The Ballad of One-Eyed Mike

This is the tale that was told to me by the man with the crystal eye
As I smoked my pipe in the camp-fire light, and the Glories swept the sky;
As the Northlights gleamed and curved and streamed, and the bottle of "hooch" was dry

A man once aimed that my life be shamed, and wrought me a deathly wrong;
I vowed one day I would well repay, but the heft of his hate was strong
He thonged me East and he thonged me West; he harried me back and forth
Till I fled in fright from his peerless spite to the bleak, bald-headed North

And there I lay, and for many a day I hatched plan after plan
For a golden haul of the wherewithal to crush and to kill my man;
And there I strove, and there I clove through the drift of icy streams;
And there I fought, and there I sought for the pay-streak of my dreams

So twenty years, with their hopes and fears and smiles and tears and such
Went by and left me long bereft of hope of the Midas touch;
About as fat as a chancel rat, and lo! despite my will
In the weary fight I had clean lost sight of the man I sought to kill

'Twas so far away, that evil day when I prayed to the Prince of Gloom
For the savage strength and the sullen length of life to work his doom
Nor sign nor word had I seen or heard, and it happed so long ago;
My youth was gone and my memory wan, and I willed it even so

It fell one night in the waning light by the Yukon's oily flow
I smoked and sat as I marvelled at the sky's port-winey glow;
Till it paled away to an absinthe gray, and the river seemed to shrink
All wobbly flakes and wriggling snakes and goblin eyes a-wink

'Twas weird to see and it 'wildered me in a queer, hypnotic dream
Till I saw a spot like an inky blot come floating down the stream;
It bobbed and swung; it sheered and hung; it romped round in a ring;
It seemed to play in a tricksome way; it sure was a merry thing

In freakish flights strange oily lights came fluttering round its head
Like butterflies of a monster size--then I knew it for the Dead
Its face was rubbed and slicked and scrubbed as smooth as a shaven pate;
In the silver snakes that the water makes it gleamed like a dinner-plate

It gurgled near, and clear and clear and large and large it grew;
It stood upright in a ring of light and it looked me through and through
It weltered round with a woozy sound, and ere I could retreat
With the witless roll of a sodden soul it wantoned to my feet

And here I swear by this Cross I wear, I heard that "floater" say:
"I am the man from whom you ran, the man you sought to slay
That you may note and gaze and gloat, and say 'Revenge is sweet'
In the grit and grime of the river's slime I am rotting at your feet

"The ill we rue we must e'en undo, though it rive us bone from bone;
So it came about that I sought you out, for I prayed I might atone
I did you wrong, and for long and long I sought where you might live;
And now you're found, though I'm dead and drowned, I beg you to forgive."

So sad it seemed, and its cheek-bones gleamed, and its fingers flicked the shore;
And it lapped and lay in a weary way, and its hands met to implore;
That I gently said: "Poor, restless dead, I would never work you woe;
Though the wrong you rue you can ne'er undo, I forgave you long ago."

Then, wonder-wise, I rubbed my eyes and I woke from a horrid dream
The moon rode high in the naked sky, and something bobbed in the stream
It held my sight in a patch of light, and then it sheered from the shore;
It dipped and sank by a hollow bank, and I never saw it more

This was the tale he told to me, that man so warped and gray
Ere he slept and dreamed, and the camp-fire gleamed in his eye in a wolfish way--
That crystal eye that raked the sky in the weird Auroral ray