ADD: Poems and Songs of Charles Badger Clark

23 Feb 08 - 09:12 PM (#2270706)
Subject: Lyr Add: THE COYOTE (Badger Clark)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)

THE COYOTE
(Charles Badger Clark)

Trailing the last gleam after,
In the valleys emptied of light,
Ripples a whimsical laughter
Under the wings of the night.
Mocking the faded west airily,
Meeting the little bats merrily,
Over the mesas it shrills
To the red moon on the hills.

Mournfully rising and waning,
Far through the moon-silvered land
Wails a weird voice of complaining
Over the thorns and the sand.
Out of blue silences eerily,
On to the black mountains wearily,
Till the dim desert is crossed,
Wanders the cry, and is lost.

Here by the fire's ruddy streamers,
Tired with our hopes and our fears,
We inarticulate dreamers
Hark to the song of our years.
Up to the brooding divinity
Far in that sparkling infinity
Cry our despair and delight,
Voice of the Western night!

Badger Clark, in Grass Grown Trails," included in "Sun and Saddle Leather," 1952 edition, pp. 107-108, Chapman & Grimes, Boston.

I have not seen music for this poem.

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Note from Joe Offer: 1922 edition of Badger Clark's Sun and Saddle Leather available at Google Books. This post is an exact transcription.

-Joe Offer-

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This is an edited PermaThread® for the poems and songs of Charles Badger Clark, Jr. This thread will be edited by Joe Offer. Feel free to post to this thread, but remember that all messages posted here are subject to editing or deletion.
If you'd like to transcribe and post other poems from this book, please do - but try to do your best at proofreading. You'll find that the Google OCR leaves much to be desired, so we can make a real contribution by posting exact transcriptions.
-Joe Offer-

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04 Mar 09 - 04:50 PM (#2581332)
Subject: Lyr Add: A BORDER AFFAIR (Charles Badger Clark)
From: Barry Finn

Another by Charles Badger Clark is Border Affair. Also know as "Spanish is the Loving Tongue". Here's a link to some background of Charles Badger Clark

Barry

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A BORDER AFFAIR
(Charles Badger Clark, Jr.)

Spanish is the lovin' tongue
Soft as music, light as spray;
'Twas a girl I learnt it from,
Livin' down Sonora way.
I don't look much like a lover,
Yet I say her love words over.
Often when I'm all alone -
"Mi amor, mi corazon."

Nights when she knew where I'd ride
She would listen for my spurs,
Fling the big door open wide,
Raise them laughin' eyes of hers.
And my heart would nigh stop beatin'
When I heard her tender greeting,
Whispered soft for me alone -
"Mi amor, mi corazon!"

Moonlight on the patio,
Old señora noddin' near,
Me and Juana talking low
So the Madre couldn't hear -
How those hours would go a-flyin'!
And too soon I'd hear her sighin'
In her little sorry tone -
"Adios, mi corazon!"

But one time I had to fly
For a foolish gamblin' fight,
And we said a swift goodbye
In that black, unlucky night.
When I'd loosed her arms from clingin'
With her words the hoofs kep' ringin',
As I galloped north alone -
"Adios, mi corazon!"

Never seen her since that night,
I kain't cross the line, you know.
She was Mex and I was white;
Like as not it's better so.
Yet I've always sort of missed her
Since that last wild night I kissed her,
Left her heart and lost my own -
"Adios, mi corazon."

I transcribed this from the 1922 edition of Badger Clark's Sun and Saddle Leather. The Digital Tradition version is almost the same.
-Joe Offer-

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05 Mar 09 - 01:18 AM (#2581571)
Subject: Lyr Add: BACHIN' (Charles Badger Clark)
From: Artful Codger

Here's one I sing (to my own tune):


BACHIN'
(Charles Badger Clark)

Our lives are hid; our trails are strange;
    We're scattered through the West
In canyon cool, on blistered range
    Or windy mountain crest.
Wherever Nature drops her ears
    And bares her claws to scratch,
From Yuma to the north frontiers,
    You'll likely find the bach',
          You will,
    The shy and sober bach'!

Our days are sun and storm and mist,
    The same as any life,
Except that in our trouble list
    We never count a wife.
Each has a reason why he's lone,
    But keeps it 'neath his hat;
Or, if he's got to tell some one,
    Confides it to his cat,
          He does,
    Just tells it to his cat.

We're young or old or slow or fast,
    But all plumb versatyle.
The mighty bach' that fires the blast
    Kin serve up beans in style.
The bach' that ropes the plungin' cows
    Kin mix the biscuits true--
We earn our grub by drippin brows
    And cook it by 'em too,
          We do,
    We cook it by 'em too.

We like to breathe unbranded air,
    Be free of foot and mind,
And go or stay, or sing or swear,
    Whichever we're inclined.
An appetite, a conscience clear,
    A pipe that's rich and old
Are loves that always bless and cheer
    And never cry or scold,
          They don't.
    They never cry or scold.

Old Adam bached some ages back
    And smoked his pipe so free,
A-loafin' in a palm-leaf shack
    Beneath a mango tree.
He'd best have stuck to bachin' ways,
    And scripture proves the same,
For Adam's only happy days
    Was 'fore the woman came,
          They was,
    All 'fore the woman came.

