane 
 
 Before the flying stones a bolder few 
 Snarled menace at the foe as they withdrew 
 To fill the outer dusk with clamorings. 
 Aloft upon a moaning wind of wings 
 The crows with harsh, vituperative cries 
 Now saw a gray wolf of prodigious size 
 Devouring with the frenzy of the starved. 
 Thus fell to Hugh a bison killed and carved ; 
 And so Fate's whims mysteriously trend 
 Woe in the silken meshes of the friend, 
 Weal in the might and menace of the foe. 
 
THE CRAWL 71 
 
 But with the fading of the afterglow 
 The routed wolves found courage to return : 
 Amid the brush Hugh saw their eye-balls burn ; 
 And well he knew how futile stick and stone 
 Should prove by night to keep them from their 
 
 own. 
 
 Better is less with safety, than enough 
 With ruin. He retreated to a bluff, 
 And scarce had reached it when the pack swooped 
 
 in 
 Upon the carcass. 
 
 All night long, the din 
 
 Of wrangling wolves assailed the starry air, 
 While high above them in a brushy lair 
 Hugh dreamed of gnawing at the bloody feast. 
 
 Along about the blanching of the east, 
 
 When sleep is weirdest and a moment's flight, 
 
 Remembered coextensive with the night, 
 
 May teem with hapful years; as light in smoke, 
 
 Upon the jumble of Hugh's dreaming broke 
 
 A buzz of human voices. Once again 
 
 He rode the westward trail with Henry's men 
 
 Hoof-smitten leagues consuming in a dust. 
 
 And now the nightmare of that broken trust 
 
 Was on him, and he lay beside the spring, 
 
 A corpse, yet heard the muffled parleying 
 
72 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Above him of the looters of the dead : 
 
 But when he might have riddled what they said, 
 
 The babble flattened to a blur of gray 
 
 And lo, upon a bleak frontier of day, 
 
 The spent moon staring down ! A little space 
 
 Hugh scrutinized the featureless white face, 
 
 As though 'twould speak. But when again the 
 
 sound 
 
 Grew up, and seemed to come from under ground, 
 He cast the drowse, and peering down the slope, 
 Beheld what set at grapple fear and hope 
 Three Indian horsemen riding at a jog ! 
 Their ponies, wading belly-deep in fog, 
 That clung along the valley, seemed to swim, 
 And through a thinner vapor moving dim, 
 The men were ghost-like. 
 
 Could they be the Sioux ? 
 Almost the wish became belief in Hugh. 
 Or were they Rees ? As readily the doubt 
 Withheld him from the hazard of a shout. 
 And while he followed them with baffled gaze, 
 Grown large and vague, dissolving in the haze, 
 They vanished westward. 
 
 Knowing well the wont 
 Of Indians moving on the bison-hunt, 
 Forthwith Hugh guessed the early riders were 
 The outflung feelers of a tribe a-stir 
 
THE CRAWL 73 
 
 Like some huge cat gone mousing. So he lay 
 
 Concealed, impatient with the sleepy day 
 
 That dawdled in the dawning. Would it bring 
 
 Good luck or ill ? His eager questioning, 
 
 As crawling fog, took on a golden hue 
 
 From sunrise. He was waiting for the Sioux, 
 
 Their parfleche panniers fat with sun-dried 
 
 maize 
 
 And wasna ! From the mint of evil days 
 He would coin tales and be no begging guest 
 About the tribal feast-fires burning west, 
 But kinsman of the blood of daring men. 
 And when the crawler stood erect again 
 O Friend-Betrayer at the Big Horn's mouth, 
 Beware of someone riding from the South 
 To do the deed that he had lived to do ! 
 
 Now when the sun stood hour-high in the blue, 
 From where a cloud of startled blackbirds rose 
 Down stream, a panic tumult broke the doze 
 Of windless morning. What unwelcome news 
 Embroiled the parliament of feathered shrews ? 
 A boiling cloud against the sun they lower, 
 Flackering strepent ; now a sooty shower, 
 Big-flaked, squall-driven westward, down they 
 
 flutter 
 To set a clump of cottonwoods a-sputter 
 
74 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 With cold black fire! And once again, some 
 
 shock 
 
 Of sight or sound flings panic in the flock 
 Gray boughs exploding in a ruck of birds ! 
 
 What augury in orniscopic words 
 
 Did yon swart sibyls on the morning scrawl ? 
 
 Now broke abruptly through the clacking 
 
 brawl 
 
 A camp-dog's barking and a pony's neigh ; 
 Whereat a running nicker fled away, 
 Attenuating to a rearward hush ; 
 And lo ! in hailing distance 'round the brush 
 That fringed a jutting bluff's base like a beard 
 Upon a stubborn chin out-thrust, appeared 
 A band of mounted warriors ! In their van 
 Aloof and lonely rode a gnarled old man 
 Upon a piebald stallion. Stooped was he 
 Beneath his heavy years, yet haughtily 
 He wore them like the purple of a king. 
 Keen for a goal, as from the driving string 
 A barbed and feathered arrow truly sped, 
 His face was like a flinty arrow-head, 
 And brooded westward in a steady stare. 
 There was a sift of winter in his hair, 
 The bleakness of brown winter in his look. 
 
THE CRAWL 75 
 
 Hugh saw, and huddled closer in his nook. 
 
 Fled the bright dreams of safety, feast and rest 
 
 Before that keen, cold brooder on the West, 
 
 As gaudy leaves before the blizzard flee. 
 
 'Twas Elk Tongue, fighting chieftain of the Ree, 
 
 With all his people at his pony's tail 
 
 Full two-score lodges emptied on the trail 
 
 Of hunger ! 
 
 On they came in ravelled rank, 
 And many a haggard eye and hollow flank 
 Made plain how close and pitilessly pressed 
 The enemy that drove them to the West 
 Such foeman as no warrior ever slew. 
 A tale of cornfields plundered by the Sioux 
 Their sagging panniers told. Yet rich enough 
 They seemed to him who watched them from the 
 
 bluff; 
 
 Yea, pampered nigh the limit of desire ! 
 No friend had filched from them the boon of 
 
 fire 
 
 And hurled them shivering back upon the beast. 
 Erect they went, full-armed to strive, at least; 
 And nightly in a cozy ember-glow 
 Hope fed them with a dream of buffalo 
 Soon to be overtaken. After that, 
 Home with their Pawnee cousins on the Platte, 
 Much meat and merry-making till the Spring. 
 
76 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 On dragged the rabble like a fraying string 
 Too tautly drawn. The rich-in-ponies rode, 
 For much is light and little is a load 
 Among all heathen with no Christ to save! 
 Gray seekers for the yet begrudging grave, 
 Bent with the hoeing of forgotten maize, 
 Wood-hewers, water-bearers all their days, 
 Toiled 'neath the life-long hoarding of their packs. 
 And nursing squaws, their babies at their backs 
 Whining because the milk they got was thinned 
 In dugs of famine, strove as with a wind. 
 Invincibly equipped with their first bows 
 The striplings strutted, knowing, as youth knows, 
 How fair life is beyond the beckoning blue. 
 Cold-eyed the grandsires plodded, for they knew, 
 As frosted heads may know, how all trails merge 
 In what lone land. Raw maidens on the verge 
 Of some half-guessed-at mystery of life, 
 In wistful emulation of the wife 
 Stooped to the fancied burden of the race ; 
 Nor read upon the withered granddam's face 
 The scrawled tale of that burden and its woe. 
 Slant to the sagging poles of the travaux, 
 Numb to the squaw's harsh railing and the goad, 
 The lean cayuses toiled. And children rode 
 A-top the household plunder, wonder-eyed 
 To see a world flow by on either side, 
 
THE CRAWL 77 
 
 From blue air sprung to vanish in blue air, 
 A river of enchantments. 
 
 Here and there 
 
 The camp-curs loped upon a vexing quest 
 Where countless hoofs had left a palimpsest, 
 A taunting snarl of broken scents. And now 
 They sniff the clean bones of the bison cow, 
 Howl to the skies ; and now with manes a-rough 
 They nose the man-smell leading to the bluff; 
 Pause puzzled at the base and sweep the height 
 With questioning yelps. Aloft, crouched low in 
 
 fright, 
 
 Already Hugh can hear the braves' guffaws 
 At their scorned foeman yielded to the squaws' 
 Inverted mercy and a slow-won grave. 
 Since Earth's first mother scolded from a cave 
 And that dear riddle of her love began, 
 No man has wrought a weapon against man 
 To match the deadly venom brewed above 
 The lean, blue, blinding heart-fires of her love. 
 Well might the hunted hunter shrink aghast ! 
 But thrice three seasons yet should swell the past, 
 So was it writ, ere Fate's keen harriers 
 Should run Hugh Glass to earth. 
 
 The hungry curs 
 
 Took up again the tangled scent of food. 
 Still flowed the rabble through the solitude 
 
78 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 A thinning stream now of the halt, the weak 
 
 And all who had not very far to seek 
 
 For that weird pass whereto the fleet are slow, 
 
 And out of it keen winds and numbing blow, 
 
 Shrill with the fleeing voices of the dead. 
 
