CACTUS AND ROSE
She wore red roses as a queen
Her jewels when she wills to shine;
She pressed one full bud to her lips,
The while she bent her eyes to mine:
“Were not life cheap for such a flower?”
Was it by chance her fingers strayed
So near my own? But ere the touch
The tempter in my blood was stayed.
A mist was on the laughing eyes,
It veiled her soft, enticing grace;
Beyond her lure of gold and blue
A tender, shadowy, haunting face
Grew like a star in twilit skies
When evening fades to rarer light;
Again I saw the cactus flowers,
Blood red, in braids as black as night.
Again we paced the earthen floor
In waiting measure, till the dance
Swept to its swift and dizzy whirl;
And there were eyes that looked askance
Because her brown hand lay in mine
Like some small, gentle, brown-winged bird;
And there were hearts had given life
For that one shy, low-spoken word
That made the night so more than dear;
That set my years to one strange tune
Of footfalls on the hard-beat earth,
And soft guitar and low-hung moon;
And wind that whispered through the roof’s
Rude thatch of branches interlaced;
And bare, dark, earthen walls whereon
The leaping firelight roughly traced
Her shadow, swaying as we danced.—
Then morning came, as calm and pale
As some dead face where tapers shine;
And through the tule reeds the quail
Called mournfully—as if they knew
No other night would ever be
So dear, so rare, so blessed of God,
From sunrise to eternity.
White-robed as any bride she lay;
Like weary stars the tapers shone;
And what I vowed in that dim place
Was vowed to her dead heart alone:
I went forth old, that had been young;
But still I keep till life’s last hour
The quail call through the tule reeds,
And one dead, crumbling, cactus flower.