THE WAYFARER

The wayfarer,

Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha," he said,

"I see that no one has passed here
"In a long time."

Later he saw that each weed

Was a singular knife.

"Well," he mumbled at last,

A slant of sun on dull brown walls,
A forgotten sky of bashful blue.

Toward God a mighty hymn,

A song of collisions and cries,

Rumbling wheels, hoof-beats, bells,

Welcomes, farewells, love-calls, final moans,

Voices of joy, idiocy, warning, despair,

The unknown appeals of brutes,

The chanting of flowers,

The screams of cut trees,

The senseless babble of hens and wise men

A cluttered incoherency that says to the stars:

"O God, save us!"

128

THE BLADES OF GRASS

In Heaven,

Some little blades of grass

Stood before God.

66

What did you do?"

Then all save one of the little blades

Began eagerly to relate

The merits of their lives.

This one stayed a small way behind,

Ashamed.

Presently, God said,

"And what did you do?"

The little blade answered, "Oh, my Lord,

Memory is bitter to me,

For, if I did good deeds,

I know not of them."

Then God, in all his splendor,

Arose from his throne.

"Oh, best little blade of grass!" he said.

Edwin Ford Piper

Edwin Ford Piper was born at Auburn, Nebraska, February 8, 1871, and literally grew up in the saddle. In 1893 he entered the University of Nebraska, from which he received an A.B. in 1897 and A.M. in 1900. He studied at Harvard (1903-4), was one of the editors of The Kiote (a magazine published from 1898 to 1902 in Lincoln, Nebraska), and, since 1905, has been an instructor of English at the State University of Iowa.

Piper's Barbed Wire and Other Poems (1918) is saturated with the color of his environment. His later poems are still more vivid and racy. "Sweetgrass Range (with its selfacknowledged debt to Burns's “Rattlin' Roarin' Willie ") and "Bindlestiff" are fresh evidences of this author's creative interest in ballads and folk-lore.

BINDLESTIFF

Oh, the lives of men, lives of men,
In pattern-molds be run;

But there's you, and me, and Bindlestiff-
And remember Mary's Son.

At dawn the hedges and the wheel-ruts ran
Into a brightening sky. The grass bent low
With shimmering dew, and many a late wild rose
Unrolled the petals from its odorous heart
While birds held tuneful gossip. Suddenly,
Each bubbling trill and whistle hid away
As from a hawk; the fragrant silence heard
Only the loving stir of little leaves;
Then a man's baritone broke roughly in:

I've gnawed my crust of mouldy bread,
Skimmed my mulligan stew;
Laid beneath the barren hedge-
Sleety night-winds blew.

Slanting rain chills my bones,

Sun bakes my skin;

Rocky road for my limping feet,

Door where I can't go in.

Above the hedgerow floated filmy smoke
From the hidden singer's fire. Once more the voice:

I used to burn the mules with the whip
When I worked on the grading gang;
But the boss was a crook, and he docked my pay—
Some day that boss will hang.

I used to live in a six by nine,
Try to save my dough-
It's a bellyful of the chaff of life,
Feet that up and go.

The mesh of leafy branches rustled loud,
Into the road slid Bindlestiff. You've seen
The like of the traveller: gaunt humanity

In stained and broken coat, with untrimmed hedge.
Of rusty beard and curling sunburnt hair;
His hat, once white, a dull uncertain cone;
His leathery hands and cheeks, his bright blue eyes
That always see new faces and strange dogs;
His mouth that laughs at life and at himself.

Sometimes they shut you up in jail—

Dark, and a filthy cell;

I hope the fellows built them jails

Find 'em down in hell.

But up above, you can sleep outdoors

Feed you like a king;

You never have to saw no wood,

Only job is sing.

The tones came mellower, as unevenly
The tramp limped off trailing the hobo song:

Good-bye, farewell to Omaha,
K. C., and Denver, too;

Put my foot on the flying freight,
Going to ride her through.

Bindlestiff topped a hillock, against the sky
Showed stick and bundle with his extra shoes
Jauntily dangling. Bird to bird once more
Made low sweet answer; in the wild rose cups
The bee found yellow meal; all softly moved
The white and purple morning-glory bells
As on the gently rustling hedgetop leaves
The sun's face rested. Bindlestiff was gone.

Oh, the lives of men, lives of men,

In pattern-molds be run;

But there's you, and me, and Bindlestiff-
And remember Mary's Son.

SWEETGRASS RANGE

Come sell your pony, cowboy

Sell your pony to me;

Braided bridle and your puncher saddle,
And spend your money free.