 Slowly the scattered stragglers, making head 
 
 Against their weariness as up a steep, 
 
 Fled westward ; and the morning lay asleep 
 
 Upon the valley fallen wondrous still. 
 
 Hugh kept his nook, nor ventured forth, until 
 The high day toppled to the blue descent, 
 When thirst became a master, and he went 
 With painful scrambling down the broken scarp, 
 Lured by the stream, that like a smitten harp 
 Rippled a muted music to the sun. 
 
 Scarce had he crossed the open flat, and won 
 The half-way fringe of willows, when he saw, 
 Slow plodding up the trail, a tottering squaw 
 Whose years made big the little pack she bore. 
 Crouched in the brush Hugh watched her. More 
 
 and more 
 
 The little burden tempted him. Why not ? 
 A thin cry throttled in that lonely spot 
 Could bring no succor. None should ever know, 
 Save him, the feasted kiote and the crow, 
 
THE CRAWL 79 
 
 Why one poor crone found not the midnight fire. 
 Nor would the vanguard, quick with young de- 
 sire, 
 
 Devouring distance westward like a flame, 
 Regret this ash dropped rearward. 
 
 On she came, 
 
 Slow-footed, staring blankly on the sand 
 So close now that it needed but a hand 
 Out-thrust to overthrow her ; aye, to win 
 That priceless spoil, a little tent of skin, 
 A flint and steel, a kettle and a knife ! 
 What did the dying with the means of life, 
 That thus the fit-to-live should suffer lack ? 
 
 Poised for the lunge, what whimsy held him 
 
 back? 
 
 Why did he gaze upon the passing prize, 
 Nor seize it ? Did some gust of ghostly cries 
 Awaken round her whisperings of Eld, 
 Wraith-voices of the babies she had held, 
 Guarding the milkless paps, the withered womb ? 
 Far down a moment's cleavage in the gloom 
 Of backward years Hugh saw her now nor saw 
 The little burden and the feeble squaw, 
 But someone sitting haloed like a saint 
 Beside a hearth long cold. The dream grew 
 
 faint ; 
 
80 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 And when he looked again, the crone was gone 
 Beyond a clump of willow. 
 
 Crawling on, 
 
 He reached the river. Leaning to a pool 
 Calm in its cup of sand, he saw a fool ! 
 A wild, wry mask of mirth, a-grin, yet grim, 
 Rose there to claim identity with him 
 And ridicule his folly. Pity ? Faugh ! 
 Who pitied this, that it should spare a squaw 
 Spent in the spawning of a scorpion brood ? 
 
 He drank and hastened down the solitude, 
 Fleeing that thing which fleered him, and was 
 
 Hugh. 
 
 And as he went his self-accusing grew 
 And with it, anger ; till it came to seem 
 That somehow some sly Jamie of a dream 
 Had plundered him again ; and he was strong 
 With lust of vengeance and the sting of wrong, 
 So that he travelled faster than for days. 
 
 Now when the eve in many-shaded grays 
 
 Wove the day's shroud, and through the lower 
 
 lands 
 
 Lean fog-arms groped with chilling spirit hands, 
 Hugh paused perplexed. Elusive, haunting, dim, 
 As though some memory that stirred in him, 
 
THE CRAWL 81 
 
 Invasive of the real, outgrew the dream, 
 
 There came upon the breeze that stole up stream 
 
 A whiff of woodsmoke. 
 
 'Twixt a beat and beat 
 
 Of Hugh's deluded heart, it seemed the sweet 
 Allure of home. A brief way, and one came 
 Upon the clearing where the sumach flame 
 Ran round the forest-fringe; and just beyond 
 One saw the slough grass nodding in the pond 
 Unto the sleepy troll the bullfrogs sung. 
 And then one saw the place where one was 
 
 young 
 
 The log-house sitting on a stumpy rise. 
 Hearth-lit within, its windows were as eyes 
 That love much and are faded with old tears. 
 It seemed regretful of a life's arrears, 
 Yet patient, with a self-denying poise, 
 Like some old mother for her bearded boys 
 Waiting sweet-hearted and a little sad. 
 So briefly dreamed a recrudescent lad 
 Beneath gray hairs, and fled. 
 
 Through chill and damp 
 Still groped the odor, hinting at a camp, 
 A two-tongued herald wooing hope and fear. 
 Was hospitality or danger near ? 
 A Sioux war-party hot upon the trail, 
 Or laggard Rees ? Hugh crawled across the vale, 
 
82 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Toiled up along a zigzag gully's bed 
 And reached a bluff's top. In a smudge of red 
 The West burned low. Hill summits, yet alight, 
 And pools of gloom anticipating night 
 Mottled the landscape to the dull blue rim. 
 What freak of fancy had imposed on him ? 
 Could one smell home-smoke fifty years away ? 
 He saw no fire ; no pluming spire of gray 
 Rose in the dimming air to woo or warn. 
 
 He lay upon the bare height, fagged, forlorn, 
 And old times came upon him with the creep 
 Of subtle drugs that put the will to sleep 
 And wreak doom to the soothing of a dream. 
 So listlessly he scanned the sombrous stream, 
 Scarce seeing what he scanned. The dark in- 
 creased ; 
 
 A chill wind wakened from the frowning east 
 And soughed along the vale. 
 
 Then with a start 
 
 He saw what broke the torpor of his heart 
 And set the wild blood free. From where he lay 
 An easy point-blank rifle-shot away, 
 Appeared a mystic germinating spark 
 That in some secret garden of the dark 
 Upreared a frail, blue, nodding stem, whereon 
 A ruddy lily flourished and was gone ! 
 
THE CRAWL 83 
 
 What miracle was this ? Again it grew, 
 The scarlet blossom on the stem of blue, 
 And withered back again into the night. 
 
 With pounding heart Hugh crawled along the 
 
 height 
 
 And reached a point of vantage whence, below, 
 He saw capricious witch-lights dim and glow 
 Like far-spent embers quickened in a breeze. 
 'Twas surely not a camp of laggard Rees, 
 Nor yet of Siouan warriors hot in chase. 
 Dusk and a quiet bivouacked in that place. 
 A doddering vagrant with numb hands, the Wind 
 Fumbled the dying ashes there, and whined. 
 It was the day-old camp-ground of the foe ! 
 
 Glad-hearted now, Hugh gained the vale below, 
 Keen to possess once more the ancient gift. 
 Nearing the glow, he saw vague shadows lift 
 Out of the painted gloom of smouldering logs 
 Distorted bulks that bristled, and were dogs 
 Snarling at this invasion of their lair. 
 Hugh charged upon them, growling like a bear, 
 And sent them whining. 
 
 Now again to view 
 
 The burgeoning of scarlet, gold and blue, 
 The immemorial miracle of fire ! 
 From heaped-up twigs a tenuous smoky spire 
 
84 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Arose, and made an altar of the place. 
 The spark-glow, faint upon the grizzled face, 
 Transformed the kneeling outcast to a priest; 
 And, native of the light-begetting East, 
 The Wind became a chanting acolyte. 
 These two, entempled in the vaulted night, 
 Breathed conjuries of interwoven breath. 
 Then, hark ! the snapping of the chains 
 
 Death ! 
 From dead wood, lo ! the epiphanic god ! 
 
 Once more the freightage of the fennel rod 
 Dissolved the chilling pall of Jovian scorn. 
 The wonder of the resurrection morn, 
 The face apocalyptic and the sword, 
 The glory of the many-symboled Lord, 
 Hugh, lifting up his eyes about him, saw ! 
 And something in him like a vernal thaw, 
 Voiced with the sound of many waters, ran 
 And quickened to the laughter of a man. 
 
 Light-heartedly he fed the singing flame 
 And took its blessing : till a soft sleep came 
 With dreaming that was like a pleasant tale. 
 
 The far white dawn was peering up the vale 
 When he awoke to indolent content. 
 A few shorn stars in pale astonishment 
 
THE CRAWL 85 
 
 Were huddled westward ; and the fire was low. 
 
 Three scrawny camp-curs, mustered in a row 
 
 Beyond the heap of embers, heads askew, 
 
 Ears pricked to question what the man might do, 
 
 Sat wistfully regardant. He arose ; 
 
 And they, grown canny in a school of blows, 
 
 Skulked to a safer distance, there to raise 
 
 A dolorous chanting of the evil days, 
 
 Their gray breath like the body of a prayer. 
 
 Hugh nursed the sullen embers to a flare, 
 
 Then set about to view an empty camp 
 
 As once before ; but now no smoky lamp 
 
 Of blear suspicion searched a gloom of fraud 
 
 Wherein a smirking Friendship, like a bawd, 
 
 Embraced a coward Safety; now no grief, 
 
 'Twixt hideous revelation and belief, 
 
 Made womanish the man ; but glad to strive, 
 
 With hope to nerve him and a will to drive, 
 
 He knew that he could finish in the race. 
 
 The staring impassivity of space 
 
 No longer mocked ; the dreadful skyward climb, 
 
 Where distance seemed identical with time, 
 
 Was past now; and that mystic something, luck, 
 
 Without which worth may flounder in the ruck, 
 
 Had turned to him again. 
 
