Madison Julius Cawein: Verses about Hunting

Through woods the Spanish moss makes gray,
With deeps the daylight never reaches,
The water sluices slow its way,
And chokes with weeds its beaches.

'T was here, lost in this lone bayou,
Where poison brims each blossom's throat,
Last night I followed a firefly glow,
And oared a leaky boat.

The way was dark; and overhead
The wailing limpkin moaned and cried;
The moss, like cerements of the dead,
Waved wildly on each side.

The way was black, albeit the trees
Let here and there the moonlight through,
The shadows, 'mid the cypress-knees,
Seemed ominous of hue.

And then behold! a boat that oozed
Slow slime and trailed rank water-weeds,
Loomed on me: in which, interfused,
Great glow-worms glowed like beads.

And in its rotting hulk, upright,
His eyeless eyes fixed far before,
A dead man sat, and stared at night,
Grasping a rotting oar.

Slowly it passed; and fearfully
The moccasin slid in its wake;
The owl shrunk shrieking in its tree;
And in its hole the snake.

But I, who met it face to face,
I could not shrink or turn aside:
Within that dark and demon place
There was no place to hide.

Slowly it passed; for me too slow!
The grim Death, in the moon's faint shine,
Whose story, haply, none may know
Save th' owl that haunts the pine.

It's up and out with the bat and owl!
We ride by night in fair and foul;
In foul and fair we take the pike,
And no man knows where our hand shall strike;
For, gun and pistol, and torch and mask,
These are our laws let any ask:
And should one ask, why, tell him then
That we are the New-Jeans Gentlemen.
It's up and out with owl and bat!
Where the road winds back by wood and flat.
Black clouds are hunting the flying moon
Let them hunt her down! and midnight soon
Shall blossom a wilder light, when down
We gallop and shoot and burn the town.
Who cares a curse who asks us then!
For we are the New-Jeans Gentlemen.
It's up and on! give the horse his head!
The rain is out and the world in bed.
Ride on to the village, and then ride back,
Where stands a house by the railroad track:
Riddle its windows and batter its door,
And call him out and shoot some more.
And if he question, why, damn him! then
Just shoot him down like gentlemen.
Why, he was a wretch beneath all scorn
Who planted the weed instead of corn.
And here is another who sold, by God!
Just bare his back and ply the rod!
Now burn his barn! and, sink or swim,
It's sport for us but Hell for him.
And well he'll know when we leave him then
That we are the New-Jeans Gentlemen.
Yes; we are kin to the bat and owl:
We wait till night, then prey and prowl.
The man who plants or sells this year
Our hounds shall smell him out, no fear.
The hunt is up! Who'll bid us halt?
We'll sow his beds with grass and salt,
Or shoot him down like a dog, and then
Ride off like New-Jeans Gentlemen.

THE woods stretch wild to the mountain side,
And the brush is deep where a man may hide,

They have brought the bloodhounds up again
To the roadside rock where they found the slain.

They have brought the bloodhounds up, and they
Have taken the trail to the mountain way.

Three times they circled the trail and crossed,
And thrice they found it and thrice they lost.

Now straight through the pines and the underbrush
They follow the scent through the forest's hush.

And their deep-mouthed bay is a pulse of fear
In the heart of the wood that the man must hear.

The man who crouches among the trees
From the stern-faced men that follow these.

A huddle of rocks that the ooze has mossed—
And the trail of the hunted again is lost.

An upturned pebble; a bit of ground
A heel has trampled—the trail is found.

And the woods re-echo the bloodhounds' bay
As again they take to the mountain way.

A rock; a ribbon of road; a ledge,
With a pine-tree clutching its crumbling edge.

A pine, that the lightning long since clave,
Whose huge roots hollow a ragged cave.

A shout; a curse; and a face aghast,
And the human quarry is laired at last.

The human quarry, with clay-clogged hair
And eyes of terror, who waits them there;

That glares and crouches and rising then
Hurls clods and curses at dogs and men.

Until the blow of a gun-butt lays
Him stunned and bleeding upon his face.

A rope, a prayer, and an oak-tree near.
And a score of hands to swing him clear.

A grim black thing for the setting sun
And the moon and the stars to look upon.