Ernest McGaffey

  • I fear no power a woman wields
    While I can have the woods and fields,
    With comradeship alone of gun,
    Gray marsh-wastes and the burning sun.

    For aye the heart’s most poignant pain
    Will wear away ’neath hail and rain,
    And rush of winds through...

  • Beside that tent and under guard
    In majesty alone he stands,
    As some chained eagle, broken-winged,
    With eyes that gleam like smouldering brands,—
    A savage face, streaked o’er with paint,
    And coal-black hair in unkempt mane.
    Thin, cruel lips, set...

  • Under the shadows of a cliff
    Crowned with a growth of stately pine
    An angler moors his rocking skiff
    And o’er the ripple casts his line,
    And where the darkling current crawls
    Like thistle-down the gay lure falls.

    Then from the depths a silver...

  • The heavy mists have crept away,
      Heavily swims the sun,
    And dim in mystic cloudlands gray
      The stars fade one by one;
    Out of the dusk enveloping
      Come marsh and sky and tree,
    Where erst has rested night’s dark ring
      Over the Kankakee...

  • I pray you, what ’s asleep?
      The lily-pads, and riffles, and the reeds;
    No longer inward do the waters creep,
      No longer outwardly their force recedes,
    And widowed Night, in blackness wide and deep,
      Resumes her weeds.

    I pray you, what ’s...