 So flamelike soared 
 Rekindled hope in him as he explored 
 
86 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Among the ash-heaps ; and the lean dogs ran 
 And barked about him, for the love of man 
 Wistful, yet fearing. Surely he could find 
 Some trifle in the hurry left behind 
 Or haply hidden in the trampled sand 
 That to the cunning of a needy hand 
 Should prove the master-key of circumstance: 
 For 'tis the little gifts of grudging Chance, 
 Well husbanded, make victors. 
 
 Long he sought 
 
 Without avail ; and, crawling back, he thought 
 Of how the dogs were growing less afraid, 
 And how one might be skinned without a blade. 
 A flake of flint might do it : he would try. 
 And then he saw or did the servile eye 
 Trick out a mental image like the real ? 
 He saw a glimmering of whetted steel 
 Beside a heap now washed with morning light ! 
 
 Scarce more of marvel and the sense of might 
 Moved Arthur when he reached a hand to take 
 The fay-wrought brand emerging from the lake, 
 Whereby a kingdom should be lopped of strife, 
 Than Hugh now, pouncing on a trader's knife 
 Worn hollow in the use of bounteous days ! 
 
 And now behold a rich man by the blaze 
 Of his own hearth a lord of steel and fire ! 
 
THE CRAWL 87 
 
 Not having, but the measure of desire 
 Determines wealth. Who gaining more, seek 
 
 most, 
 
 Are ever the pursuers of a ghost 
 And lend their fleetness to the fugitive. 
 For Hugh, long goaded by the wish to live, 
 What gage of mastery in fire and tool ! 
 That twain wherewith Time put the brute to 
 
 school, 
 Evolving Man, the maker and the seer. 
 
 'Twixt urging hunger and restraining fear 
 
 The gaunt dogs hovered round the man; while 
 
 he 
 
 Cajoled them in the language of the Ree 
 And simulated feeding them with sand, 
 Until the boldest dared to sniff his hand, 
 Bare-fanged and with conciliative whine. 
 Through bristled mane the quick blade bit the 
 
 spine 
 
 Below the skull ; and as a flame-struck thing 
 The body humped and shuddered, withering; 
 The lank limbs huddled, wilted. 
 
 Now to skin 
 
 The carcass, dig a hole, arrange therein 
 And fix the pelt with stakes, the flesh-side up. 
 This done, he shaped the bladder to a cup 
 
88 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 On willow withes, and filled the rawhide pot 
 With water from the river made it hot 
 With roasted stones, and set the meat a-boil. 
 Those days of famine and prodigious toil 
 Had wrought bulimic cravings in the man, 
 And scarce the cooking of the flesh outran 
 The eating of it. As a fed flame towers 
 According to the fuel it devours, 
 His hunger with indulgence grew, nor ceased 
 Until the kettle, empty of the feast, 
 Went dim, the sky and valley, merging, swirled 
 In subtle smoke that smothered out the world. 
 Hugh slept. 
 
 And then as divers, mounting, sunder 
 A murmuring murk to blink in sudden wonder 
 Upon a dazzling upper deep of blue 
 He rose again to consciousness, and knew 
 The low sun beating slantly on his face. 
 
 Now indolently gazing round the place, 
 
 He noted how the curs had revelled there 
 
 The bones and entrails gone; some scattered 
 
 hair 
 
 Alone remaining of the pot of hide. 
 How strange he had not heard them at his side ! 
 And granting but one afternoon had passed, 
 What could have made the fire burn out so fast ? 
 
THE CRAWL 89 
 
 Had daylight waned, night fallen, morning crept, 
 Noon blazed, a new day dwindled while he 
 
 slept ? 
 
 And was the friendlike fire a Jamie too ? 
 Across the twilit consciousness of Hugh 
 The old obsession like a wounded bird 
 Fluttered. 
 
 He got upon his knees and stirred 
 The feathery ash ; but not a spark was there. 
 Already with the failing sun the air 
 Went keen, betokening a frosty night. 
 Hugh winced with something like the clutch of 
 
 fright. 
 
 How could he bear the torture, how sustain 
 The sting of that antiquity of pain 
 Rolled back upon him face again the foe, 
 That yielding victor, fleet in being slow, 
 That huge, impersonal malevolence ? 
 
 So readily the tentacles of sense 
 Root in the larger standard of desire, 
 That Hugh fell farther in the loss of fire 
 Than in the finding of it he arose. 
 And suddenly the place grew strange, as grows 
 A friend's house, when the friend is on his bier, 
 And all that was familiar there and dear 
 Puts on a blank, inhospitable look. 
 
90 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Hugh set his face against the east, and took 
 
 That dreariest of ways, the trail of flight. 
 
 He would outcrawl the shadow of the night 
 
 And have the day to blanket him in sleep. 
 
 But as he went to meet the gloom a-creep, 
 
 Bemused with life's irrational rebuffs, 
 
 A yelping of the dogs among the bluffs 
 
 Rose, hunger-whetted, stabbing ; rent the pall 
 
 Of evening silence ; blunted to a drawl 
 
 Amid the arid waterways, and died. 
 
 And as the echo to the sound replied, 
 
 So in the troubled mind of Hugh was wrought 
 
 A reminiscent cry of thought to thought 
 
 That, groping, found an unlocked door to life : 
 
 The dogs keen flint to skin one then the knife 
 
 Discovered. Why, that made a flint and steel! 
 
 No further with the subtle foe at heel 
 
 He fled ; for all about him in the rock, 
 
 To waken when the needy hand might knock, 
 
 A savior slept ! He found a flake of flint, 
 
 Scraped from his shirt a little wad of lint, 
 
 Spilled on it from the smitten stone a shower 
 
 Of ruddy seed ; and saw the mystic flower 
 
 That genders its own summer, bloom anew ! 
 
 And so capricious luck came back to Hugh; 
 And he was happier than he had been 
 
THE CRAWL 91 
 
 Since Jamie to that unforgiven sin 
 Had yielded, ages back upon the Grand. 
 Now he would turn the cunning of his hand 
 To carving crutches, that he might arise, 
 Be manlike, lift more rapidly the skies 
 That crouched between his purpose and the mark. 
 The warm glow housed him from the frosty dark, 
 And there he wrought in very joyous mood 
 And sang by fits whereat the solitude 
 Set laggard singers snatching at the tune. 
 The gaunter for their hunt, the dogs came soon 
 To haunt the shaken fringes of the glow, 
 And, pitching voices to the timeless woe, 
 Outwailed the lilting. So the Chorus sings 
 Of terror, pity and the tears of things 
 When most the doomed protagonist is gay. 
 The stars swarmed over, and the front of day 
 Whitened above a white world, and the sun 
 Rose on a sleeper with a task well done, 
 Nor roused him till its burning topped the blue. 
 
 When Hugh awoke, there woke a younger Hugh, 
 
 Now half a stranger; and 'twas good to feel 
 
 With ebbing sleep the old green vigor steal, 
 
 Thrilling, along his muscles and his veins, 
 
 As in a lull of winter-cleansing rains 
 
 The gray bough quickens to the sap a-creep. 
 
92 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 It chanced the dogs lay near him, sound asleep, 
 Curled nose to buttock in the noonday glow. 
 He killed the larger with a well-aimed blow, 
 Skinned, dressed and set it roasting on a spit ; 
 And when 'twas cooked, ate sparingly of it, 
 For need might yet make little seem a feast. 
 
 Fording the river shallows, south by east 
 
 He hobbled now along a withered rill 
 
 That issued where old floods had gashed the hill 
 
 A cyclopean portal yawning sheer. 
 
 No storm of countless hoof had entered here : 
 
 It seemed a place where nothing ever comes 
 
 But change of season. He could hear the plums 
 
 Plash in the frosted thicket, over-lush ; 
 
 While, like a spirit lisping in the hush, 
 
 The crisp leaves whispered round him as they fell. 
 
 And ever now and then the autumn spell 
 
 Was broken by an ululating cry 
 
 From where far back with muzzle to the sky 
 
 The lone dog followed, mourning. Darkness 
 
 came; 
 
 And huddled up beside a cozy flame, 
 Hugh's sleep was but a momentary flight 
 Across a little shadow into light. 
 
 So day on day he toiled : and when, afloat 
 Above the sunset like a stygian boat, 
 
THE CRAWL 93 
 
 The new moon bore the spectre of the old, 
 
 He saw a dwindling strip of blue outrolled 
 
 The valley of the tortuous Cheyenne. 
 
 And ere the half moon sailed the night again, 
 
 Those far lone leagues had sloughed their garb of 
 
 blue, 
 
 And dwindled, dwindled, dwindled after Hugh, 
 Until he saw that Titan of the plains, 
 The sinewy Missouri. Dearth of rains 
 Had made the Giant gaunt as he who saw. 
 This loud Chain-Smasher of a late March thaw 
 Seemed never to have bellowed at his banks ; 
 And yet, with staring ribs and hollow flanks, 
 The urge of an indomitable will 
 Proclaimed him of the breed of giants still ; 
 And where the current ran a boiling track, 
 'Twas like the muscles of a mighty back 
 Grown Atlantean in the wrestler's craft. 
 
 Hugh set to work and built a little raft 
 
 Of driftwood bound with grapevines. So it fell 
 
 That one with an amazing tale to tell 
 
 Came drifting to the gates of Kiowa. 
 
