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"New poems / by Madison Cawein [electronic text]." In the digital collection American Verse Project. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/BAH7936.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 3, 2024.
Pages
THE MOUNTAIN-STILL
I THE MOONSHINER
HE leans far out and watches: Down belowThe road seems but a ribbon through the trees:The bluff, from which he gazes, whence he seesSome ox-team or some horseman come and go,Is briered with brush. A man comes riding slowAround a bend of road. Against his kneesThe branches whip. He sits at careless ease.It is the sheriff, armed for any foe.A detonation tears the echoes fromEach pine-hung crag; upon the rider's browA smear of red springs out: he shades it now,His grey eyes on the bluff. The crags are dumb.Smoke wreathes one spot. The sheriff, with a cough,Marks well that place, and then rides slowly off.
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II THE SHERIFF
Night and the mountain road: a crag where burnsWhat seems a star, low down: three men that glideFrom tree and rock towards it: one a guideFor him who never from his purpose turns,Who stands for law among these mountain kerns.At last the torchlit cave, along whose sideThe still is seen, and men who have defiedThe law so long —law, who the threshold spurnsWith levelled weapons now.... Wolves in a denFight not more fiercely than these fought; wild fearIn every face, and rage and pale surprise.The smoke thins off, and in the cave four menLie dead or dying: one that mountaineer,And one the sheriff with the fearless eyes.
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