They applied some balmy lotion to the proper parts within.
Then they danced till ruddy morning, and their drying garments steamed,
And awful was the shrinkage of those seven- dollar suits!
And the feet of Murphy’s woodsmen gashed and slashed and clashed and seamed,
Till a steady rain of slivers rained behind those bradded boots.
--And all disputes of etiquette were buried once for all,
At that Christmas social function, the Rapo- genus Ball.
We’re spurred with the spikes in our soles;
Our hands are hard-calloused by peavies and poles,
And we’re drenched with the spume of the chutes.
And down from the hills where the rivers are fed
We hurroop them with the peavies from their sullen beds of snow;
With the pickpole for a goadstick, down the brimming streams we go;
They are hitching, they are halting, and they lurk and hide and dodge,
They sneak for skulking eddies, they bunt the bank and lodge.
And we almost can imagine that they hear the yell of saws
And the grunting of the grinders of the paper- mills because
They loiter in the shallows and they cob-pile at the falls,
And they buck like ugly cattle where the broad deadwater crawls.
But we wallow in and welt ’em with the water to our waist,
For the driving pitch is dropping and the Drouth is gasping “Haste!”
Here a dam and there a jam, that is grabbed by grinning rocks,
Gnawed by the teeth of the ravening ledge that slavers at our flocks;
Twenty a month for daring Death; for fighting from dawn to dark--
Twenty and grub and a place to sleep in God’s great public park;
We roofless go, with the cook’s bateau to fol- low our hungry crew--
A billion of spruce and hell turned loose when the Allegash drive goes through.
My lad with the spurs at his heel Has a cattle-ranch bronco to bust;
A thousand of Texans to wheedle and wheel To market through smother and dust.
He would wince to wade and wallow--and I hate a horse or steer!
But we stand the kings of herders--he for There and I for Here.
Though he rides with Death behind him when he rounds the wild stampede,
I will chop the jamming king-log and I’ll match him, deed for deed.
And for me the greenwood savor and the lash across my face
Of the spitting spume that belches from the back-wash of the race;
The glory of the tumult where the tumbling torrent rolls