IV 
 THE RETURN OF THE GHOST 
 
 NOT long Hugh let the lust of vengeance gnaw 
 Upon him idling ; though the tale he told 
 And what report proclaimed him, were as gold 
 To buy a winter's comfort at the Post. 
 "I can not rest; for I am but the ghost 
 Of someone murdered by a friend," he said, 
 "So long as yonder traitor thinks me dead, 
 Aye, buried in the bellies of the crows 
 Andkiotes!" 
 
 Whereupon said one of those 
 Who heard him, noting how the old man shook 
 As with a chill : "God fend that one should look 
 With such a blizzard of a face for me !" 
 For he went grayer like a poplar tree 
 That shivers, ruffling to the first faint breath 
 Of storm, while yet the world is still as death 
 Save where, far off, the kenneled thunders bay. 
 
 So brooding, he grew stronger day by day, 
 Until at last he laid the crutches by. 
 And then one evening came a rousing cry 
 94 
 
THE RETURN OF THE GHOST 95 
 
 From where the year's last keelboat hove in view 
 Around the bend, its swarthy, sweating crew 
 Slant to the shouldered line. 
 
 Men sang that night 
 In Kiowa, and by the ruddy light 
 Of leaping fires amid the wooden walls 
 The cups went round; and there were merry 
 
 brawls 
 
 Of bearded lads no older for the beard ; 
 And laughing stories vied with tales of weird 
 By stream and prairie trail and mountain pass, 
 Until the tipsy Bourgeois bawled for Glass 
 To 'shame these with a man's tale fit to hear.' 
 
 The graybeard, sitting where the light was blear, 
 With little heart for revelry, began 
 His story, told as of another man 
 Who, loving late, loved much and was betrayed. 
 He spoke unwitting how his passion played 
 Upon them, how their eyes grew soft or hard 
 With what he told ; yet something of the bard 
 He seemed, and his the purpose that is art's, 
 Whereby men make a vintage of their hearts 
 And with the wine of beauty deaden pain. 
 Low-toned, insistent as October rain, 
 His voice beat on ; and now and then would flit 
 Across the melancholy gray of it 
 
96 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 A glimmer of cold fire that, like the flare 
 
 Of soundless lightning, showed a world made bare, 
 
 Green Summer slain and all its leafage stripped. 
 
 And bronze jaws tightened, brawny hands were 
 
 gripped, 
 
 As though each hearer had a fickle friend. 
 But when the old man might have made an end, 
 Rounding the story to a peaceful close 
 At Kiowa, songlike his voice arose, 
 The grinning gray mask lifted and the eyes 
 Burned as a bard's who sees and prophesies, 
 Conning the future as a time long gone. 
 Swaying to rhythm the dizzy tale plunged on 
 Even to the cutting of the traitor's throat, 
 And ceased as though a bloody strangling smote 
 The voice of that gray chanter, drunk with 
 
 doom. 
 And there was shuddering in the blue-smeared 
 
 gloom 
 
 Of fallen fires. It seemed the deed was done 
 Before their eyes who heard. 
 
 The morrow's sun, 
 
 Low over leagues of frost-enchanted plain, 
 Saw Glass upon his pilgrimage again, 
 Northbound as hunter for the keelboat's crew. 
 And many times the wide autumnal blue 
 
THE RETURN OF THE GHOST 97 
 
 Burned out and darkened to a deep of stars ; 
 And still they toiled among the snags and bars 
 Those lean up-stream men, straining at the rope, 
 Lashed by the doubt and strengthened by the 
 
 hope 
 
 Of backward winter engines wrought of bone 
 And muscle, panting for the Yellowstone, 
 Bend after bend and yet more bends away. 
 Now was the river like a sandy bay 
 At ebb-tide, and the far-off cutbank's boom 
 Mocked them in shallows ; now 'twas like a flume 
 With which the toilers, barely creeping, strove. 
 And bend by bend the selfsame poplar grove, 
 Set on the selfsame headland, so it seemed, 
 Confronted them, as though they merely dreamed 
 Of passing one drear point. 
 
 So on and up 
 
 Past where the tawny Titan gulps the cup 
 Of Cheyenne waters, past the Moreau's mouth ; 
 And still wry league and stubborn league fell 
 
 south, 
 
 Becoming haze and weary memory. 
 Then past the empty lodges of the Ree 
 That gaped at cornfields plundered by the Sioux; 
 And there old times came mightily on Hugh, 
 For much of him was born and buried there. 
 Some troubled glory of that wind-tossed hair 
 
98 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Was on the trampled corn ; the lonely skies, 
 So haunted with the blue of Jamie's eyes, 
 Seemed taunting him; and through the frosted 
 
 wood 
 
 Along the flat, where once their tent had stood, 
 A chill wind sorrowed, and the blackbirds' brawl 
 Amid the funeral torches of the Fall 
 Ran raucously, a desecrating din. 
 
 Past where the Cannon Ball and Heart come in 
 They labored. Now the Northwest 'woke at last. 
 The gaunt bluffs bellowed back the trumpet blast 
 Of charging winds that made the sandbars smoke. 
 To breathe now was to gulp fine sand, and choke : 
 The stinging air was sibilant with whips. 
 Leaning the more and with the firmer grips, 
 Still northward the embattled toilers pressed 
 To where the river yaws into the west. 
 There stood the Mandan village. 
 
 Now began 
 
 The chaining of the Titan. Drift-ice ran. 
 The winged hounds of Winter ceased to bay. 
 The stupor of a doom completed lay 
 Upon the world. The biting darkness fell. 
 Out in the night, resounding as a well, 
 They heard the deckplanks popping in a vise 
 Of frost ; all night the smithies of the ice 
 
THE RETURN OF THE GHOST 99 
 
 Reechoed with the griding jar and clink 
 Of ghostly hammers welding link to link : 
 And morning found the world without a sound. 
 There lay the stubborn Prairie Titan bound, 
 To wait the far-off Heraclean thaw, 
 Though still in silent rage he strove to gnaw 
 The ragged shackles knitting at his breast. 
 
 And so the boatman won a winter's rest 
 Among the Mandan traders : but for Hugh 
 There yet remained a weary work to do. 
 Across the naked country west by south 
 His purpose called him at the Big Horn's mouth 
 Three hundred miles of winging for the crow ; 
 But by the river trail that he must go 
 'Twas seven hundred winding miles at least. 
 
 So now he turned his back upon the feast, 
 Snug ease, the pleasant tale, the merry mood, 
 And took the bare, foot-sounding solitude 
 Northwestward. Long they watched him from 
 
 the Post, 
 
 Skied on a bluff-rim, fading like a ghost 
 At gray cock-crow ; and hooded in his breath, 
 He seemed indeed a fugitive from Death 
 On whom some tatter of the shroud still clung. 
 Blank space engulfed him. 
 
 Now the moon was young 
 
ioo SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 When he set forth ; and day by day he strode, 
 His scarce healed wounds upon him like a load ; 
 And dusk by dusk his fire outflared the moon 
 That waxed until it wrought a spectral noon 
 At nightfall. Then he came to where, awhirl 
 With Spring's wild rage, the snow-born Titan girl, 
 A skyey wonder on her virgin face, 
 Receives the virile Yellowstone's embrace 
 And bears the lusty Seeker for the Sea. 
 A bleak, horizon-wide serenity 
 Clung round the valley where the twain lay dead. 
 A winding sheet was on the marriage bed. 
 
 'Twas warmer now ; the sky grew overcast ; 
 And as Hugh strode southwestward, all the vast 
 Gray void seemed suddenly astir with wings 
 And multitudinary whisperings 
 The muffled sibilance of tumbling snow. 
 It seemed no more might living waters flow, 
 Moon gleam, star glint, dawn smoulder through, 
 
 bird sing, 
 
 Or ever any fair familiar thing 
 Be so again. The outworn winds were furled. 
 Weird weavers of the twilight of a world 
 Wrought, thread on kissing thread, the web of 
 
 doom. 
 Grown insubstantial in the knitted gloom, 
 
THE RETURN OF THE GHOST 101 
 
 The bluffs loomed eerie, and the scanty trees 
 Were dwindled to remote dream-traceries 
 That never might be green or shield a nest. 
 
 All day with swinging stride Hugh forged south- 
 west 
 
 Along the Yellowstone's smooth-paven stream, 
 A dream-shape moving in a troubled dream ; 
 And all day long the whispering weavers wove. 
 And close on dark he came to where a grove 
 Of cottonwoods rose tall and shadow-thin 
 Against the northern bluffs. He camped therein 
 And with cut boughs made shelter as he might. 
 
 Close pressed the blackness of the snow-choked 
 
 night 
 
 About him, and his fire of plum wood purred. 
 Athwart a soft penumbral drowse he heard 
 The tumbling snowflakes sighing all around, 
 Till sleep transformed it to a Summer sound 
 Of boyish memory susurrant bees, 
 The Southwind in the tousled apple trees 
 And slumber flowing from their leafy gloom. 
 
 He wakened to the cottonwoods' deep boom. 
 Black fury was the world. The northwest's roar, 
 As of a surf upon a shipwreck shore, 
 
102 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Plunged high above him from the sheer bluff's 
 
 verge ; 
 
 And, like the backward sucking of the surge, 
 Far fled the sobbing of the wild snow-spray. 
 
