by John Silas Reed (1887 - 1920)
Coyote song
Language: English
A-oo, my brothers, the moon is red, And the antelope starts from his prairie bed -- Then join ye again in the ancient threne For the day that's dead, And the hunt that's fled And the terror of things unseen! Afar, afar on the starlit plain Our fathers howled where the deer had lain, And hung on the flanks of the bison run -- For the bull that fell In the wild pell-mell Had died ere the night was done! No more the warrior rides his raids, And the hunting-star of the prairie fades; While a fiery comet tears the night, [With a crimson stream]1 And a demon shriek, All ablaze with the white man's light! But oft when the winter winds are high, We hear on the prairie the bellowed cry And the rumbling hoofs of the bison run -- But we seek in vain Through the empty plain, For the buffalo days are done. . . . A-oo, my brothers, the stars are red, And the lean coyote must mourn unfed. Come join ye again in the ancient croon -- For the dawn is gray And another day Has faded the red, red moon...
View original text (without footnotes)
Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Garrett Medlock [Guest Editor]
Confirmed with John Reed, Tamburlaine and other Verses, Riverside (Connecticut), Hillacre, 1917, page 35.
1 Bauer: "With a crimson streak"Authorship:
- by John Silas Reed (1887 - 1920), "Coyote song", appears in Tamburlaine, and other verses [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Marion Eugénie Bauer (1882 - 1955), "Coyote song", published 1912, copyright © 1912 [ voice and piano ], Arthur P. Schmidt [sung text checked 2 times]
Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Garrett Medlock [Guest Editor]
This text was added to the website: 2015-04-14
Line count: 30
Word count: 192