The draughtsman was fitted with paper
They took from the memory book,
The transit and stand came from Peter,
Who down on the earth used to look:
The rod was supplied and a level.
With one other thing to get yet,
The chain we got loaned from the devil,
And hubs we proceeded to set.
We hunted the children of Israel,
And ordered them out on the line,
And Aaron, with Jonah and Ishmael,
All helped us to build it on time;
We fixed up the Ark for a cookshack,
Installing the devil as cook,
We knew he could fix up the hard tack,
From reading of him in the book.
We tore up the golden pavements,
And sighted through jasper walls,
Upsetting the angels' arrangements,
And shocking their ears with our calls.
Lot handled a back-flagging picket,
The rod Moses used at the rock,
And put a B.M. at the wicket,
Where incoming pilgrims would knock.
Mere Eve watched, with angels beside her,
As Adam the foreman we made;
And took the Pale Horse and his rider
To drive a machine on the grade.
I've worked on the C.P. and others,
And often seen queer-looking sights;
But laughed when the Zebedee brothers
Drove mules in the heavenly heights.
King Solomon sent us a tender,
A house for the agent to build,
And Matthew, our legal defender,
Saw specifications were filled;
We put up a gold cantilever,
O'erspanning the Valley of Rest,
And hunted up old Shalmanezar,
For laying the steel in the West.
We worked, for we knew it depended
Where we should Eternity spend;
Our future we stoutly defended,
The line that we made at The End.
That grade never needed inspection,
Such filling we never had seen;
Pure silver and gold for a section,
With radium stuffed in between.
We showed, when the road was completed,
Our duty we never would shirk;
And the Master who viewed it repeated:
"That man should be judged by his work."
He called up the saints of the ages,
To honor us with their esteem,
And pardoned our past-blotted pages—
When I woke, and I found 'twas a dream.
THE MUSTERING OF THE LEGION
(To the Legion of Frontiersmen)
'Twas a dream that I dreamed of to-morrow,
A shadow was cast before,
And the men who were missing had gathered
To answer the call to war.
Did ye think they were dead to the Empire?
Ah, no, though their trail is dim!
On the roll of the Legion you'll find them,
The Frontiersmen of the King.