The Old Sheep Wagon

I have heard men long for a palace, but I want no such abode,
For wealth is a source of trouble, and a jeweled crown is a load;
I’11 take my home in the open, with a mixture of sun and rain—
Just give me my old sheep wagon, on the boundless Wyoming plain.
With the calling sheep around me, and my collie’s head on my knees,
I float my cigarette smoke on the sage-scented prairie breeze;
And at night, when the band is bedded, I creep, like a tired child,
To my tarp, in the friendly wagon, alone on the sheep range wild.
Music and art I am missing?—but what great symphony
Can equal the harps of nature that are twanged by the plains-wind free?
And where is the master of color to match, though for years he tried,
The purples that veil yon mesa, at the hour of eventide?
I have had my fill of mankind, and my dog is my only friend,
So I’m waiting, here in the sagebrush, for the judgment the Lord may send;
They’ll find me dead in my wagon, out here on the hilltops brown,
But I reckon I’11 die as easy as I would in a bed in town!