From Clark's Sun and Saddle Leather, 1915. (text unaltered)

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05 Mar 09 - 02:12 AM (#2581580)
Subject: Lyr Add: THE OLD COW MAN (Charles Badger Clark)
From: Artful Codger

And here's another of his I sing, again to my own tune:

THE OLD COW MAN
(Charles Badger Clark)

I rode across a valley range
I hadn't seen for years.
The trail was all so spoilt and strange
It nearly fetched the tears.
I had to let ten fences down
(The fussy lanes ran wrong)
And each new line would make me frown
And hum a mournin' song.

    Oh, it's squeak! squeak! squeak!
      Hear 'em stretchin' of the wire!
    The nester brand is on the land;
      I reckon I'll retire,
    While progress toots her brassy horn
      And makes her motor buzz,
    I thank the Lord I wasn't born
      No later than I was.

'Twas good to live when all the sod,
Without no fence or fuss,
Belonged in partnership to God,
The Gover'ment and us.
With skyline bounds from east to west
And room to go and come,
I loved my fellow man the best
When he was scattered some.

    Oh, it's squeak! squeak! squeak!
      Close and closer cramps the wire.
    There's hardly any place to back away
      And call a man a liar.
    Their house has locks on every door;
      Their land is in a crate.
    These ain't the plains of God no more,
      They're only real estate.

There's land where yet no ditchers dig
Nor cranks experiment;
It's only lovely, free and big
And isn't worth a cent.
I pray that them who come to spoil
May wait till I am dead
Before they foul that blessed soil
With fence and cabbage head.

    Yet it's squeak! squeak! squeak!
      Far and farther crawls the wire.
    To crowd and pinch another inch
      Is all their heart's desire.
    The word is overstocked with men
      And some will see the day
    When each must keep his little pen,
      But I'll be far away.

When my old soul hunts range and rest
Beyond the last divide,
Just plant me in some stretch of West
That's sunny, lone and wide.
Let cattle rub my tombstone down
And coyotes mourn their kin,
Let hawses paw and tromp the moun'
But don't you fence it in!

    Oh it's squeak! squeak! squeak!
      And they pen the land with wire.
    They figure fence and copper cents
      Where we laughed 'round the fire.
    Job cussed his birthday, night and morn,
      In his old land of Uz,
    But I'm just glad I wasn't born
      No later than I was!

From Clark's Sun and Saddle Leather, 1915.

Don Edwards also sings this song, to his own tune, but for a more lyrical feel, he hums instead of singing the first line of each chorus. My take is that the old cow man is crotchety, rankled and arch, rather than merely maudlin, and the grating squeaks should be played up (on the string of a fiddle, say, when not singing unaccompanied.)

BTW, Badger was a given name, not a sobriquet; it should not be quoted.

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05 Mar 09 - 09:53 AM (#2581754)
Subject: Index: poems of Charles Badger Clark
From: Jim Dixon

The following books are viewable at Google Books (if you're in the US, at least):

Sun and Saddle Leather, by Charles Badger Clark, Jr. (Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1917)

CONTENTS:

A Bad Half Hour 17
A Border Affair 26
A Cowboy's Prayer 21
A Roundup Lullaby 37
Bachin' 41
Bacon 46
From Town 19
God's Reserves 49
Ridin' 13
The Bunk-House Orchestra 28
The Christmas Trail 23
The Glory Trail 43
The Legend of Boastful Bill 32
The Lost Pardner 47
The Married Man 51
The Old Cow Man 54
The Outlaw 30
The Plainsmen 57
The Song of the Leather 15
The Tied Maverick 35
The Trail o' Love 39
The Westerner 59

Grass-Grown Trails by Badger Clark (Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1917)

CONTENTS:

A Ranger 16
Freightin' 34
God of the Open 57
Half-Breed 28
Hawse Work 26
Latigo Town 60
On the Drive 19
On the Oregon Trail 46
Saturday Night 21
Southwestern June 22
The Bad Lands 43
The Border 40
The Buffalo Trail 62
The Camp Fire's Song 63
The Coyote 9
The Forest Rangers 48
The Free Wind 10
The Locoed Horse 30
The Long Way 32
The Medicine Man 12
The Night Herder 24
The Old Prospector 55
The Passing of the Trail 58
The Piano at Red's 14
The Rains 37
The Sheep-Herder 51
The Springtime Plains 45
The Yellow Stuff 49
To Her 29

Sun and Saddle Leather: Including Grass Grown Trails and New Poems by Badger Clark, 11th edition, (Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1922)

[These are the "new poems":]

Battle 198
In the Hills 200
Jeff Hart 196
My Enemy 187
Others 194
Plains Born 183
The Fighting Swing 189
The Old Camp Coffee-Pot 185
The Smoke-Blue Plains 192

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05 Mar 09 - 09:59 AM (#2581756)
Subject: RE: ADD: Poems and Songs of Charles Badger Clark
From: Jim Dixon

Apparently Badger was his real middle name and not a nickname or pseudonym; therefore there is no need to put it in quotation marks. At least quotation marks were not used in the byline of his own books (see above).

