Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.
By Amelia WalstienCarpenter756 The Ride to Cherokee
I
So do your best, my beauty, for a home for you and me;
For you the oats and leisure, for me the pipe and book,
With sometimes, just at sunset, the long gray eastward look.
For once there was another: ah, Kathrine! who shall say
What wilful fancy seized you that sunny summer day;
You turned and nodded, smiling as you went gayly by,
And the man who strolled beside you had a braver front than I;
It meant a day’s undoing, a night’s black watch for me,
And this mad ride, Grimalkin, to-day for Cherokee.
Each urging to the utmost, and God help him that ’s down,
Shoulder to shoulder rising like shapes in horror cast,
And my good mare aflashing a star along the blast;
So—so—my brave Grimalkin, it ’shome for you and me
If we ride the distance safely to the line in Cherokee:
We ’ll pass our lives together,—you ’ll have a stall with me,
And a blanket—if we win it—in the home in Cherokee.
Look well, little Grimalkin, or you ’re left, too, at the last;
He ’s singing as he ’s riding with his brave and gallant air,
With the fierce light falling hotly on his face and yellow hair.
A rush—a shout; he ’s falling; God help the man that ’s down
As the wild steeds thunder onward, on the hard earth baked and brown.
On, on; and look, Grimalkin! we’re safe, ’t is victory!
We ’ll stake the claim and hold the home, here in the Cherokee.
As he lay staring upward into the dust-filled skies:
Eyes one star-flash of memory told me I ’d met before,
Eyes that a woman’s loving would brighten nevermore.
And fancy flung me backward, from that madding rush and whirl,
To an old Long Island garden and a violet-laden girl;
Ah well, he stole my treasure, my sweetheart’s heart, from me,—
God rest him! I ’m the victor, to-day in Cherokee!