Uncle Walt [Walt Mason], the Poet PhilosopherMason, Walt
General
Uncle Walt [Walt Mason], the Poet Philosopher
Mason, Walt
Poetry
He's won success where others failed; he's built a weird machine,
composed of cranks and doodads and propelled by gasoline, that circles
proudly overhead, as graceful in its flight, as any eagle that cavorts
along the airy height. When Wilbur and his brother bold began their
march to fame, the sages of the village sneered, and said: "What is
their game? Do these here loonies really think that they can make a trap
of iron and brass and canvas things, and junk and other scrap, with
which to leave the solid earth, and plow the atmosphere? By jings! It
isn't safe for them to be at large, that's clear." But Wilbur and his
brother bold, whose courage never fails, kept on a-patching up their
trap with wire and tin and nails, they built a new cafoozelum, improved
the rinktyram, and tinkered up the doodlewhang until it wouldn't jam;
and then one morning up they flew, and all the village seers just stood
around and pawed the ground and chewed each other's ears. Good luck be
with those Dayton boys--good luck in every flight! It is a pleasant rite
to write that Wright is strictly right!
_The Broncho_
You haven't much sense, but I love you well, O wild-eyed broncho of
mine! Your heart is hot with the heat of hell, and a cyclone's in your
spine; your folly grows with increasing age; you stand by the pasture
bars, and bare your teeth in a dotard rage, and kick at the smiling
stars. As homely you as the face of sin, with brands on your mottled
flanks, and saddle scars on your dusky skin, and burs on your tail and
shanks! and old--so old that the men are dead, who branded your neck and
side; and their sons have lived and gone to bed, and turned to the wall
and died. But it's you for the long, long weary trail, o'er the hills
and the desert sand, by the side of the bones of the steeds that fail
and perish on either hand. It's you for the steady and tireless lope,
through canyon or mountain pass; to be flogged at night with a length of
rope, and be fed on a bunch of grass.
[Illustration: "_And then I float away, away, to moonlit castles in
Cathay._"]
_Schubert's Serenade_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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