Room! room to turn round in, to breathe and be free,
To grow to be giant, to sail as at sea
With the speed of
the wind on a steed with his mane
To the wind, without
pathway or route or a rein.
Room! room to be free where
the white border'd sea
Blows a kiss to a brother as
boundless as he;
Where the buffalo come like a cloud on
the plain,
Pouring on like the tide of a storm-driven
main,
And the lodge of the hunter to friend or to foe
Offers rest; and unquestion'd you come or you go.
My
plains of America! Seas of wild lands!
From a land in
the seas in a raiment of foam,
That has reached to a
stranger the welcome of home,
I turn to you, lean to
you, lift you my hands.
Run? Run? See this flank,
sir, and I do love him so!
But he's blind, badger blind.
Whoa, Pache, boy, whoa.
No, you wouldn't believe it to
look at his eyes,
But he's blind, badger blind, and it
happen'd this wise:
"We lay in the grass and the
sun-burnt clover
That spread on the ground like a great
brown cover
Northward and southward, and west and away
To the Brazos, where our lodges lay,
One broad and
unbroken level of brown.
We were waiting the curtains of
night to come down
To cover us trio and conceal our
flight
With my brown bride, won from an Indian town
That lay in the rear the full ride of a night.
"We
lounged in the grass � her eyes were in mine,
And her
hands on my knee, and her hair was as wine
In its wealth
and its flood, pouring on and all over
Her bosom wine
red, and press'd never by one.
Her touch was as warm as
the tinge of the clover
Burnt brown as it reach'd to the
kiss of the sun.
Her words they were low as the
lute-throated dove,
And as laden with love as the heart
when it beats
In its hot, eager answer to earliest love,
Or the bee hurried home by its burthen of sweets.
"We lay low in the grass on the broad plain levels,
Old Revels and I, and my stolen brown bride;
"Forty full
miles if a foot, and the devils
Of red Comanches are hot
on the track
When once they strike it. Let the sun go
down
Soon, very soon,"muttered bearded old Revels
As
he peer'd at the sun, lying low on his back,
Holding
fast to his lasso. Then he jerk'd at his steed
And he
sprang to his feet, and glanced swiftly around,
And then
dropp'd, as if shot, with an ear to the ground;
Then
again to his feet, and to me, to my bride,
While his
eyes were like flame, his face like a shroud,
His form
like a king, and his beard like a cloud,
And his voice
loud and shrill, as both trumpet and reed, �
"Pull, pull
in your lassoes, and bridle to steed,
And speed you if
ever for life you would speed.
Aye, ride for your lives,
for your lives you must ride!
For the plain is aflame,
the prairie on fire,
And the feet of wild horses hard
flying before
I heard like a sea breaking high on the
shore,
While the buffalo come like a surge of the sea,
Driven far by the flame, driving fast on us three
As
a hurricane comes, crushing palms in his ire."
"We
drew in the lassoes, seized saddle and rein,
Threw them
on, cinched them on, cinched them over again,
And again
drew the girth; and spring we to horse,
With head to the
Brazos, with a sound in the air
Like the surge of a sea,
with a flash in the eye,
From that red wall of flame
reaching up to the sky;
A red wall of flame and a black
rolling sea
Rushing fast upon us, as the wind sweeping
free
And afar from the desert blown hollow and hoarse.
"Not a word, not a wail from a lip was let fall,
We brcke not a whisper, we breathed not a prayer,
There
was work to be done, there was death in the air,
And the
chance was as one to a thousand for all.
"Twenty
miles! ... thirty miles! a dim distant speck. ...
Then a
long reaching line, and the Brazos in sight!
And I rose
in my seat with a shout of delight.
I stood in my
stirrup, and look'd to my right �
But Revels was gone; I
glanced by my shoulder
And saw his horse stagger; I saw
his head drooping
Hard down on his breast, and his naked
breast stooping
Low down to the mane, as so swifter and
bolder
Ran reaching out for us the red-footed fire.
He rode neck to neck with a buffalo bull,
That made the
earth shake where he came in his course,
The monarch of
millions, with shaggy mane full
Of smoke and of dust,
and it shook with desire
Of battle, with rage and with
bellowing hoarse.
His keen, crooked horns, through the
storm of his mane,
Like black lances lifted and lifted
again;
And I looked but this once, for the fire licked
through,
And Revels was gone, as we rode two and two.
"I look'd to my left then � and nose, neck, and
shoulder
Sank slowly, sank surely, till back to my
thighs,
And up through the black blowing veil of her
hair
Did beam full in mine her two marvelous eyes,
With a longing and love yet a look of despair
And of
pity for me, as she felt the smoke fold her,
And flames
leaping far for her glorious hair.
Her sinking horse
falter'd, plunged, fell and was gone
As I reach'd
through the flame and I bore her still on.
On! into the
Brazos, she, Pache and I �
Poor, burnt, blinded Pache. I
love him. |