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05 Mar 09 - 11:04 AM (#2581794)
Subject: Lyr Add: THE OPEN (Charles Badger Clark)
From: Jim Dixon

This poem does NOT seem to be in any of his books.
From Outing, Volume LXIV, No. 4, New York: Outing Publishing Company, July, 1914:

THE OPEN
By Charles Badger Clark, Jr.

Weaving of a saddle and a wind across my eyes,
Blowing from the wideness of a sun-brimmed plain,
Hush my hurts to slumber and sing my spirit wise,
Wafting woe behind me where the market clatter dies
Back along the skyline with its dim smoke stain.

Humming in the rhythm of the hoof-timed lays,
I can see the glory of the worldling rise
Where the dusty pillar of the whirlwind sways,
And my lips are laughing while the glad soul prays—
Weaving of a saddle and a wind across my eyes!

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05 Mar 09 - 11:41 AM (#2581829)
Subject: RE: ADD: Poems and Songs of Charles Badger Clark
From: Q (Frank Staplin)

His mother was Harriet Badger, married Henry Clark.

The Badger name occurs in Ireland, but I don't know the place of origin of the name; it could be elsewhere.

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05 Mar 09 - 12:03 PM (#2581843)
Subject: Lyr Add: PIONEERS (Charles Badger Clark)
From: Jim Dixon

From Scribner's Magazine, Volume LXVI, No. 6, December, 1919, page 733:


PIONEERS
By Badger Clark

A Broken wagon wheel that rots away beside the river,
A sunken grave that dimples on the bluff above the trail;
The larks call, the wind sweeps, the prairie grasses quiver
And sing a wistful roving song of hoof and wheel and sail.
Pioneers, pioneers, you trailed it on to glory,
Across the circling deserts to the mountains blue and dim.
New England was a night camp; Old England was a story.
The new home, the true home lay out beyond the rim.

You fretted at the old hearth, the kettle and the cricket,
The fathers' little acres, the wood lot and the pond.
Ay, better storm and famine and the arrow from the thicket,
Along the trail to wider lands that glimmered out beyond.
Pioneers, pioneers, the quicksands where you wallowed,
The rocky hills and thirsty plains—they hardly won your heed.
You snatched the thorny chance, broke the trail that others followed
For sheer joy, for dear joy of marching in the lead.

Your wagon track is laid with steel; your tired dust is sleeping.
Your spirit stalks the valleys where a restive nation teems.
Your soul has never left them in their sowing and their reaping.
The children of the outward trail, their eyes are full of dreams.
Pioneers, pioneers, your children will not reckon
The dangers on the dusky ways no man has ever gone.
They look beyond the sunset where the better countries beckon,
With old faith, with bold, faith to find a wider dawn.

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05 Mar 09 - 12:32 PM (#2581856)
Subject: RE: ADD: Poems and Songs of Charles Badger Clark
From: Jim Dixon

While looking for poems by Badger Clark, I ran across this essay about American foreign policy:

Cowards and Fools—Fall In! by Badger Clark, in The Survey, June 24, 1916.

Patriotism of the 1916 model, as I gather from current utterances editorial and oratorical, is an earnest desire to wallop some foreign nation, especially if it interferes with our business. ... National honor? Well, I have yet to make out just what that is, but it seems to be the thing that fosters in us that most pitiful form of cowardice—the fear that somebody will think we are afraid.

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05 Mar 09 - 12:43 PM (#2581862)
Subject: RE: ADD: Poems and Songs of Charles Badger Clark
From: Jim Dixon

From Literature of South Dakota by Oscar William Coursey (Mitchell, SD: The Educator Supply Company, 1916), Page 55:

A dainty little lullaby of Clark's is his "longing" to return to Dakota, which appeared in an old issue of the Deadwood Pioneer-Times. It follows:

Though a restless man may wander from Johannesburg to Nome,
There is always some one country that he dreams about as "home."
Here and there I camp and sojourn in my roamings back and forth
But my dreams are always drifting to the Black Hills of the north.

Now, while western skies are glowing like an open furnace mouth
And the soft, gray shadows gather on these deserts of the south
And the coyote's first weird night-cry down the dim arroyo shrills,
Like a sinner's dream of Heaven come my visions of the Hills.

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05 Mar 09 - 01:33 PM (#2581902)
Subject: Lyr Add: BACON (Charles Badger Clark
From: Q (Frank Staplin)

It's impossible to go on any camping trip, do extended outdoor and field work or exploration without a slab of bacon. Badger Clark said it well in his poem, "Bacon."

Lyr. Add: BACON
1
You're salty and greasy and smoky as sin
But of all grub we love you the best.
You stuck to us closer than the nighest of kin
And helped us win out in the West,
You froze with us up on the Laramie Trail;
You sweat with us down at Tucson;
When Injun was painted and white man was pale
You nerved us to grip our last chance by the tail
And load up our Colts and hang on.
2
You've sizzled by mountain and mesa and plain
Over campfires of sagebrush and oak;
The breezes that blow from the Platte to the main
Have carried your savory smoke.
You're friendly to miner or puncher or priest;
You're as good in December as May;
You always came in when the fresh meat had ceased
And the rough course of empire to westward was greased
By the bacon we fried on the way.
3
We've said that you weren't fit for white men to eat
And your virtues we often forget.
We've called you by names that I darsn't repeat,
But we love you and swear by you yet.
Here's to you, old bacon, fat, lean streak and rin',
All the westerners join in the toast,
From mesquite and yucca to sagebrush and pine,
From Canada down to the Mexican Line,
From Omaha out to the coast!