 Black blindness grew white blindness and 'twas 
 
 day. 
 
 All being now seemed narrowed to a span 
 That held a sputtering wood fire and a man ; 
 Beyond was tumult and a whirling maze. 
 The trees were but a roaring in a haze; 
 The sheer bluff-wall that took the blizzard's 
 
 charge 
 
 Was thunder flung along the hidden marge 
 Of chaos, stridden by the ghost of light. 
 White blindness grew black blindness and 'twas 
 
 night 
 Wherethrough nor moon nor any star might grope. 
 
 Two days since, Hugh had killed an antelope 
 And what remained sufficed the time of storm. 
 The snow banked round his shelter kept him warm 
 And there was wood to burn for many a day. 
 
 The third dawn, oozing through a smudge of gray, 
 
 Awoke him. It was growing colder fast. 
 
 Still from the bluff high over boomed the blast, 
 
THE RETURN OF THE GHOST 103 
 
 But now it took the void with numbing wings. 
 By noon the woven mystery of things 
 Frayed raggedly, and through a sudden rift 
 At length Hugh saw the beetling bluff-wall lift 
 A sturdy shoulder to the flying rack. 
 Slowly the sense of distances came back 
 As with the waning day the great wind fell. 
 The pale sun set upon a frozen hell. 
 The wolves howled. 
 
 Hugh had left the Mandan town 
 When, heifer-horned, the maiden moon lies down 
 Beside the sea of evening. Now she rose 
 Scar-faced and staring blankly on the snows 
 While yet the twilight tarried in the west ; 
 And more and more she came a tardy guest 
 As Hugh pushed onward through the frozen 
 
 waste 
 
 Until she stole on midnight shadow-faced, 
 A haggard spectre; then no more appeared. 
 
 'Twas on that time the man of hoary beard 
 Paused in the early twilight, looming lone 
 Upon a bluff-rim of the Yellowstone, 
 And peered across the white stream to the south 
 Where in the flatland at the Big Horn's mouth 
 The new fort stood that Henry's men had built. 
 
104 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 What perfect peace for such a nest of guilt ! 
 What satisfied immunity from woe ! 
 Yon sprawling shadow, pied with candle-glow 
 And plumed with sparkling wood-smoke, might 
 
 have been 
 
 A homestead with the children gathered in 
 To share its bounty through the holidays. 
 Hugh saw their faces round the gay hearth-blaze : 
 The hale old father in a mood for yarns 
 Or boastful of the plenty of his barns, 
 Fruitage of honest toil and grateful lands ; 
 And, half a stranger to her folded hands, 
 The mother with October in her hair 
 And August in her face. One moment there 
 Hugh saw it. Then the monstrous brutal fact 
 Wiped out the dream and goaded him to act, 
 Though now to act seemed strangely like a dream. 
 
 Descending from the bluff", he crossed the stream, 
 The dry snow fifing to his eager stride. 
 Reaching the fort stockade, he paused to bide 
 The passing of a whimsy. Was it true ? 
 Or was this but the fretted wraith of Hugh 
 Whose flesh had fed the kiotes long ago ? 
 
 Still through a chink he saw the candle-glow, 
 So like an eye that brazened out a wrong. 
 And now there came a flight of muffled song, 
 
THE RETURN OF THE GHOST 105 
 
 The rhythmic thudding of a booted heel 
 
 That timed a squeaking fiddle to a reel ! 
 
 How swiftly men forget ! The spawning Earth 
 
 Is fat with graves; and what is one man worth 
 
 That fiddles should be muted at his fall ? 
 
 He should have died and did not that was 
 
 all. 
 
 Well, let the living jig it ! He would turn 
 Back to the night, the spacious unconcern 
 Of wilderness that never played the friend. 
 
 Now came the song and fiddling to an end, 
 
 And someone laughed within. The old man 
 
 winced, 
 
 Listened with bated breath, and was convinced 
 'Twas Jamie laughing ! Once again he heard. 
 Joy filled a hush 'twixt heart-beats like a bird ; 
 Then like a famished cat his lurking hate 
 Pounced crushingly. 
 
 He found the outer gate, 
 Beat on it with his shoulder, raised a cry. 
 No doubt 'twas deemed a fitful wind went by ; 
 None stirred. But when he did not cease to 
 
 shout, 
 
 A door creaked open and a man came out 
 Amid the spilling candle-glimmer, raised 
 The wicket in the outer gate and gazed 
 
io6 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 One moment on a face as white as death, 
 Because the beard was thick with frosted breath 
 Made mystic by the stars. Then came a gasp, 
 The clatter of the falling wicket's hasp, 
 The crunch of panic feet along the snow; 
 And someone stammered huskily and low : 
 "My God! I saw the Old Man's ghost out 
 
 there!" 
 
 J Twas spoken as one speaks who feels his hair 
 Prickle the scalp. And then another said 
 It seemed like Henry's voice "The dead are 
 
 dead : 
 
 What talk is this, Le Bon ? You saw him die ! 
 Who's there?" 
 
 Hugh strove to shout, to give the lie 
 To those within ; but could not fetch a sound. 
 Just so he dreamed of lying under ground 
 Beside the Grand and hearing overhead 
 The talk of men. Or was he really dead, 
 And all this but a maggot in the brain ? 
 
 Then suddenly the clatter of a chain 
 Aroused him, and he saw the portal yawn 
 And saw a bright rectangled patch of dawn 
 As through a grave's mouth no, 'twas candle- 
 light 
 Poured through the open doorway on the night ; 
 
THE RETURN OF THE GHOST 107 
 
 And those were men before him, bulking black 
 Against the glow. 
 
 Reality flashed back; 
 He strode ahead and entered at the door. 
 A falling fiddle jangled on the floor 
 And left a deathly silence. On his bench 
 The fiddler shrank. A row of eyes, a-blench 
 With terror, ran about the naked hall. 
 And there was one who huddled by the wall 
 And hid his face and shivered. 
 
 For a spell 
 That silence clung ; and then the old man : 
 
 "Well, 
 
 Is this the sort of welcome that I get ? 
 'Twas not my time to feed the kiotes yet ! 
 Put on the pot and stew a chunk of meat 
 And you shall see how much a ghost can eat ! 
 I've journeyed far if what I hear be true !" 
 
 Now in that none might doubt the voice of 
 
 Hugh, 
 
 Nor yet the face, however it might seem 
 A blurred reflection in a flowing stream, 
 A buzz of wonder broke the trance of dread. 
 "Good God !" the Major gasped; "We thought 
 
 you dead ! 
 Two men have testified they saw you die!" 
 
io8 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 "If they speak truth," Hugh answered, "then I lie 
 Both here and by the Grand. If I be right, 
 Then two lie here and shall lie from this night. 
 Which are they?" 
 
 Henry answered : "Yon is one." 
 
 The old man set the trigger of his gun 
 
 And gazed on Jules who cowered by the wall. 
 
 Eyes blinked, expectant of the hammer's fall ; 
 
 Ears strained, anticipative of the roar. 
 
 But Hugh walked leisurely across the floor 
 
 And kicked the croucher, saying: "Come, get up 
 
 And wag your tail ! I couldn't kill a pup !" 
 
 Then turning round : "I had a faithful friend; 
 
 No doubt he too was with me to the end ! 
 
 Where's Jamie?" 
 
 "Started out before the snows 
 For Atkinson." 
 
JAMIE 
 
 THE Country of the Crows, 
 Through which the Big Horn and the Rosebud 
 
 run, 
 
 Sees over mountain peaks the setting sun ; 
 And southward from the Yellowstone flung wide, 
 It broadens ever to the morning side 
 And has the Powder on its vague frontier. 
 About the subtle changing of the year, 
 Ere even favored valleys felt the stir 
 Of Spring, and yet expectancy of her 
 Was like a pleasant rumor all repeat 
 Yet none may prove, the sound of horses' feet 
 Went eastward through the silence of that land. 
 For then it was there rode a little band 
 Of trappers out of Henry's Post, to bear 
 Dispatches down to Atkinson, and there 
 To furnish out a keelboat for the Horn. 
 And four went lightly, but the fifth seemed worn 
 As with a heavy heart ; for that was he 
 Who should have died but did not. 
 109. 
 
no SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Silently 
 
 He heard the careless parley of his men, 
 And thought of how the Spring should come 
 
 again, 
 
 That garish strumpet with her world-old lure, 
 To waken hope where nothing may endure, 
 To quicken love where loving is betrayed. 
 Yet now and then some dream of Jamie made 
 Slow music in him for a little while ; 
 And they who rode beside him saw a smile 
 Glimmer upon that ruined face of gray, 
 As on a winter fog the groping day 
 Pours glory through a momentary rift. 
 Yet never did the gloom that bound him, lift; 
 He seemed as one who feeds upon his heart 
 And finds, despite the bitter and the smart, 
 A little sweetness and is glad for that. 
 
