'The Cow-Girl' and 'Call of the Range'

My cowgirl's hat came in the mail today.  The Children's Express Theatre has started rehearsals for "SonWest Roundup"  about the Town of Dirt Clod.  There are cowgirls, cowboys, and a sheriff in our little town.  The children and I are learning how to talk and walk like cowgirls. The old western range is calling the children to perform this summer for Shores UMC VBS.  I am featuring Candian poet Rhoda Sivell beautiful poems "The Range Call" and "The Cow-Girl".

 The Range Call by Rhoda Sivell of Canada, 1912

I'm lonely to-night for the old range,
And the voices I loved to hear;
Though the band in the town is playing,
The music comes soft to my ear.
There's only the river between us,
The town in the flat shows bright,
But I'm lonely, lonely, lonely,
For my old range home to-night.

I'm lonely to-night for the old friends;
For new friends can never be
Just what those dear old range friends
Have been in the past to me.
But I hear their voices calling,
And the band has ceased to play,
And my heart has gone out from the gas-lit town
To the wild range far away.

If you ever the range call,
The voice that speaks soft and sweet;
That wins you back to the prairie,
Away from the gas-lit street;
If once you hear her calling,
You sure than have got to go,
For the old range is waiting for you,
And you've got to love her so.

 Rhoda Cosgrave Sivell was born in Ireland in 1874. She lived in Canada and published a collection of poems, Voices from the Range, first printed in 1911.  Rhoda Sivell's Voices from the Range was covered by Canadian copyright law until 2012.  Her poems are now public domain. 

The Cow-Girl by Rhoda Sivell, 1912

Out on the wild range, riding
To the music of drifting feet;
As we lope o’er the sunburned prairie, I and the cow-girl meet.

The sun in the West is setting.
And shoots out its golden beams;
One falls on the face of the rider,
The cow-girl of my dreams

She’s as lithe as the supple willows That grow by the bed of the streams;
Her hair like the golden sunbeam
That falls on the girl of my dreams.

Her eyes are as dark as the shadows
That creep down the canyon wide;
With a look like a half-broke broncho, Half fearful, yet trusting beside.

Her face like the roses in summer
That grow in the coulees deep;
Her lips like the scarlet sand-flower
That blossoms in cut-banks steep.

She’s as fair as a summer morning; As pure as the prairie air;
She’s as wild as the silver sage brush
That grows by the grey wolf’s lair.

The sky in the West has darkened
As home to the camp we ride,
As I lope o’er the shadowed prairie With the cow-girl by my side.

We laugh and we talk together, To the music of drifting feet.
As we lope o’er the sunburned prairie, Where I and the cow-girl meet.