"Sun and Saddle Leather," that book first published 1915.

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05 Mar 09 - 03:48 PM (#2582030)
Subject: Lyr Add: TO THE EXPERIMENTERS (Badger Clark)
From: Jim Dixon

This one obviously wasn't intended to be sung, but may be interesting nevertheless.

From The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, New York: The Century Co., Vol. LXXXVI, No. 1, May, 1913, page 43:


TO THE EXPERIMENTERS
By Charles Badger Clark, Jr.

Help me live long, O keen, cool servants of science!
Give me a hundred years, for life is good and I love it,
And wonders are easy for you.
Yet, by a rule that is older than Æsculapius,
I still must reckon my time to that luckless day
When a 'whelming foe will cross a frontier unguarded
Into this myriad nation of cells that bears my name,
Storming fort after fort till the swarming defenders have perished
And the strangled empire shall fall.
My friends, simple folk, will weep and say, "He is dead!"
But you will smile at their terrible, black-winged angel,
And jot his name and description down in your note-book—
The bitter song of the ages in a line of chemic formula!
Aye, and perchance you can take the components of living,—
Provinces, ravaged and waste, of that ruinous empire,—
And cunningly right them again.
Then call in the mourners.
"Say you your friend is dead?
See through that glass how his heart is pulsating steadily.
Look there, and there, at the beautiful play of the organs—
All the reactions of life restored by our science!
Where is your death?"
But I—is there not an I?—catch you that in a test-tube!

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05 Mar 09 - 04:18 PM (#2582060)
Subject: RE: ADD: Poems and Songs of Charles Badger Clark
From: Artful Codger

Well, unless you're vegetarian; we manage. ;-}

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05 Mar 09 - 04:41 PM (#2582083)
Subject: Lyr Add: MY FATHER AND I (Badger Clark)
From: Jim Dixon

Another poem, not meant for singing, that didn't make it into his books.

From The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, New York: The Century Co., Vol. XCI, No. 5, March, 1916, page 682:


MY FATHER AND I
By Badger Clark

My father prayed as he drew a bead on the graycoats,
Back in those blazing years when the house was divided.
Bless his old heart! There never was truer or kinder;
Yet he prayed, while hoping the ball from his clumsy old musket
Might thud to the body of some hot-eyed young Southerner
And tumble him limp in the mud of the Vicksburg trenches.
That was my father, serving the Lord and his country,
Praying and shooting whole-heartedly,
Never a doubt.
And now what about
Me in my own day of battle?
Could I put my prayers behind a slim Springfield bullet?
Hardly, except to mutter: "Jesus, we part here.
My country calls for my body, and takes my soul also.
Do you see those humans herded and driven against me?
Turn away, Jesus, for I've got to kill them.
Why? Oh, well, it's the way of my fathers,
And such evils bring some vast, vague good to my country.
I don't know why, but to-day my business is killing,
And my gods must be luck and the devil till this thing is over.
Leave me now, Lord. Your eye makes me slack in my duty."
My father could mix his prayers and his shooting,
And he was a rare, true man in his generation.
Now, I 'm fairly decent in mine, I reckon;
Yet if I should pray like him, I'd spoil it by laughing.
What is the matter?

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05 Mar 09 - 07:10 PM (#2582184)
Subject: RE: ADD: Poems and Songs of Charles Badger Clark
From: maeve

I sing and am recording "A Cowboy's Prayer" set to my own tune. When I sang it for Gordon Bok and the South Portland crowd it seemed to work well. (Gordon Bok and the Downeast Delights?)

Katlaughing posted the lyrics at some point. I followed the slightly different original version from one of the 2 official C.B.Clark websites. I'll try to post it, but my wrist is hurting too much right now.

maeve

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06 Mar 09 - 12:04 PM (#2582667)
Subject: Index: Cowboy Poetry: Poems & Prose by C. B. Clark
From: Jim Dixon

Cowboy Poetry: Classic Poems & Prose by Badger Clark, edited by Greg Scott (Phoenix, AZ: Cowboy Miner Productions, 2005)

This book, because of its recent copyright date, is not viewable in its entirety at Google Books, but many pages are.

