The Lonesome Land: Trail’s End
Note~ This poem has been modified from an original poem, “Lonesome Land”, by my uncle Albert Pendergraft (1894–1944). See the brief commentary on Albert’s life and the original composition following the poem.
Dedicated to Albert and his Lonesome Land with love and hope . . .
(Rewritten, revised, expanded and edited by Lloyd Albert Williams.)
You’re a Lonesome Land a virgin land
Beautifully exposed free and bare
You’re an untamed still wild Lonesome Land
But a proud land demanding yet fair
When I pause on some sun-blistered hill
And gaze far o’er your broad boundless range
Where the brisk restless winds never still
And swift sunlight and cloud shadows change
There’s a song in my heart and an ache
A longing indefinitely sad
With contentment that sorrow can’t take
And my troubles seem gone and I’m glad
In the night while the hours slowly pass
When the wolves wail their long lonely cry
And the wind whispers low in the grass
As the stars circle silently by
Your feminine spirit holds me fast
In a spell that cannot be undone
While the days of my lifetime shall last
You have blessed me and made me your son
Then softly to me drifts your sweet voice
When I’m so weary and far away
Faintly I hear you and I rejoice
For you are calling me home to stay
More often now I hear your calm call
While I so long but sated do roam
And my eyes fill with tears that might fall
Were it not that you’re calling me home
Your voice promises comfort and peace
When I rest on your nurturing breast
Then all my cares and sorrows shall cease
And my somnolent soul shall find rest
Give me strength till my battles are won
While along life’s lonely trails I plod
Then at last when my journey is done
Let me sleep for all time ‘neath your sod
Let my spirit roam free in your hills
And keep watch as the ages pass by
Till the clamor of humankind stills
When mere men and their follies shall die
Till the heavens and earth have grown old
And the endless dark night has drawn on
When the sun in your path has grown cold
And the days of creation are gone
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(The original 1944 poem has been privately retained for posterity)
About Albert and the original poem:
At the time he was a ditch rider for some of Wyoming’s Big Horn River basin counties. Albert committed suicide in 1944, leaving behind a poem he called “Lonesome Land”, presumably as a self-penned epitaph, although it was written in more of a lyrical ballad kind of song-writing, repeating the title “Lonesome Land” every other line in each verse. A ditch rider’s life is a lonely life, so the original poem, or ballad, may have been generated over time by singing it along the trails he rode, which, if so, made it a much simpler poem than this recent rewritten revision, although the meaning of the original poem and a few phrases of the more memorable lines have not been changed, but all of the stanzas have been altered for length, meter and the rhyming scheme, including four new stanzas that I have added. ~llaw
I thank you for this beyond words, Amy! I felt the same emotions you describe in rewriting this original poem (written as a song, repeating the words “Lonesome Land” every other line in each stanza), but I got his message and rewrote the poem the way I believed he would have wanted it.
Yes, he was a cowboy and a long time ditch rider for the Big Horn Basin counties in Wyoming. As you may have guessed, I was given his name as my middle name, which in some of my writings I have taken “Albert” as my first name. I never really knew him, but remember meeting him on the downtown street in Worland, Wyoming at three or four years old, where I remember he gave me and my older brother each a sliver dollar to spend as we pleased.
Not long after that my parents told me he had killed himself. But I never forgot him, and he has always been an inspirational part of my life, even though my family disliked his poem because they thought is was heathenish at the same time I believed it was incredibly spiritual, even though it didn’t include three or four of the stanzas that I later added alluding to the relationship with the feminine way of the land that you so thoughtfully pointed out in your comment. Only one other person I know of has actually understood this poem other than you, Amy. But then not many folks have read it either.
Beautiful and sweet, the song of an eternal cowboy, one who is oneness with the land. This is such a deep love that the feminine spirit of the land cannot help but love him back.