 Now up the Powder, striking for the Platte 
 Across the bleak divide the horsemen went ; 
 Attained that river where its course is bent 
 From north to east : and spurring on apace 
 Along the wintry valley, reached the place 
 Where from the west flows in the Laramie. 
 Thence, fearing to encounter with the Ree, 
 They headed eastward through the barren land 
 To where, fleet-footed down a track of sand, 
 
JAMIE in 
 
 The Niobrara races for the morn 
 A gaunt-loined runner. 
 
 Here at length was born 
 Upon the southern slopes the baby Spring, 
 A timid, fretful, ill-begotten thing, 
 A-suckle at the Winter's withered paps : 
 Not such as when announced by thunder-claps 
 And ringed with swords of lightning, she would 
 
 ride, 
 
 The haughty victrix and the mystic bride, 
 Clad splendidly as never Sheba's Queen, 
 Before her marching multitudes of green 
 In many-bannered triumph ! Grudging, slow, 
 Amid the fraying fringes of the snow 
 The bunch-grass sprouted; and the air was 
 
 chill. 
 
 Along the northern slopes 'twas winter still, 
 And no root dreamed what Triumph-over-Death 
 Was nurtured now in some bleak Nazareth 
 Beyond the crest to sunward. 
 
 On they spurred 
 
 Through vacancies that waited for the bird, 
 And everywhere the Odic Presence dwelt. 
 The Southwest blew, the snow began to melt ; 
 And when they reached the valley of the Snake, 
 The Niobrara's ice began to break, 
 
112 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 And all night long and all day long it made 
 A sound as of a random cannonade 
 With rifles snarling down a skirmish line. 
 
 The geese went over. Every tree and vine 
 Was dotted thick with leaf-buds when they saw 
 The little river of Keyapaha 
 Grown mighty for the moment. Then they came, 
 One evening when all thickets were aflame 
 With pale green witch-fires and the windflowers 
 
 blew, 
 
 To where the headlong Niobrara threw 
 His speed against the swoln Missouri's flank 
 And hurled him roaring to the further bank 
 A giant staggered by a pigmy's sling. 
 Thence, plunging ever deeper into Spring, 
 Across the greening prairie east by south 
 They rode, and, just above the Platte's wide 
 
 mouth, 
 Came, weary with the trail, to Atkinson. 
 
 There all the vernal wonder-work was done : 
 No care-free heart might find aught lacking there. 
 The dove's call wandered in the drowsy air; 
 A love-dream brooded in the lucent haze. 
 Priapic revellers, the shrieking jays 
 Held mystic worship in the secret shade. 
 Woodpeckers briskly plied their noisy trade 
 
JAMIE 113 
 
 Along the tree-boles, and their scarlet hoods 
 Flashed flame-like in the smoky cottonwoods. 
 What lacked ? Not sweetness in the sun-lulled 
 
 breeze ; 
 
 The plum bloom murmurous with bumblebees 
 Was drifted deep in every draw and slough. 
 Not color ; witcheries of gold and blue 
 The dandelion and the violet 
 Wove in the green. Might not the sad forget, 
 The happy here have nothing more to seek ? 
 Lo, yonder by that pleasant little creek, 
 How one might loll upon the grass and fish 
 And build the temple of one's wildest wish 
 'Twixt nibbles ! Surely there was quite enough 
 Of wizard-timber and of wonder-stufF 
 To rear it nobly to the blue-domed roof! 
 
 Yet there was one whose spirit stood aloof 
 From all this joyousness a gray old man, 
 No nearer now than when the quest began 
 To what he sought on that long winter trail. 
 
 Aye, Jamie had been there ; but when the tale 
 That roving trappers brought from Kiowa 
 Was told to him, he seemed as one who saw 
 A ghost, and could but stare on it, they said : 
 Until one day he mounted horse and fled 
 
H4 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Into the North, a devil-ridden man. 
 "I've got to go and find him if I can," 
 Was all he said for days before he left. 
 
 And what of Hugh ? So long of love bereft, 
 So long sustained and driven by his hate, 
 A touch of ruth now made him desolate. 
 No longer eager to avenge the wrong, 
 With not enough of pity to be strong 
 And just enough of love to choke and sting, 
 A gray old hulk amid the surge of Spring 
 He floundered on a lee-shore of the heart. 
 
 But when the boat was ready for the start 
 Up the long watery stairway to the Horn, 
 Hugh joined the party. And the year was shorn 
 Of blooming girlhood as they forged amain 
 Into the North ; the late green-mantled plain 
 Grew sallow; and the ruthless golden shower 
 Of Summer wrought in lust upon the flower 
 That withered in the endless martyrdom 
 To seed. The scarlet quickened on the plum 
 About the Heart's mouth when they came thereto ; 
 Among the Mandans grapes were turning blue, 
 And they were purple at the Yellowstone. 
 A frosted scrub-oak, standing out alone 
 Upon a barren bluff top, gazing far 
 Above the crossing at the Powder's bar, 
 
JAMIE 115 
 
 Was spattered with the blood of Summer slain. 
 
 So it was Autumn in the world again, 
 
 And all those months of toil had yielded nought 
 
 To Hugh. (How often is the seeker sought 
 
 By what he seeks a blind, heart-breaking 
 
 game !) 
 
 For always had the answer been the same 
 From roving trapper and at trading post : 
 Aye, one who seemed to stare upon a ghost 
 And followed willy-nilly where it led, 
 Had gone that way in search of Hugh, they said 
 A haggard, blue-eyed, yellow-headed chap. 
 
 And often had the old man thought, * Mayhap 
 He'll be at Henry's Post and we shall meet ; 
 And to forgive and to forget were sweet : 
 'Tis for its nurse that Vengeance whets the tooth ! 
 And oh the golden time of Jamie's youth, 
 That it should darken for a graybeard's whim !' 
 So Hugh had brooded, till there came on him 
 The pity of a slow rain after drouth. 
 
 But at the crossing of the Rosebud's mouth 
 A shadow fell upon his growing dream. 
 A band of Henry's traders, bound down stream, 
 Who paused to traffic in the latest word 
 Down-river news for matters seen and heard 
 
n6 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 In higher waters had not met the lad, 
 Not yet encountered anyone who had. 
 
 Alas, the journey back to yesterwhiles ! 
 How tangled are the trails ! The stubborn miles, 
 How wearily they stretch ! And if one win 
 The long way back in search of what has been, 
 Shall he find aught that is not strange and new ? 
 
 Thus wrought the melancholy news in Hugh, 
 As he turned back with those who brought the 
 
 news; 
 
 For more and more he dreaded now to lose 
 What doubtful seeking rendered doubly dear. 
 And in the time when keen winds stripped the 
 
 year 
 
 He came with those to where the Poplar joins 
 The greater river. There Assinoboines, 
 Rich from the Summer's hunting, had come down 
 And flung along the flat their ragged town, 
 That traders might bring goods and winter there. 
 
 So leave the heartsick graybeard. Otherwhere 
 The final curtain rises on the play. 
 Tis dead of Winter now. For day on day 
 The blizzard wind has thundered, sweeping wide 
 From Mississippi to the Great Divide 
 
JAMIE 117 
 
 Out of the North beyond Saskatchewan. 
 
 Brief evening glimmers like an inverse dawn 
 
 After a long white night. The tempest dies ; 
 
 The snow-haze lifts. Now let the curtain rise 
 
 Upon Milk River valley, and reveal 
 
 The stars like broken glass on frosted steel 
 
 Above the Piegan lodges, huddled deep 
 
 In snowdrifts, like a freezing flock of sheep. 
 
 A crystal weight the dread cold crushes down 
 
 And no one moves about the little town 
 
 That seems to grovel as a thing that fears. 
 
 But see ! a lodge-flap swings ; a squaw appears, 
 Hunched with the sudden cold. Her footsteps 
 
 creak 
 
 Shrill in the hush. She stares upon the bleak, 
 White skyline for a moment, then goes in. 
 We follow her, push back the flap of skin, 
 Enter the lodge, inhale the smoke-tanged air 
 And blink upon the little faggot-flare 
 That blossoms in the center of the room. 
 Unsteady shadows haunt the outer gloom 
 Wherein the walls are guessed at. Upward, 
 
 far, 
 
 The smoke-vent now and then reveals a star 
 As in a well. The ancient squaw, a-stoop, 
 Her face light-stricken, stirs a pot of soup 
 
Ii8 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 That simmers with a pleasant smell and sound. 
 A gnarled old man, cross-legged upon the ground, 
 Sits brooding near. He feeds the flame with 
 
 sticks ; 
 
 It brightens. Lo, a leaden crucifix 
 Upon the wall ! These heathen eyes, though dim, 
 Have seen the white man's God and cling to Him, 
 Lest on the sunset trail slow feet should err. 
 
 But look again. From yonder bed of fur 
 Beside the wall a white man strives to rise. 
 He lifts his head, with yearning sightless eyes 
 Gropes for the light. A mass of golden hair 
 Falls round the face that sickness and despair 
 Somehow make old, albeit he is young. 
 His weak voice, stumbling to the mongrel tongue 
 Of traders, flings a question to the squaw : 
 "You saw no Black Robe? Tell me what you 
 
 saw!" 
 
 And she, brief-spoken as her race, replies : 
 "Heaped snow sharp stars a kiote on the 
 
 rise." 
 