Contents

Acknowledgements 7
Preface 9
Badger Clark, the Cowboy Poet 11

Poetry 19

A Bad Half Hour 23
A Border Affair 28
A Cowboy's Prayer 25
A Loveletter 67
A Ranger 39
A Roundup Lullaby 35
Arizony's Probation 93
Awhile 97
Campsmoke 91
Cowboy and Coyote 72
Exiled Black Hiller 69
From Town 30
Girl Wanted—Mistletoe 71
Good-Bye Old Forty-Five 81
In the Smoker 95
Mountain Music 98
Ode to the Busted Comb 89
Pals 103
Plains Born 55
Poem to Harry Kendall 107
Ridin' 21
Saturday Night 57
Semi-Arid 106
The Border 45
The Bunk-House Orchestra 37
The Canyon Trail 99
The Christmas Trail 48
The Glory Trail 42
The Legend of Boastful Bill 32
The Long Way 61
The Losers 86
The Old Cow Man 52
The Old Trailer 73
The Open 96
The Piano at Red's 26
The Requiem of the Big Heart 77
The Roundup 65
The Rover's Toast 79
The Song of the Leather 50
The Stake 75
The Wind Is Blowin' 60
The Yellow Stuff 58
To Julia Elizabeth 101
To the Lady of South Pass on Her Birthday Feb. 17, 1908 83
Trail Song 96
Notes on Poems 108

Photo Album 111
Short Stories 117

A Deal in Mules 205
A Great Institution 141
A Wind to Heaven 219
All for Nothing 149
Don't Spoil His Aim! 233
Great-Grandma Girl 367
Hearts and Clubs 195
In the Natural 167
Lovely Day! 285
Matters of Religion 309
Scat! 321
The Gift of the Lamp 129
The Gloria Kids 175
The Guiding Star 381
The Gumbo Lily 335
The Home-Wreckers 351
The Kind Man 119
The Little Widow 157
The Price of Liberty 271
The Sacred Salt 185
The Wise Man 295
The Young Hero 259
Tuck's Quiet Wedding 247
That Was the Life! 395
Notes on the Short Stories 402

Essays 405

Hermitry 413
Mexico, Cowards and Fools—Fall In! 407
My Father and I 406
Prose and Worse 423
Notes on Essays 427
About the Editor 429

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06 Mar 09 - 01:45 PM (#2582755)
Subject: Lyr Add: AWHILE (Badger Clark)
From: Jim Dixon

The Teepee Book [periodical] Sheridan, WY: Herbert Coffeen, 1915-1916.

Cowboy Poetry: Classic Poems & Prose by Badger Clark, edited by Greg Scott (Phoenix, AZ: Cowboy Miner Productions, 2005)


AWHILE
Badger Clark

Never think I hate my kind.
But the noises of the road—
I would often leave behind
Awhile, awhile—
I would lose them for a mile.

Give me desert stars that brood
Where the utter silence rings
Like a harp with murmurous strings
Touched by winds of solitude.
Awhile, awhile—
Leave me lonely for a mile.

All unguided let me walk.
I am not afraid to trust
To the wolf-track in the dust
Or the shadow of a hawk
Awhile, awhile—
Let me wander for a mile.

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06 Mar 09 - 02:00 PM (#2582767)
Subject: Lyr Add: A LOVELETTER (Badger Clark)
From: Jim Dixon

A LOVELETTER
Badger Clark

The sun rose clear and glorious today
And desert, hill and flinty mountain slope
Sailed underneath a smiling, cloudless sky—
A perfect summer morning. But at noon
A cloud rolled up above the eastern hills
And, swiftly blotting out the sunny heaven,
It burst above the valley with a roar
Of rushing wind and rumbling thunderpeal.
Then all the land was dim and gray with rain
Save where the lightning cast its pallid flare
Across the gloom, and every dry ravine
Was drowned beneath a sudden turbid flood
That drove the cattle from their sheltered nooks
And forced them back upon the stormswept hills.
Thus for two hours, then nature changed her mood,
Just like the fickle lady that she is.
The storm grew less and then reluctantly
Subsided into distant mutterings,
And then, with day, it died an angry death
In a vast glare of crimson to the west.
Now night is come and Hesper once again
Gleams from a rift between the ling'ring clouds.
Again the crickets start their serenade
And chirp among the wet, stormbeaten grass,
While I sit here—rough, booted, bare of arm,
As I may sit for many nights to come,
And note another day of exile past
And vainly wish it were five hundred days.

You ask me why I write in measured words
When easy prose would serve me just as well?
I don't know why, unless it is because
I spent the day with Tennyson
In fighting o'er the jousts of Arthur's court
And rescuing fair ladies from distress
With those bold knights that formed the Table Round.
Since the rhythm lingers in my brain
And music times the beating of my heart.

Today, while looking upon the storm,
The streaming land, the writhing, lashing trees
All blurred and dim with the obscuring rain,
It seemed I saw a type of my dim life
And looked upon that stormy tact of years
That lies between me and sunny calm
Which Hope points out for you and me at last.

Ah Memory! and now a thousand miles
Stretch out their dreary length between us two,
Yet love is in my heart, a deathless flame
Caught from a fire you kindled long ago.
It may be but a fancy, yet it seems
That far ahead I see another fire
Burning upon a hearth that's all our own
And there, before that flame, with Love, our guest
We'll sit through all the evenings of our lives,
When these few evil days have passed away!

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06 Mar 09 - 08:24 PM (#2582977)
Subject: Lyr Add: ARIZONY'S PROBATION (Badger Clark)
From: Jim Dixon

ARIZONY'S PROBATION
Badger Clark

Though the Utah man wears a dozen yokes,
And Nevada stacks her chips;
They belong to the forty six grow up folks
And nobody minds their slips;
But young Arizony must do right
And her people must be good.
So she'll walk in robes of shining white,
And she jines the sisterhood.
So its long farewell to Old Nick's spell,
To the guns and the doubled fist,
And the men can't score on the wheel no more,
And the ladies can't play whist
Quit your shooting scraps and you can't shoot craps,
Nor indulge any wreckless traits
For a wisdom tooth ends our careless youth
And we're going to jine the States.

