The Low-Down White

Well, the cherry bends with blossom, and the vivid grass is springing,

And the star-like lily nestles in the green;

And the frogs their joys are singing, and my heart in tune is ringing,

And it doesn't matter what I might have been,

While above the scented pine-gloom, piling heights of golden glory,

The sun-god paints his canvas in the west;

I can couch me deep in clover, I can listen to the story

Of the lazy, lapping water--it is best.

While the trout leaps in the river, and the blue grouse thrills the

cover,

And the frozen snow betrays the panther's track,

And the robin greets the dayspring with the rapture of a lover,

I am happy, and I'll nevermore go back.

For I know I'd just be longing for the little old log cabin,

With the morning-glory clinging to the door,

Till I loathed the city places, cursed the care on all the faces,

Turned my back on lazar London evermore.

So send me far from Lombard Street, and write me down a failure;

Put a little in my purse and leave me free.

Say: "He turned from Fortune's offering to follow up a pale lure,

He is one of us no longer--let him be."

I am one of you no longer: by the trails my feet have broken,

The dizzy peaks I've scaled, the camp-fire's glow,

By the lonely seas I've sailed in--yea, the final word is spoken,

I am signed and sealed to nature. Be it so.

THE LOW-DOWN WHITE

This is the pay-day up at the mines, when the bearded brutes come down;

There's money to burn in the streets to-night, so I've sent my

klooch to town,

With a haggard face and a ribband of red entwined in her hair of brown.

And I know at the dawn she'll come reeling home with the bottles,

one, two, three;

One for herself to drown her shame, and two big bottles for me,

To make me forget the thing I am and the man I used to be.

To make me forget the brand of the dog, as I crouch in this hideous

place;

To make me forget once I kindled the light of love in a lady's face,

Where even the squalid Siwash now holds me a black disgrace.

Oh, I have guarded my secret well! And who would dream as I speak

In a tribal tongue like a rogue unhung, 'mid the ranch-house filth

and reek,

I could roll to bed with a Latin phrase, and rise with a verse of

Greek?

Yet I was a senior prizeman once, and the pride of a college eight;

Called to the bar--my friends were true! but they could not keep me

straight;

Then came the divorce, and I went abroad and "died" on the River Plate.

But I'm not dead yet; though with half a lung there isn't time to

spare,

And I hope that the year will see me out, and, thank God, no one

will care--

Save maybe the little slim Siwash girl with the rose of shame in her

hair.

She will come with the dawn, and the dawn is near; I can see its

evil glow,

Like a corpse-light seen through a frosty pane in a night of want

and woe;

And yonder she comes, by the bleak bull-pines, swift staggering

through the snow.

THE LITTLE OLD LOG CABIN

When a man gits on his uppers in a hard-pan sort of town,

An' he ain't got nothin' comin', an' he can't afford ter eat,

An' he's in a fix fer lodgin', an' he wanders up an' down,

An' you'd fancy he'd been boozin', he's so locoed 'bout the feet;

When he's feelin' sneakin' sorry, an' his belt is hangin' slack,

An' his face is peaked an' grey-like, an' his heart gits down an'

whines,

Then he's apt ter git a-thinkin' an' a-wishin' he was back

In the little ol' log cabin in the shadder of the pines.