What will it matter, when comes the call
To enter the dim unknown?
What will it matter, when, after all,
You stand at the Master's throne?
Maybe I dream, but I often seem
Man's judgment to hear reversed;
"I judge by not what you should have been,
'Tis strange you have not been worse."
So have I dreamed of the long ago,
Songs have I sung to your name;
Little of fancy, to you who know,
The cost of a nation's fame;
Memories dear to the men who roam,
Brothers I knew in the land;
Leaving the judgment to you alone,
To you, who will understand.
TO YOU WHO CAN NEVER UNDERSTAND
You've often, by your fireside, talked of people you have known,
The soldier, p'raps the doctor, or the priest;
These verses are of fellows, most of whom are never known,
On whom the limelight falls perhaps the least.
There's many who've forgotten, in the comfort of a home,
The boys whose lives are mingled with the wild;
Who leave the surging city, model out the great alone,
To hardness, for your pleasure, reconciled.
* * * * * * *
When, lying in your sleeper in a first-class Pullman car,
Or musing at the table while you dine,
The train is running swiftly on without a jolt or jar,
D'you ever think of those who made the line?
While rushing o'er the prairies, fresh with towns all newly born,
The bush, the bridge across the Torrent's fall;
And rounding mighty canyons in the hazy early morn,
Don't quite forget the boys who did it all.
We know you bought a ticket, and you pay for all you get,
But don't you see the shadow near the pine,
Who looks at you appealingly, with face so white and set,
For duty died, your comfort on the line.
Just turn your eyes to Westward, to the bluff that shades the creek,
The sunset's glory setting overhead;
We found him in the bushes, he'd been frozen near a week,
His life, a pioneer, the man that's dead.