The Cow-Puncher’s Elegy
I’ve ridden nigh a thousand leagues upon two bands of steel,
And it takes a grizzled Westerner to know just how I feel;
The ranches dot the strongholds of the old-time saddlemen,
And the glory of the cattle days can ne’er come back again.
Oh, the creak of saddle leather—
Oh, the sting of upland weather
When the cowmen roamed the foothills and drove in ten thousand steers;
Through the years, back in the dreaming,
I can see the camp-fires gleaming,
And the lowing of the night-herd sounds, all faintly, in my ears.
There’s a checkerboard of fences on the vast and wind-swept range;
And the haystacks and the windmills make the landscape new and strange,
And the plains are full of farmers, with their harrows and their ploughs;
On the roadsides loiter kidlets, who are ‘driving home the cows!’
Oh, the quickly faded glory
Of the cowboy’s brief, brief story!
How the old range beckons vainly in the sunshine and the rain!
Oh, the reek of roundup battle
And the thund’ring hoofs of cattle—
But why dream a useless day-dream, that can only give one pain?
Where have gone those trails historic, where the herders sought the mart?
Where have they gone the saucy cow-towns, where the gunman played his part?
Where has gone the Cattle Kingdom, with its armed, heroic strife?
Each has vanished like a bubble that has lived its little life.
Oh, the spurs we set a-jingling,
And the blood that went a-tingling
When we rode forth in the morning, chaps-clad knights in cavalcade;
And the mem’ries that come trooping,
And the spirits, sad and drooping,
When the cowman looks about him at the havoc Time has made.