At the roundup camp when the stars peep out
And the coyote tunes his harp;
You will find nice cowboys grouped about
Playing marbles on a tarp.
And with lemonade their souls they steep
Till the campfire light grows dim
While the cook reads "Pilgrim's Progress" deep
And the range boss hums a hymn.
Oh, it's adieu to our language grim
And the ways of Grizzly Pete;
All our wild oats crop must be sody pop
And the cueb cigareet.
It is sure a crime, in our sun kissed clime
For the boys to get on skates;
And the long horn kin must shed their sin
Yes we're going to jine the States.

In the gloomy mines and the roaring mills
Where the air was once so blue,
They have changed their ways and assumed the frills
Of the W.C.T.U.
And the fireman sweats but he plans to flee
From the blistery fires to come
And the miner just says, "Oh, dear me,"
If the hard steel whacks his thumb
Oh, it's fond goodbye to our old friend,
Hi, Lo, Jack, and the family tree,
And the miner packs just a bunch of tracts
Where his Climax used to be.
Once Bill and Sam didn't care a...dam
But our wise men legislates
That we've got to be from our sins set free
If we're going to jine the States.

When our Arizony sashays forth
Dust white as her yucca bloom
And the fat old States to the East and North
Will remark as they make her room,
"It is plain to see by your sweet face dear
That you're strange to the ways of sin,
Plumb stainless is a rare thing here,
And we need you bad. Come in."
So it's long farewell to merry...hell
Blue smoke and the red, red paint,
And the first "troubled" that hints we're had
Will be licked till he swears we ain't.
Now the water cart and an icy heart
For the Old Boys tempting baits;
We'll be calm and cold and let on we're old
Now we're going to jine the States.

---

06 Mar 09 - 09:05 PM (#2583003)
Subject: Lyr Add: COWBOY AND COYOTE (Badger Clark)
From: Jim Dixon

From The Pacific Monthly, Portland, OR: The Pacific Monthly Publishing Company, Volume XVII, April, 1907, page 445:


COWBOY AND COYOTE
By Charles B. Clark, Jr.

Ridin' home when light is failin'
And the draws are dim and still,
I can hear the coyote wailin'
In the shadows by the hill—
"Ah-ee-e-e! Ah-ee-e-e!"
With a lonely sort o' feelin'
Through the dusk it comes a-stealin'
Down to me.

You're my pet abomination,
You old skulker of the dark,
But we're pards in isolation
And our tastes are sim'lar—hark!
"Ah-ee-e-e! Ah-ee-e-e!"
Though your cry is weird and skeery
Yet there's somethin' in it cheery,
Wild and free.

We dont care what stocks are mopin'
Or how much the trusts have sinned.
While we're free to range the open,
See the stars and feel the wind—
"Ah-ee-e-e! Ah-ee-e-e!"
We aint plagued with arts and graces
In these big, forsaken spaces,
You and me.

---

06 Mar 09 - 09:44 PM (#2583020)
Subject: Lyr Add: THE OLD TRAILER (Badger Clark)
From: Jim Dixon

From The Pacific Monthly, Portland, OR: The Pacific Monthly Publishing Company, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, July, 1907, page 13:


THE OLD TRAILER
By Charles B. Clark, Jr.

Far across the sunny ranges,
Up the foothills, through the pass,
Winds the trail we used to travel,
Rainwashed, now, and dim with grass.
It is hard to trace, old pardner;
Only we know where it lies—
We that learned its lonely reaches
With the sunset in our eyes.

You can trace it down the ridges
And along the cañon rim,
But a steel bridge leaps the river
Where our horses used to swim.
Our old ford is full of quicksand,
And the old, blazed trees are down;
Gone to feed the hungry engines
In some smoky minin' town.

Do you mind that stretch of prairie
Where we fought the reds away?
Hi! old pard, do you remember
How the bullets hummed that day?
Now it's farms and green alfalfa
'Stead of open, grassy plain.
And our wild, old trail is sobered
To a sleepy, country lane.

Further on you'd hardly know it,
All the old landmarks are changed;
There are gardens, now, and orchards
Where our saddle horses ranged;
And the trail is cut to pieces,
Crossed with road and fence and lawn,
Till at last you come to asphalt,
And the dim, old track is gone.

Gone—the years fly on, old pardner,
And the last, faint wheeltracks fade;
We are scattered like the ashes
Of the campfires that we made.
Our old trail is nigh forgotten;
Fields are green and cities rise
Where we camped and fought and journeyed
With the sunset in our eyes.

---

06 Mar 09 - 10:03 PM (#2583034)
Subject: Lyr Add: THE REQUIEM OF THE BIG HEART (C B Clark)
From: Jim Dixon

From The Pacific Monthly Portland, OR: The Pacific Monthly Company, Vol. XXI, No. 5, May, 1909, page 506:


THE REQUIEM OF THE BIG HEART
By Charles Badger Clark, Jr.

