Cicely
By Bret Harte (Francis)
Cicely says youre a poet; maybe, I aint much on rhyme:
I reckon youd give me a hundred, and beat me every time.
Poetry! thats the way some chaps puts up an idee,
But I takes mine straight without sugar, and thats whats the matter with me.
Poetry! just look round you, alkali, rock, and sage;
Sage-brush, rock, and alkali; aint it a pretty page!
Sun in the east at mornin, sun in the west at night,
And the shadow of this yer station the ony thing moves in sight.
Poetry! Well now Polly! Polly, run to your mam;
Run right away, my pooty! By-by! Aint she a lamb?
Poetry! that reminds me o suthin right in that suit:
Jest shet that door thar, will yer? for Cicelys ears is cute.
Ye noticed Polly, the baby? A month afore she was born,
Cicely my old woman was moody-like and forlorn;
Out of her head and crazy, and talked of flowers and trees;
Family man yourself, sir? Well, you know what a woman bes.
Narvous she was, and restless, said that she couldnt stay.
Stay! and the nearest woman seventeen miles away.
But I fixed it up with the doctor, and he said he would be on hand,
And I kinder stuck by the shanty, and fenced in that bit o land.
One night, the tenth of October, I woke with a chill and a fright,
For the door it was standing open, and Cicely warnt in sight,
But a note was pinned on the blanket, which it said that she couldnt stay,
But had gone to visit her neighbor, seventeen miles away!
When and how she stampeded, I didnt wait for to see,
For out in the road, next minit, I started as wild as she;
Running first this way and that way, like a hound that is off the scent,
For there warnt no track in the darkness to tell me the way she went.
Ive had some mighty mean moments afore I kem to this spot,
Lost on the Plains in 50, drownded almost and shot;
But out on this alkali desert, a-hunting a crazy wife,
Was raly as on-satis-factory as anything in my life.
Cicely! Cicely! Cicely! I called, and I held my breath,
And Cicely! came from the canyon, and all was as still as death.
And Cicely! Cicely! Cicely! came from the rocks below,
And jest but a whisper of Cicely! down from them peaks of snow.
I aint what you call religious, but I jest looked up to the sky,
And this yers to what Im coming, and maybe ye think I lie:
But up away to the eastard, yaller and big and far,
I saw of a suddent rising the singlerist kind of star.
Big and yaller and dancing, it seemed to beckon to me:
Yaller and big and dancing, such as you never see:
Big and yaller and dancing, I never saw such a star,
And I thought of them sharps in the Bible, and I went for it then and thar.
Over the brush and bowlders I stumbled and pushed ahead,
Keeping the star afore me, I went wherever it led.
It might hev been for an hour, when suddent and peart and nigh,
Out of the yearth afore me thar riz up a babys cry.
Listen! thars the same music; but her lungs they are stronger now
Than the day I packed her and her mother, Im derned if I jest know how.
But the doctor kem the next minit, and the joke o the whole thing is
That Cis never knew what happened from that very night to this!
But Cicely says youre a poet, and maybe you might, some day,
Jest sling her a rhyme bout a baby that was born in a curious way,
And see what she says; and, old fellow, when you speak of the star, dont tell
As how twas the doctors lantern, for maybe twont sound so well.