Jim Bludso
Thursday, September 12, 2002
Sections
Alt.Mail
Special Reports
For some reason I woke up the morning of September 12, 2002, remembering this poem we memorized in high school. It's not a great poem, but it's a good one, and tells an American story of ordinary heroism, one worth remembering.
| Jim Bludso of the Prairie Belle |
|
John Hay. 1838–1905 |
| WALL, no! I can't tell whar he lives, | |
| Because he don't live, you see; | |
| Leastways, he 's got out of the habit | |
| Of livin' like you and me. | |
| Whar have you been for the last three year | 5 |
| That you haven't heard folks tell | |
| How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks | |
| The night of the Prairie Belle? | |
| He weren't no saint,—them engineers | |
| Is all pretty much alike,— | 10 |
| One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill | |
| And another one here, in Pike; | |
| A keerless man in his talk was Jim, | |
| And an awkward hand in a row, | |
| But he never flunked, and he never lied,— | 15 |
| I reckon he never knowed how. | |
| And this was all the religion he had,— | |
| To treat his engine well; | |
| Never be passed on the river; | |
| To mind the pilot's bell; | 20 |
| And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire,— | |
| A thousand times he swore | |
| He 'd hold her nozzle agin the bank | |
| Till the last soul got ashore. | |
| All boats has their day on the Mississip, | 25 |
| And her day come at last,— | |
| The Movastar was a better boat, | |
| But the Belle she wouldn't be passed. | |
| And so she come tearin' along that night— | |
| The oldest craft on the line— | 30 |
| With a nigger squat on her safety-valve, | |
| And her furnace crammed, rosin and pine. | |
| The fire bust out as she clared the bar, | |
| And burnt a hole in the night, | |
| And quick as a flash she turned, and made | 35 |
| For that willer-bank on the right. | |
| There was runnin' and cussin', but Jim yelled out, | |
| Over all the infernal roar, | |
| "I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank | |
| Till the last galoot 's ashore." | 40 |
| Through the hot, black breath of the burnin' boat | |
| Jim Bludso's voice was heard, | |
| And they all had trust in his cussedness, | |
| And knowed he would keep his word. | |
| And, sure's you 're born, they all got off | 45 |
| Afore the smokestacks fell,— | |
| And Bludso's ghost went up alone | |
| In the smoke of the Prairie Belle. | |
| He weren't no saint,—but at jedgment | |
| I'd run my chance with Jim, | 50 |
| 'Longside of some pious gentlemen | |
| That wouldn't shook hands with him. | |
| He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing,— | |
| And went for it thar and then; | |
| And Christ ain't a going to be too hard | 55 |
| On a man that died for men. |