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Robert W Service - The Squaw Man
Work rating: Low

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.
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