Up the sun-beat hill we will carry him;
'Neath a grim, spiked yucca we'll bury him
And his grave will be hard to find;
But his pet hawse whickers the whole day long,
And the boys speak soft and the work goes wrong,
And the night don't bring neither laugh nor song,
For his heart it was big and kind.

There's never a woman to cry for him;
Just the dry range wind it will sigh for him,
And us few that he's left behind.
There's never a parson to talk and pray,
Nor a hint of a grief in the glarin' day,
But we frown while we shovel the sand away,
For his heart it was big and kind.

All his tale will go to the sand with him—
'Cept the part that showed like a brand with him—
For his mouth never bragged nor whined;
But we read on the face that is still and pale,
How his game was to lose and his luck to fail,
And his life was a night on a rain-swep' trail,
Yet his heart it was big and kind.

There is some that would see only wrong in him,
'Cause that thirst of hell was so strong in him,
And his good they would never mind;
But we all take falls from the trail we plan
And, though mebbe he slipped in the race he ran,
When he fell like a beast he'd get up like a man,
And his heart it was big and kind.

It's the last of the good, bright sun for him,
And the last, dim chance it is done for him,
And the rest of his trail is blind;
So the poor, blurred life, that we kaint see through,
With its weak and strong and its false and true,
Our God of the Open, we'll leave to You,
For Your heart it is big and kind.

---

06 Mar 09 - 10:18 PM (#2583038)
Subject: Lyr Add: THE ROUNDUP (Badger Clark)
From: Jim Dixon

From The Pacific Monthly, Portland, OR: The Pacific Monthly Publishing Co.,
Vol. XVI, No. 4, October, 1906, page 500:


THE ROUNDUP
By Chas. B. Clark, Jr.

Come, strap on your chaps and your big spurs too,
And wrangle your horses as soon as you're through;
Better catch up a dozen for one won't do,
For we're startin' today for the roundup.

Wah! the roundup!
There'll be Shorty and Frenchy and Bacon Rind Joe,
And a rough-ridin' outfit from Seven XO,
There'll be steaks that is juicy and beans that is rich,
There'll be steers that is ugly and horses that pitch,
There'll be yellin' and hootin' and maybe some shootin',
And plenty of fun at the roundup.

We must crawl from our tarps at the breakin' of morn,
And we spend the whole day between cantle and horn.
Over hills and up gulches with never a rest,
Till the day flickers out on the hills to the West,
There is lopin' and ropin' and no time for mopin';
It's work for good men on the roundup.

There is noise in the mountains and dust on the plains,
And the cattle string out of the dry, sandy drains,
While the far-scattered punchers are urgin' them in,
With words that smell strong of original sin,
With a racin' and chasin' and often 'bout facin',
And that is the edge of the roundup.

A cavortin' and snortin' of horses gone wrong,
With a hailstorm of cuss words, a sprinkle of song,
And a bawlin' of calves that don't want to but must,
And a smell of burnt hair and a swirlin' of dust,
And a rattle of battle 'mongst long-horned cattle,
And that is the heart of the roundup.

Wow! the roundup!
And when it is over the whole blamed force
Draws liquified joy from its nearest source,
Then there's happiness, fights, and, at last, remorse;
That's mostly the end of a roundup.

---

07 Mar 09 - 03:06 AM (#2583105)
Subject: RE: ADD: Poems and Songs of Charles Badger Clark
From: Artful Codger

A number of Clark poems have entered the song tradition, including:

A Bad Half-Hour - sung (ironically) to "Annie Laurie"
A Border Affair = Spanish Is the Loving Tongue
The Bunkhouse Orchestra - sung to "Turkey in the Straw"
The Glory Trail = High-Chin Bob
Roundup Lullaby = Desert Blue and Silver, or Desert Silver[y] Blue, or Cowboy Lullaby

All these have been posted already in other Mudcat threads.

Don Edwards also set "The Old Cow Man" and "Ridin'" to music and recorded them on Saddle Songs.

Thanks, Jim, for posting poems not included in his early books.

---

07 Mar 09 - 04:10 AM (#2583120)
Subject: Lyr Add: RIDIN' / IN ARIZONY (Charles Badger Clark
From: Artful Codger

Since I mentioned Don Edwards singing this one, here it is:


Ridin'
   Charles Badger Clark, 1906

There is some that like the city—
   Grass that's curried smooth and green,
Theaytres and stranglin' collars,
   Wagons run by gasoline—
But for me it's hawse and saddle
   Every day without a change,
And a desert sun a-blazin'
   On a hundred miles of range.

   Just a-ridin', a-ridin' —
      Desert ripplin' in the sun,
   Mountains blue among the skyline—
      I don't envy anyone
         When I'm ridin'.

When my feet is in the stirrups
   And my hawse is on the bust,
With his hoofs a-flashin' lightnin'
   From a cloud of golden dust,
And the bawlin' of the cattle
   Is a-comin' down the wind
Then a finer life than ridin'
   Would be mighty hard to find.

   Just a-ridin', a-ridin'—
      Splittin' long cracks through the air,
   Stirrin' up a baby cyclone,
      Rippin' up the prickly pear
         As I'm ridin'.

I don't need no art exhibits
   When the sunset does her best,
Paintin' everlastin' glory
   On the mountains to the west
And your opery looks foolish
   When the night-bird starts his tune
And the desert's silver mounted
   By the touches of the moon.

