Classic Poem

The drive it ain't such easy graft that I would recommend
To any gink to ride the drink, an', least of all, a friend.
It's up at four an' sluice a dam or sack a swampy rear
Until the sun has got the run an' baby stars appear.
It ain't no job to recommend
To anybody that's a friend.

I've heard some guy from off the plains who'd punched the cows a spell
Describe the same an' cuss an' claim the cowboy life is hell—
When cattle beller in the night an' fifty head go down,
When bulls stampede an' rivers bleed from trampled banks of brown,
While gray coyotes wait to browse
Upon the flanks of wounded cows.

But, Mr. Puncher from the plains, you've never tackled this,
Have tried to put a Winter's cut to town without a miss.
A bughouse bull may scare a herd an' break a hunderd bones,
An' so a lawg can play the dawg an' snub among the stones
An' pile a norway drive so deep
A crew will lose a week of sleep.

My puncher friend has seen a man an' hoss go out to mill
The bloodshot eyes an' sweatin' thighs an' flyin' feet that kill,
Has seen a man an' hoss go down before that sea of meat,
Has seen it pound 'em in the ground beneath a thousand feet—
Has seen the longhorns have their fling
An', where a Man was, leave a Thing.

But I have seen a river-rat, a peavey in his mit,
Below a jam the peavey ram beneath the breast of it;
An' I have heard the timber break, have heard it groan an' whine,
Have heard him cry an' seen him die before a wall of pine—
Have seen the foam a second red
That never yet give up its dead.
An' so, I guess, it always is: the cowboy or the rat
They may be slick, but Death is quick an' cattier than that.
As long as men must fight for bread, must fight an' work an' cuss,
Some other guy must go an' die to pay the Price for us.
For men who toil on land or tide
Have Death, the foreman, at their side.