Ballad Of One Eyed Mike Lyrics

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