POETRY.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2036, 2 September 1880, Page 3

POETRY.

BILL GIBBON'S DELIVERANCE. Bt Arthur Matthisoit. Never heerd tell o' Bill Gibbon ! Why yer've kinder been out of existence. I don't believe some on you'd think, If it warn't for a little assistance. I ain't " over smart" not myself; Well, who said I was—what's it matter ; To know Bill was, I guess, kinder cute, So let's have no more o' that chatter. "What did he do ?" well—l'm danrd! If yer won't, pretty soon, raiße my dander ; For yer ought to know Bill just as well As the geese on a pond knows the gander. Wal, there, yer needn't get riled. Smooth your feathers back, steady, I'll tell, mates— Tell yer one of his feats of the woods, A braver deed never befell, mates— In Winconein'a big forests, one day, We was makin' a clearin' in Fall time ; And the thing as Bill Gibbon done then, I, for one, shall remember for all time. A broad-shouldered coon was old Bill, With a will, like his muscles, of iron ; He'd a' tackled a buffalo ball, And at ohoppin'—well, warn't he a spry 'un.

It was choppin' as brought it abont, boys, For Bill had begun on a whopper, A two-hundred foot mighty pine, As was doomed to sure death by his chopper.

We'd all on us stopp'd, work was done ; He'd finish, " dog - gorned if he wouldn't!" An' we quit him, all full of our chaff, An' laughin' and say in' he couldn't! He buried bis nxe in the tree ; We set eff for our cabin, ns others. "I'll kill him afore eight!" he cries, "Him and p'raps one or two of his brothers !"

On the floor of his hut "afore eight" He lay, as he told us all, gasping, How it happ'd—his voice broke, His rough big brown hand my own grasping.

Fast and strong fell his strokes on the tree, It sway'd, an' it creak'd, an' it quiver'd, It toppled, it fell!—then says he— As he anoke, why, we all on ns shiver'd—

" I struck the last blow with such force, That the tree, in a second, was timber, And I fell to the earth, just as stiff As the miuute before I'd been^limber.

" Swoop up-n me the giant tree craah'd ! Fiercely fell on my right leg and broke it! An' it seem'd to shriek out for revenge, Revenge ! just as if it had spoke it.

"'Help!' I cried, but a long hour had gone Since I'd seen you boys homewards all file off, And a bugle's voice wouldn't been heard In them thick woods and bushes a mile off.

" I couldn't lie there all night, So I made up my mind in a second— I know'd as the leg must come off, So, to do it myself! beat, I reckon'd.

"One stroke !—what was left of the leg Was freed from the tree and its branches V And what poor Bill Gibbon then said, Why, the thought of it now my cheek blanches.

My heart knocks aloud at my ribs, Though I ain't in the leastways white livered ! When I think what he did on that night, By his right hand how he was deliver'd.

He trie! with a plnck, all Irs own, To crawl, inch by inch, to his cabin : Though each move as he made on the road Was, we'd most on us think, just like stabbin*.

When he found as he couldn't get on, Becaucie his two legs wasn't equal, A bold thought comes into his head As you'll see, when I tell you the sequel.

A word and a blow 'twas with Bill, He'd act on a thought soon as catch it, Bis right leg was off, his axe gleamed, And he cut off his left leg to match it.

He sturdily stump'd to his hut, A glass of hot rum quick he mixes ; " Overcome !" there's not one of us speaks As his torn limbs we splices and fixes 1

"A stout, constitooshun !' Well, yss ! A hero, too, birth, bone, and breeding. What's that you say, you out there, How he did fur to stop all the bleeding?

Oh, didn't I mention it ? That's odd ! 'Bout them limbs as was torn into ribbons; Wal, yer S3e, didn't matter to him, They was wooden legs, mates, was Bill Gibbon's!