I remember as though 'twere yesterday, the lesson we
learnt that night,
The answer that broke on our startled ears, the voice
from the riven height.
The God we had challenged with angry words was
guarding and watching yet,
And loving the wilderness we had cursed, the God who
could not forget.
He knew of the lonely location crew, away in the
shadowed past,
He knew of the road we had come to build, reserving
it to the last.
He knew we would say He had long forgot the arid
and thirsty land,
But spoke from the heavens that night to show 'twas
even as He had planned.
RECALLED
Where the mountains rise in splendour,
And the shadows darkly fall,
And the torrent rushes o'er the silent glen,
Where the coyote's bark is wailing
With its never-ending call,
How I miss my home among the lonely men.
Left it all because they called me,
Left it all a year ago.
Tried to think the things of home could satisfy.
Changed the silence for the glitter
Of a city's empty glow.
Tried to crush my soul of things that never die.
Things that were and ever shall be,
Things that never, never change.
Things that men I see around can never know.
Things I know and love for ever,
Thro' my wand'ring vision range,
Things that whisper in the silence "You must go."
You who've never heard them calling,
Pleading voices in the night,—
You who've never known the challenge of the wild,
Cannot know the aching longing
For the freedom and the fight
When the loneliness is calling for her child.
There's a trail that lies a-waiting
In a dim and aged land.
There are monuments unbuilded in the gloom.
There are epitaphs unwritten,
Sleeping men who understand,
There's a challenge, there's a fight against the doom.
When the wild is closing on you,
And defiance you have hurled,
And the trail is fading dimly in the night,
As the mystic lights are dancing
On the frontier of the world
You are fighting grim and silent for your life.
When you're staking on the limit
With a hope that's nearly gone,
Then you grit your teeth and bluff the wild again,
Till you see the lights a-gleaming
In the coulee thro' the storm,
And you shout a mocking triumph thro' your pain.