The Squaw Man

    The cow-moose comes to water, and the beaver's overbold,
    The net is in the eddy of the stream;
    The teepee stars the vivid sward with russet, red and gold,
    And in the velvet gloom the fire's a-gleam.
    The night is ripe with quiet, rich with incense of the pine;
    From sanctuary lake I hear the loon;
    The peaks are bright against the blue, and drenched with sunset wine,
    And like a silver bubble is the moon.

    Cloud-high I climbed but yesterday; a hundred miles around
    I looked to see a rival fire a-gleam.
    As in a crystal lens it lay, a land without a bound,
    All lure, and virgin vastitude, and dream.
    The great sky soared exultantly, the great earth bared its breast,
    All river-veined and patterned with the pine;
    The heedless hordes of caribou were streaming to the West,
    A land of lustrous mystery - and mine.

    Yea, mine to frame my Odyssey: Oh, little do they know
    My conquest and the kingdom that I keep!
    The meadows of the musk-ox, where the laughing grasses grow,
    The rivers where the careless conies leap.
    Beyond the silent Circle, where white men are fierce and few,
    I lord it, and I mock at man-made law;
    Like a flame upon the water is my little light canoe,
    And yonder in the fireglow is my squaw.

    A squaw man! yes, that's what I am; sneer at me if you will.
    I've gone the grilling pace that cannot last;
    With bawdry, bridge and brandy - Oh, I've drank enough to kill
    A dozen such as you, but that is past.
    I've swung round to my senses, found the place where I belong;
    The City made a madman out of me;
    But here beyond the Circle, where there's neither right or wrong,
    I leap from life's straight-jacket, and I'm free.

    Yet ever in the far forlorn, by trails of lone desire;
    Yet ever in the dawn's white leer of hate;
    Yet ever by the dripping kill, beside the drowsy fire,
    There comes the fierce heart-hunger for a mate.
    There comes the mad blood-clamour for a woman's clinging hand,
    Love-humid eyes, the velvet of a breast;
    And so I sought the Bonnet-plumes, and chose from out the band
    The girl I thought the sweetest and the best.

    O wistful women I have loved before my dark disgrace!
    O women fair and rare in my home land!
    Dear ladies, if I saw you now I'd turn away my face,
    Then crawl to kiss your foot-prints in the sand!
    And yet - that day the rifle jammed - a wounded moose at bay -
    A roar, a charge . . . I faced it with my knife:
    A shot from out the willow-scrub, and there the monster lay. . . .
    Yes, little Laughing Eyes, you saved my life.

    The man must have the woman, and we're all brutes more or less,
    Since first the male ape shinned the family tree;
    And yet I think I love her with a husband's tenderness,
    And yet I know that she would die for me.
    Oh, if I left you, Laughing Eyes, and nevermore came back,
    God help you, girl! I know what you would do. . . .
    I see the lake wan in the moon, and from the shadow black,
    There drifts a little, EMPTY birch canoe.

    We're here beyond the Circle, where there's never wrong nor right;
    We aren't spliced according to the law;
    But by the gods I hail you on this hushed and holy night
    As the mother of my children, and my squaw.
    I see your little slender face set in the firelight glow;
    I pray that I may never make it sad;
    I hear you croon a baby song, all slumber-soft and low -
    God bless you, little Laughing Eyes! I'm glad.