Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE OLD MACKENZIE TRAIL, by JOHN AVERY LOMAX Poet's Biography First Line: See, stretching yonder o'er that low divide Last Line: Went rangeing o'er the old mackenzie trail. Subject(s): Cowboys; Ranch Life; Roads; West (u.s.); Paths; Trails; Southwest; Pacific States | ||||||||
SEE, stretching yonder o'er that low divide Which parts the falling rain, the eastern slope Sends down its waters to the southern sea Through Double Mountain's winding length of stream; The western side spreads out into a plain, Which sinks away o'er tawny, rolling leagues At last into the rushing Rio Grande, See, faintly showing on that distant ridge, The deep-cut pathways through the shelving crest, Sage-matted now and rimmed with chaparral, The dim reminders of the olden times, The life of stir, of blood, of Indian raid, The hunt of buffalo and antelope; The camp, the wagon train, the sea of steers; The cowboy's lonely vigil through the night; The stampede and the wild ride through the storm; The call of California's golden flood; The impulse of the Saxon's "Westward Ho" Which set our fathers' faces from the east, To spread resistless o'er the barren wastes, To people all the regions 'neath the sun Those vikings of the old Mackenzie Trail. It winds this old forgotten cattle trail Through valleys still and silent even now, Save when the yellow-breasted desert lark Cries shrill and lonely from a dead mesquite, In quivering notes set in a minor key; The endless round of sunny days, of starry nights, The desert's blank immutability. The coyote's howl is heard at dark from some Low-lying hill; companioned by the loafer wolf They yelp in concert to the far off stars, Or gnaw the bleached bones in savage rage That lie unburied by the grass-grown paths. The prairie dogs play sentinel by day And backward slips the badger to his den; The whir, the fatal strike of rattlesnake, A staring buzzard floating in the blue, And, now and then, the curlew's eerie call, Lost, always lost, and seeking evermore. All else is mute and dormant; vacantly The sun looks down, the days run idly on, The breezes whirl the dust, which eddying falls Smothering the records of the westward caravans, Where silent heaps of wreck and nameless graves Make milestones for the old Mackenzie Trail. Across the Brazos, Colorado, through Concho's broad, fair valley, sweeping on By Abilene it climbs upon the plains, The Llano Estacado (beyond lie wastes Of alkali and hunger gaunt and death), And here is lost in shifting rifts of sand. Anon it lingers by a hidden spring That bubbles joy into the wilderness; Its pathway trenched that distant mountain side, Now grown to gulches through torrential rain. De Vaca gathered pinons by the way, Long ere the furrows grew on yonder hill, Cut by the creaking prairie-schooner wheels; La Salle, the gentle Frenchman, crossed this course, And went to death and to a nameless grave. For ages and for ages through the past Comanches and Apaches from the north Came sweeping southward, searching for the sun, And charged in mimic combat on the sea. The scions of Montezuma's low-browed race Perhaps have seen that knotted, thorn-clad tree; Or sucked the cactus apples growing there. All these have passed, and passed the immigrants, Who bore the westward fever in their brain, The Norseman tang for roving in their veins; Who loved the plains as sailors love the sea, Braved danger, death, and found a resting place While traveling on the old Mackenzie Trail. Brave old Mackenzie long has laid him down To rest beyond the trail that bears his name; A granite mountain makes his monument; The northers, moaning o'er the low divide, Go gently past his long deserted camps. No more his rangers guard the wild frontier, No more he leads them in the border fight. No more the mavericks, winding stream of horns To Kansas bound; the dust, the cowboy songs And cries, the pistol's sharp report, the free, Wild days in Texas by the Rio Grande. And some men say when dusky night shuts down, Dark, cloudy nights without a kindly star, One sees dim horsemen skimming o'er the plain Hard by Mackenzie's trail; and keener ears Have heard from deep within the bordering hills The tramp of ghostly hoofs, faint cattle lows, The rumble of a moving wagon train, Sometimes far echoes of a frontier song; Then sounds grow fainter, shadows troop away, On westward, westward, as they in olden time Went rangeing o'er the old Mackenzie Trail. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...WESTERN WAGONS by STEPHEN VINCENT BENET DRIVING WEST IN 1970 by ROBERT BLY IN THE HELLGATE WIND by MADELINE DEFREES A PERIOD PORTRAIT OF SYMPATHY by EDWARD DORN ASSORTED COMPLIMENTS by EDWARD DORN AT THE COWBOY PANEL by EDWARD DORN SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: JUDGE SELAH LIVELY by EDGAR LEE MASTERS |
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