The Lake Charles echo. [volume] (Lake Charles, Parish of Calcasieu, La.) 1876-1898, 1876-10-05
BaYARD TAYLOR'S TRAVESTY ON
JOAQUIN MILLER.

Bayard Taylor's new book, 1.-THE Echo Club,
contains the following ANY one whO has read Joa
ouin Miller win recognize the eleverness Of the line
LelOw;
THE FATE OF THE FRoNTIERsMAN.
| That whisky iugl For, dry or wet,
Ny tale viii need It's help, you bet
We made for the desert, she and I,
Though life was loathsome and love lie,
But an the same--I let her diet
Fer whyf There was barely water for one
In the small canteen, and prOTender nonel
A splendid snake with an emerald scale
Slid before us along the trail,
with a famished parrot pecling Its head
And, seizing a huge dark brown rock
In her dark brown hands, as you crush crock
with the dark brown rock she crushed 1t dead.
Rut ere her teeth in its flesh could meet,
laid her as dead Is the snake at my feet
And grabbed the snake for myself to eat.
The plain stretched wide, from side to side.
As bare and blistered and cracked and dried
AS moccasin sole of buffalo hide.
And my throat grew hot as walked the TRAIL
My blood in 9 sizzle, my muscles dry,
A crimson glare in my glorious eye,
And felt my Binews wither and fall,
Like one who has lavished for fifty nights,
HIS pile in he'll of gambling delights,
And Is kicked at dawn from bottle and bed,
And sent to hegulChSs without red,
There was no penguin to pick or pluck
No sTmadilo's throat to be stuck,
Not even a hilberTy's ball Of blue,
To slush my tongue with its indigo dow,
And the dry, brown palm trees ratified and roared,
Like the swish and swizzle of Walkers sword.
| was nigh rubbed out when far away,
A shanty, baked in the furnace of day,
And petered on, for an hour or mOre,
Till dropped, like mangy hound, at the door,
No soul to be seen; but basin stood
On the bench, with mess OF dubious food,
Stringy and doughty and lumpy and thick
As the clay ere fame has turned it to brick
gobbled 1t up with furious fire,
prairie squall Of hungry desire,
Aud strength came back; when, 10! a scream
Closed my stomach and burst my dream
She stood before me, as 1.-THE and tall
As a musqueet bush on the PinOs wall
Fierce as the Zuni panther's leap,
Fair as the slim Apache sheep.
A lariat draped her broad brown hips,
And she stood and glared with parted lips,
While piercing stitches and maddening shoots
Ran through my body from brain to boots,
] would have Clasped her but ere ! could,
She flung back her hairs tempestuOus hood,
And screamed in a voice like a tiger cats:
" You've gone and EFT up my pizen for rats"
Ny blood grew limp and my hair grew hard
AS the steely tail of the DESERT paid;
/ sank at her feet, convulsed and pale,
And kissed in my anguish her brown tOe-naiI.
You may II the cloud from the fresCOed sky,
Or tear the man fIOm his place In the mOOn
Fur from the buzzaTd and plumes from the coon,
But you can't tear me from the truth cry,
That life is lOathsOme and love a lie
She lifted meoup TO her bare brown face;
She cracked by bones in her brown embrace;
And there in the shanty, side by SIDE
Each on the others bosom died.
She's now the mistress of Buffalo Bill
And pure as the heart Of a lilly still;
While have killed all who cared for me,
And Pm just as lonely as can be;
So pass the whisky we'll have spree