The Squaw Man

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.