The Old Camp-fire Poem Rhyme Scheme

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Now shift the blanket pad before your saddle back you fling	A
And draw your cinch up tighter till the sweat drops from the ring	A
We've a dozen miles to cover ere we reach the next divide	B
Our limbs are stiffer now than when we first set out to ride	B
And worse the horses know it and feel the leg grip tire	C
Since in the days when long ago we sought the old camp fire	C
	-
Yes twenty years Lord how we'd scent its incense down the trail	D
Through balm of bay and spice of spruce when eye and ear would fail	D
And worn and faint from useless quest we crept like this to rest	E
Or flushed with luck and youthful hope we rode like this abreast	E
Ay straighten up old friend and let the mustang think he's nigher	C
Through looser rein and stirrup strain the welcome old camp fire	C
	-
You know the shout that would ring out before us down the glade	F
And start the blue jays like a flight of arrows through the shade	F
And sift the thin pine needles down like slanting shining rain	G
And send the squirrels scampering back to their holes again	H
Until we saw blue veiled and dim or leaping like desire	C
That flame of twenty years ago which lit the old camp fire	C
	-
And then that rest on Nature's breast when talk had dropped and slow	I
The night wind went from tree to tree with challenge soft and low	I
We lay on lazy elbows propped or stood to stir the flame	J
Till up the soaring redwood's shaft our shadows danced and came	J
As if to draw us with the sparks high o'er its unseen spire	C
To the five stars that kept their ward above the old camp fire	C
	-
Those picket stars whose tranquil watch half soothed half shamed our sleep	K
What recked we then what beasts or men around might lurk or creep	K
We lay and heard with listless ears the far off panther's cry	C
The near coyote's snarling snap the grizzly's deep drawn sigh	C
The brown bear's blundering human tread the gray wolves' yelping choir	C
Beyond the magic circle drawn around the old camp fire	C
	-
And then that morn Was ever morn so filled with all things new	L
The light that fell through long brown aisles from out the kindling blue	L
The creak and yawn of stretching boughs the jay bird's early call	M
The rat tat tat of woodpecker that waked the woodland hall	M
The fainter stir of lower life in fern and brake and brier	C
Till flashing leaped the torch of Day from last night's old camp fire	C
	-
Well well we'll see it once again we should be near it now	N
It's scarce a mile to where the trail strikes off to skirt the slough	O
And then the dip to Indian Spring the wooded rise and strange	P
Yet here should stand the blasted pine that marked our farther range	P
And here what's this A ragged swab of ruts and stumps and mire	C
Sure this is not the sacred grove that hid the old camp fire	C
	-
Yet here's the blaze I cut myself and there's the stumbling ledge	Q
With quartz outcrop that lay atop now leveled to its edge	Q
And mounds of moss grown stumps beside the woodman's rotting chips	R
And gashes in the hillside that gape with dumb red lips	R
And yet above the shattered wreck and ruin curling higher	C
Ah yes still lifts the smoke that marked the welcome old camp fire	C
	-
Perhaps some friend of twenty years still lingers there to raise	S
To weary hearts and tired eyes that beacon of old days	S
Perhaps but stay 'tis gone and yet once more it lifts as though	I
To meet our tardy blundering steps and seems to move and lo	I
Whirls by us in a rush of sound the vanished funeral pyre	C
Of hopes and fears that twenty years burned in the old camp fire	C
	-
For see beyond the prospect spreads with chimney spire and roof	T
Two iron bands across the trail clank to our mustang's hoof	T
Above them leap two blackened threads from limb lopped tree to tree	C
To where the whitewashed station speeds its message to the sea	C
Rein in Rein in The quest is o'er The goal of our desire	C
Is but the train whose track has lain across the old camp fire	C

Bret Harte (francis)

The Old Camp-fire Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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