   Just a-ridin', a-ridin',
      Who kin envy kings and czars
   When the coyotes down the valley
      Are a-singin' to the stars,
         If he's ridin'?

When my earthly trail is ended
   And my final bacon curled
And the last great roundup's finished
   At the Home Ranch of the world
I don't want no harps nor haloes
   Robes nor other dressed up things—
Let me ride the starry ranges
   On a pinto hawse with wings!

   Just a-ridin', a-ridin'—
      Nothin' I'd like half so well
   As a-roundin' up the sinners
      That have wandered out of Hell,
         And a-ridin'.

From Clark's Sun and Saddle Leather (1915, text from 1922 ed.)
Originally published as "In Arizony", 1906 (Pacific Monthly, August)

---

23 Jul 10 - 12:29 AM (#2950388)
Subject: RE: ADD: Poems and Songs of Charles Badger Clark
From: Artful Codger

One should not presume Clark wrote "The Ballad of Billy Leamont" on the basis of its appearing in this thread. Lomax was exercising artistic license when he used that fragment as an introduction to Clark's poem "From Town" (in Lomax, "Ridin' Up the Rocky Trail from Town"). The poem was originally titled "The Trail from Town" (or so it was named in The Pacific Monthly, Sept. 1907).

The short, untitled poem which Jim Dixon posted above, starting "Though a restless man may wander," appears to be a variant of "Exiled Black Hiller"; this poem may be found in Scott's compilation Cowboy Poetry: [etc.], which has been cited and linked in previous posts. Scott commented:

Badger was already a published poet when his hometown newspaper [the Deadwood Pioneer Times] printed this poem. Twenty years after his death it was republished with a few changes, as the "Exile" in Boots and Bylines.

---

24 Jul 14 - 01:29 PM (#3644914)
Subject: RE: ADD: Poems and Songs of Charles Badger Clark
From: Chef Juke

All,

So, a few years ago I created a webpage with some recorded versions of the song versions of "A Roundup Lullaby".

Here is the original page:
http://chefjuke.com/badger/

I've since made a small video documenting my search for the song as well as my memories of growing up with it. The video is here:

http://chefjuke.com/badger/index3.html

The video was a present for my Mom on her recent 80th Birthday.

I wouldn't have found the origins of the song without the help of the folks on the Mudcat Cafe.

Would love any comments or feedback.

Sincerely,

Chef Juke
aka
Patrice Mackey
http://www.chefjuke.com

---

24 Jul 14 - 11:50 PM (#3645050)
Subject: RE: ADD: Poems and Songs of Charles Badger Clark
From: GUEST,Guestful Codger

At the top of this thread, Joe gave a link to the 1922 edition of Sun and Saddle Leather at Google Books, with a note that transcriptions from there should be carefully proofread, due to the many OCR errors. Project Gutenberg has the 1919 edition in EPUB and HTML forms (among others), where the OCR has been carefully proofed against the original scans and italics etc. have been restored.

---

25 Jul 14 - 01:31 PM (#3645244)
Subject: RE: ADD: Poems and Songs of Charles Badger Clark
From: Stewart

Chief, what a wonderful journey through a song that is my favorite also. I was a member of the Pomona College Men's Glee Club from 1955-1959 - I could have been a voice on that recording you played. The director at that time was Bill Russell (we called him "Bill" - a little more informal then). When I go back for alumni reunions the Glee Club alumni are asked to join in singing some of the old songs - that is always a thrill and brings back many fond memories. This song has always been part of my repertoire, particularly with my guitar around an evening campfire. Thanks for sharing your journey.

Cheers, S. in Seattle

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25 Jul 14 - 01:34 PM (#3645247)
Subject: RE: ADD: Poems and Songs of Charles Badger Clark
From: Stewart

I'm sorry, that should be "Chef"

S.

---

25 Jul 14 - 01:43 PM (#3645253)
Subject: RE: ADD: Poems and Songs of Charles Badger Clark
From: Q (Frank Staplin)

I have the 1942 Chapman and Grimes- corrected?

I looked at "Roundup Lullaby," and found one added apostrophe (needed), and in another line the 1919 ed. lacks an apos... where one is correctly placed in the print ed.

I like the combined edition.

---

22 Aug 14 - 12:34 PM (#3653032)
Subject: RE: ADD: Poems and Songs of Charles Badger Clark
From: Q (Frank Staplin)

The 1921 edition of "Songs of the Cowboys," N. Howard Thorp, includes "A Border Affair," the original Badger Clark poem, pp. 10-11.
Thorp prefaces the verses with a note that it was sung by Orville Cox, a Taos cowboy. The tune is not included; I wonder how close it was to the one used by others who recorded either the original song or the simplified "Spanish Is a Loving Tongue."

---

28 Apr 22 - 05:20 PM (#4140528)
Subject: RE: ADD: Poems and Songs of Charles Badger Clark
From: GUEST,keberoxu

Badger Clark recently had a feature article in Smithsonian magazine about his life and work. But they left out his first name of Charles, I don't know why.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/saddle-up-badger-clark-americas-cowboy-poet-180975770/

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