 The blind youth huddles moaning in the furs. 
 The firewood spits and pops, the boiled pot purrs 
 And sputters. On this little isle of sound 
 The sea of winter silence presses round 
 One feels it like a menace. 
 
JAMIE 119 
 
 Now the crone 
 
 Dips out a cup of soup, and having blown 
 Upon it, takes it to the sick man there 
 And bids him eat. With wild, unseeing stare 
 He turns upon her : "Why are they so long ? 
 I can not eat ! I've done a mighty wrong ; 
 It chokes me ! Oh no, no, I must not die 
 Until the Black Robe comes !" His feeble cry 
 Sinks to a whisper. "Tell me, did they go 
 Your kinsmen ?" 
 
 "They went south before the snow." 
 "And will they tell the Black Robe ?" 
 
 "They will tell." 
 
 The crackling of the faggots for a spell 
 Seems very loud. Again the sick man moans 
 And, struggling with the weakness in his bones, 
 Would gain his feet, but can not. "Go again, 
 And tell me that you see the bulks of men 
 Dim in the distance there." 
 
 The squaw obeys ; 
 
 Returns anon to crouch beside the blaze, 
 Numb-fingered and a-shudder from the night. 
 The vacant eyes that hunger for the light 
 Are turned upon her : "Tell me what you saw! 
 Or maybe snowshoes sounded up the draw. 
 Quick, tell me what you saw and heard out there 1" 
 
120 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 "Heaped snow sharp stars big stillness every- 
 where." 
 
 One clutching at thin ice with numbing grip 
 
 Cries while he hopes ; but when his fingers slip, 
 
 He takes the final plunge without a sound. 
 
 So sinks the youth now, hopeless. All around 
 
 The winter silence presses in ; the walls 
 
 Grow vague and vanish in the gloom that crawls 
 
 Close to the failing fire. 
 
 The Piegans sleep. 
 
 Night hovers midway down the morning steep. 
 The sick man drowses. Nervously he starts 
 And listens ; hears no sound except his heart's 
 And that weird murmur brooding stillness makes. 
 But stealthily upon the quiet breaks 
 Vague as the coursing of the hearer's blood 
 A muffled, rhythmic beating, thud on thud, 
 That, growing nearer, deepens to a crunch. 
 So, hungry for the distance, snowshoes munch 
 The crusted leagues of Winter, stride by stride. 
 A camp-dog barks ; the hollow world outside 
 Brims with the running howl of many curs. 
 
 Now wide-awake, half risen in the furs, 
 The youth can hear low voices and the creak 
 Of snowshoes near the lodge. His thin, wild 
 shriek 
 
JAMIE 121 
 
 Startles the old folk from their slumberings : 
 "He comes! The Black Robe!" 
 
 Now the door-flap swings, 
 And briefly one who splutters Piegan, bars 
 The way, then enters. Now the patch of stars 
 Is darkened with a greater bulk that bends 
 Beneath the lintel. "Peace be with you, friends ! 
 And peace with him herein who suffers pain!" 
 So speaks the second comer of the twain 
 A white man by his voice. And he who lies 
 Beside the wall, with empty, groping eyes 
 Turned to the speaker: "There can be no peace 
 For me, good Father, till this gnawing cease 
 The gnawing of a great wrong I have done." 
 
 The big man leans above the youth : "My son " 
 (Grown husky with the word, the deep voice 
 
 breaks, 
 
 And for a little spell the whole man shakes 
 As with the clinging cold) " have faith and 
 
 hope! 
 
 'Tis often nearest dawn when most we grope. 
 Does not the Good Book say, Who seek shall 
 
 find?" 
 
 "But, Father, I am broken now and blind, 
 And I have sought, and I have lost the way." 
 To which the stranger : "What would Jesus say ? 
 
122 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Hark ! In the silence of the heart 'tis said 
 By their own weakness are the feeble sped ; 
 The humblest feet are surest for the goal ; 
 The blind shall see the City of the Soul. 
 Lay down your burden at His feet to-night." 
 
 Now while the fire, replenished, bathes in light 
 The young face scrawled with suffering and care, 
 Flinging ironic glories on the hair 
 And glinting on dull eyes that once flashed blue, 
 The sick one tells the story of old Hugh 
 To him whose face, averted from the glow, 
 Still lurks in gloom. The winds of battle blow 
 Once more along the steep. Again one sees 
 The rescue from the fury of the Rees, 
 The graybeard's fondness for the gay lad ; then 
 The westward march with Major Henry's men 
 With all that happened there upon the Grand. 
 
 "And so we hit the trail of Henry's band," 
 The youth continues; "for we feared to die: 
 And dread of shame was ready with the lie 
 We carried to our comrades. Hugh was dead 
 And buried there beside the Grand, we said. 
 Could any doubt that what we said was true ? 
 They even praised our courage ! But I knew ! 
 The nights were hell because I heard his cries 
 And saw the crows a-pecking at his eyes, 
 
JAMIE 123 
 
 The kiotes tearing at him. O my God ! 
 
 I tried and tried to think him under sod ; 
 
 But every time I slept it was the same. 
 
 And then one night I lay awake he came ! 
 
 I say he came I know I hadn't slept ! 
 
 Amid a light like rainy dawn, he crept 
 
 Out of the dark upon his hands and knees. 
 
 The wound he got that day among the Rees 
 
 Was like red fire. A snarl of bloody hair 
 
 Hung round the eyes that had a pleading stare, 
 
 And down the ruined face and gory beard 
 
 Big tear-drops rolled. He went as he appeared, 
 
 Trailing a fog of light that died away. 
 
 And I grew old before I saw the day. 
 
 Father, I had paid too much for breath ! 
 The Devil traffics in the fear of death, 
 And may God pity anyone who buys 
 
 What I have bought with treachery and lies 
 This rat-like gnawing in my breast ! 
 
 "I knew 
 
 1 couldn't rest until I buried Hugh ; 
 And so I told the Major I would go 
 To Atkinson with letters, ere the snow 
 
 Had choked the trails. Jules wouldn't come 
 
 along ; 
 He didn't seem to realize the wrong ; 
 
124 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 He called me foolish, couldn't understand. 
 I rode alone not south, but to the Grand. 
 Daylong my horse beat thunder from the sod, 
 Accusing me ; and all my prayers to God 
 Seemed flung in vain at bolted gates of brass. 
 And in the night the wind among the grass 
 Hissed endlessly the story of my shame. 
 
 " I do not know how long I rode : I came 
 
 Upon the Grand at last, and found the place, 
 
 And it was empty. Not a sign or trace 
 
 Was left to show what end had come to Hugh. 
 
 And oh that grave ! It gaped upon the blue, 
 
 A death-wound pleading dumbly for the slain. 
 
 I filled it up and fled across the plain, 
 
 And somehow came to Atkinson at last. 
 
 And there I heard the living Hugh had passed 
 
 Along the river northward in the Fall ! 
 
 O Father, he had found the strength to crawl 
 
 That long, heart-breaking distance back to life, 
 
 Though Jules had taken blanket, steel and knife, 
 
 And I, his trusted comrade, had his gun ! 
 
 " They said I'd better stay at Atkinson, 
 Because old Hugh was surely hunting me, 
 White-hot to kill. I did not want to flee 
 Or hide from him. I even wished to die, 
 If so this aching cancer of a lie 
 
JAMIE 125 
 
 Might be torn out forever. So I went, 
 As eager as the homesick homeward bent, 
 In search of him and peace. 
 
 But I was cursed. 
 
 For even when his stolen rifle burst 
 And spewed upon me this eternal night, 
 I might not die as any other might ; 
 But God so willed that friendly Piegans came 
 To spare me yet a little unto shame. 
 Father, is there any hope for me ?" 
 
 i 
 
 "Great hope indeed, my son !" so huskily 
 
 The other answers. "I recall a case 
 
 Like yours no matter what the time and 
 
 place 
 
 5 Twas somewhat like the story that you tell ; 
 Each seeking and each sought, and both in hell; 
 But in the tale I mind, they met at last." 
 
 The youth sits up, white-faced and breathing 
 
 fast: 
 "They met, you say ? What happened ? Quick ! 
 
 Oh quick!" 
 
 "The old man found the dear lad blind and sick 
 And both forgave 'twas easy to forgive 
 For oh we have so short a time to live " 
 
126 SONG OF HUGH GLASS 
 
 Whereat the youth : "Who's here ? The Black 
 
 Robe's gone! 
 Whose voice is this ?" 
 
 The gray of winter dawn 
 Now creeping round the door-flap, lights the 
 
 place 
 
 And shows thin fingers groping for a face 
 Deep-scarred and hoary with the frost of years 
 Whereover runs a new springtide of tears. 
 
 "0 Jamie, Jamie, Jamie I am Hugh ! 
 
 There was no Black Robe yonder Will I do ?" 
 
 Printed in the United States of America. 
 
' I *HE following gages contain advertisements 
 of a few of the Macmillan books. 
 
HEW BOOKS OF POETRY 
 
 Spoon River Anthology 
 
 BY EDGAR LEE MASTERS 
 
 Decorated doth, $1.23 ; leather, 
 
 " A work, splendid in observation, marvelous in the artistry 
 of exclusion, yet of democratic inclusiveness, -piercingly an- 
 alytic of character, of plastic fictility of handling, sympathetic 
 underneath irony, humorous, pathetic, tragic, comic, particular 
 yet universal a Comedie Humaine a creation of a whole 
 community of personalties." 
 
