Classic Poem

“The West has no place for a poet,” said the corpulent man with a sneer,
As we sat by the fire, out at Harrison Lake, in the spring of the year—
Out at Harrison Springs where the invalids go, for a bibulous spell,
To ease up their bellies on water that smells like the portals of Hell.
“The West has no time for your verses; for what is the rhyme of a song
To souls in the kingdom of action, to men who are rugged and strong.”
And he threw out his chest as he said it, as much as to say: “If you'd see
A real worthy son of the Westland, pray, take a good look over me.”

I had lived among cowboys and miners; I had lived where the loggers pitch camp;
And from Medicine Hat to Vancouver I knew all the land like a tramp.
I had ridden the plains on a broncho; I had panned out the gold in a sluice;
I had eaten the fare of a Pullman and quaffed of the riverman's juice.
I had watched them rip mountains at Blairmore; I had felt the Chinook at MacLeod:
On a journey from Grand Forks to Nelson I had torn off a strip of a cloud.
I had seen the grim Welshmen of Fernie pour out of the earth like a stream
And walk through the city at midnight, like phantoms that walk in a dream.
I had stood on a summit of Kaslo and gained new conceptions of God,
Who, lifting the bulk of the mountains, could bend to the flower on the sod.
I had chanted my songs to a trapper—a hundred miles deep in the wild:
When I blew him a wisp of my music he wept with the tears of a child.
I had read to strong men on the prairies my song of Saskatchewan land;
And after the show they would tell me, with a fine, prairie grip of the hand:
“Say, stranger, you're right and we know it; and we need men like you to be told
There are far truer measures than silver and far better treasures than gold.”
I had read in the shacks of the hill-lands, where wealth was the boast of a lamp;
For from Medicine Hat to Vancouver I knew all the land like a tramp.
And never a cowboy or miner, and never a logger that year
But gave me a Western reception and sent me away with a cheer.
And I came to the towns of the Coast-line, where they wear a brocade and a brogue,
Where “peas on your knife,” with the Smart Set, and “strangle your soup” are in vogue,
And, touching the ploughshare of fancy, I turned a sweet rhyme of the earth—
A rhyme that had slept in the valleys since ever the grasses had birth.
Before me were women whose culture was twenty months old in the blood:
And men who had risen to greatness by pawning an acre of mud.
And I sang them God's truths in my numbers—the truths which their hearts had opposed.
And some of them laughed when I started, and all of them sneered when I closed.
“The West has no place for a poet,” said the corpulent man with a sneer,
As we sat by the fire out at Harrison Lake in the spring of the year:
“Musicians and poets and artists are all out of place in the West:
I speak for the men of the mountains:” and he smote his fat hand on his breast.

“I speak for the men of the mountains!” He lied when he made that remark;
For how could the flesh of the sparrow speak out for the soul of the lark?
Yea, how could a vain little sparrow, that whets on the pavement its bill,
Know aught of the tang of wild berries that grow on the brow of the hill?
So I said: “When I hear a man sneering at all that is sweetest or best
I know he is not of the Eastland, and I know he is not of the West.
He's a mongrel the East wouldn't stand for, and the man of the mountains ignores;
He made a few bucks in the boom days or else he'd be sweeping out stores.
He's like a soiled cat who sits snarling all night on the rim of a fence,
And thinks: “I'm a hell of a cougar; the tiger and I are immense!”
He speaks for the men of the mountains? Nay, the man of the West doesn't sneer.
It's the man that the East wouldn't stand for; and perhaps he has been here a year
When he swells out his chest like the fat man I met out at Harrison Springs,
And says: “We have no use for poets or any poor sissy who sings.”

My friend is the miner at Coleman, the rancher beyond Pincher Creek,
The logger who rides into Vernon, with the kiss of the wind on his cheek.
But the ten-dollar clerk of the city, or the chewing-gum girl with the slang,
Or the half-naked daub from Vancouver, who drawls with the “400” twang,
Who couldn't tell ragtime from Handel, or Milton from old Mother Goose,
A two-dollar chromo from Rembrandt; and yet who are quick to turn loose
Their sneers on the man who would pour them rare wines of his art, for a toast;
But these are the breed of the mongrel—they're not the pure blood of the Coast.

So, drink with me cowboys and miners; I'll pour you a cup of my dreams.
My rhyme has grown strong in your mountains, and pure in your glacier streams.
I'll limn you new flowers on the prairie; I'll show you grim shapes in the crag;
And we'll dance with the maid of the North Wind a far better dance than the rag.
The East hath her genius and culture; the West hath her vigor and brawn;
And one hath the splendor of noonday, and one hath the glory of dawn.
So, God give Thy smile to the Westland, wherever a true heart abides;
And God give thy smile to the Eastland, and blot out the line that divides.