 Wm. Marion Reedy in the Mirror. 
 
 "The natural child of Walt Whitman ... the only poet 
 with true Americanism in his bones." 
 
 John Cowper Powys in New York Times. 
 
 "A wonderfully vivid series of transcripts from real life." 
 
 Current Opinion. 
 
 " There is no doubt that in < Spoon River Anthology ' Mr. 
 Masters speaks with a new and authentic voice. It is an 
 illuminating piece of work, and an unforgettable one." 
 
 Chicago Post. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
NEW BOOKS OF POETRY 
 
 Vision of War 
 
 BY LINCOLN COLCORD 
 
 Cloth) I2m0) $1^3; leather ', $1.50 
 
 In unrhymed rhythms Lincoln Colcord describes 
 vividly the present war, life in the trenches and the suf- 
 fering of the wounded. He shows great power for 
 realism, but also emphasizes a phase of warfare that 
 has been too often ignored its spiritual glory. The 
 theme of the poem is two-fold : war, its characteristics 
 and its effect on civilization, and the need of various 
 reforms in human society ; from this it is but a step to 
 the second theme, which is, in reality, a vision of the 
 brotherhood of man or possibly a belief in the ideals 
 and dreams which shall ultimately inspire men and lift 
 them above narrowness and selfishness. Mr. Colcord 
 has written with remarkable power and imagination; 
 he has bound the big with the little, the real with the 
 ideal, and played his moods and incidents with unerring 
 discrimination. " Vision of War " is a poem of unified 
 and sustained power ; it is one of the most remarkable 
 literary productions yet called forth by the European 
 struggles. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
NEW BOOKS OF POETRY 
 
 The Pilgrim Kings : Greco and Goya 
 and Other Poems of Spain 
 
 BY THOMAS WALSH 
 
 Cloth, I2mo, $1.25 ; leather, $1.50 
 
 Mr. Walsh knows and loves his Spain, both of this and of an 
 earlier day, and many of his poems celebrate the glories of the 
 great artists of that country. Along with their rich and unusual 
 culture, there is in these poems a vein of mysticism and of under- 
 standing of the Church which will commend Mr. Walsh's verses to 
 readers of widely different tastes. 
 
 Rivers to the Sea 
 
 BY SARA TEASDALE 
 
 Cloth, izmo, $1.2 j ; leather, $1.30 
 
 The author of this book is widely known, and favorably, through 
 her contributions to the magazines, and the publication of the 
 present collection of poems will be welcomed by all lovers of litera- 
 ture. The volume opens with a sequence of love lyrics which, taken 
 together, unfold an interesting romance. Each lyric is complete in 
 itself and possesses a quaint simplicity and human quality. Follow- 
 ing the love lyrics come poems on scattering themes and the work 
 closes with a trilogy called " Sapho." 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
NEW BOOKS OF POETRY 
 
 The Complete Poetical Works of 
 Robert Browning 
 
 New Globe Edition, with additional poems first published in 1914 
 Cloth, i2mo, $1.73; Leather, 
 
 There have been added to this standard edition of Browning's works those new 
 poems which were first published in a separate volume in 1914, together with a 
 number of other poems not hitherto included, as well as an introduction by Sir 
 Frederic G. Kenyon on the Browning Manuscripts and Robert Browning's An- 
 swers to Questions Concerning Some of His Poems. These additions make this 
 the most complete and authoritative edition of Browning's writings ever published. 
 
 Six French Poets 
 
 BY AMY LOWELL 
 
 Author of " Sword Blades and Poppy Seed," " A Dome of Many-Col- 
 oured Glass," etc. 
 
 Cloth, ismo 
 
 Here Miss Lowell in a series of biographical and critical essays deals with 
 Emile Verhaeren, Albert Samain, Remy de Gourmont, Henri de Regnier, Fran- 
 cis Jammes, and Paul Fort. This is the first English book to contain a minute 
 and careful study of these famous writers, who belong to the generation immedi- 
 ately succeeding that of Verlaine and Mallarme'. It is being realized by students 
 that the epoch just passing away in France has been one of the greatest poetical 
 epochs in French history. .Si.* French Poets is a brilliant series of studies of 
 the principal poets of this period, themselves, their work, and their relations to 
 their times. Each essay is preceded by a portrait and facsimile signature, and is 
 illustrated by a number of poems in the original French, with translations in an 
 appendix. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
HEW MACMILLAN PLAYS 
 
 The Life of Man 
 
 A Play in Five Acts. 
 BY LEONID ANDREYEV 
 
 Author of " Anathema," etc. 
 
 Cloth, i2mo, $1.23 
 
 This powerful play by one of the most prominent of the modern school 
 of dramatists should be read by all who desire to keep pace with the spirit 
 and tendencies of present-day art and literature in Russia. For here is 
 truly displayed Andreyev's genius in the most characteristic manner. The 
 Life of Man has been translated by J. G. Hogarth. 
 
 The Porcupine 
 
 BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON 
 
 Author of " Van Zorn," " Captain Craig," etc. 
 
 Cloth, I2mo, $7.23 
 
 In manner and technique this three-act drama 'recalls some of the work 
 of Ibsen. Written adroitly and with the literary cleverness exhibited in Van 
 Zorn, it tells a story of a domestic entanglement in a dramatic fashion well 
 calculated to hold the reader's attention. 
 
 The Faithful 
 
 BY JOHN MASEFIELD 
 
 Author of " The Tragedy of Pompey the Great," " Philip 
 the King," etc. 
 
 Cloth, I2mo, $1.23 ; leather, $1.50 
 
 Mr. Masefield's contributions to dramatic literature are held in quite as 
 high esteem by his admirers as his narrative poems. In The Faithful, his 
 new play, he is at his best. It is described as a powerful piece of writing, 
 vivid in characterization and gripping in theme. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
IMPORTANT NEW WORKS 
 
 John M. Synge 
 
 A Few Personal Recollections with Biographical Notes 
 BY JOHN MASEFIELD 
 
 Author of " The Everlasting Mercy," etc. 
 
 With frontispiece. Boards, i2mo 
 Edition limited to 500 numbered copies, $1.00 
 
 An interesting little book is this in which one of the most distin- 
 guished poets of the day gives his impressions of Synge. The matter 
 is very intimate in nature, narrating Mr. Masefield's relations with 
 the Irish writer, reproducing conversations with him and throwing 
 in this personal way new light on the character and genius of the 
 man. 
 
 The Art of the Moving Picture 
 
 BY VACHEL LINDSAY 
 
 Author of " The Congo and Other Poems," etc. 
 
 Cloth, izmo, $i.JO 
 
 Mr. Lindsay's book is one of the first to be written in appreciation 
 of the moving picture. His purpose is to show how to classify and 
 judge the better films. He describes the types of photo plays, dis- 
 cusses the likeness of the motion picture to the old Egyptian picture 
 writing, summarizes the one hundred main points of difference be- 
 tween the legitimate drama and the film drama, indicates that the 
 best censorship is a public sense of beauty and takes up the value of 
 scientific films, news films, educational and political films. The 
 volume closes with some sociological observations on the conquest 
 of the motion picture, which he regards as a force as revolutionary 
 as was the invention of printing. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New Tork 
 
THE MACMILLAN MODERN POETS 
 
 Each volume leather, 12mo, $1.50 
 
 The Story of a Roundhouse. By JOHN MASEFIELD 
 
 The Faithful. By JOHN MASEFIELD 
 
 The Tragedy of Pompey the Great. By JOHN MASEFIELD 
 
 Philip the King and Other Poems. By JOHN MASEFIELD 
 
 A Mainsail Haul. By JOHN MASEFIELD 
 
 The Daffodil Fields. By JOHN MASEFIELD 
 
 The Everlasting Mercy. By JOHN MASEFIELD 
 
 Salt Water Ballads. By JOHN MASEFIELD 
 
 Spoon River Anthology. By EDGAR LEE MASTERS 
 
 The Congo and Other Poems. By VACHEL LINDSAY 
 
 Crack 0' Dawn. By FANNIE STEARNS DAVIS 
 
 Fires. By WILFRID WILSON GIBSON 
 
 Daily Bread. By WILFRID WILSON GIBSON 
 
 Womenkind. By WILFRID WILSON GIBSON 
 
 Poems. By ALFRED No YES 
 
 Vision of War. By LINCOLN COLCORD 
 
 Rivers to the Sea. By SARA TEASDALE 
 
 The Pilgrim Kings. By THOMAS WALSH 
 
 The Song of Hugh Glass. By JOHN G. NEIHARDT 
 
 The work of the more popular of the modern poets is now 
 to be available in attractive leather bindings. A number of 
 the books included in the series are new publications this year 
 "Rivers to the Sea," "The Pilgrim Kings," "Vision of 
 War," Crack O' Dawn," " The Song of Hugh Glass," " The 
 Faithful," and " Spoon River Anthology," for example but 
 whether new or old they are all the work of established authors 
 warranting preservation in this more elaborate form. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York