HIS PLACE
To the enduring memory of Clarence H. Shaw, who knew the desert as few men know it, and who lies at rest in one of its most beautiful corners.
This is his place—here where the mountains run,
Naked and scarred and seamed up to the face of the sun;
His place—reaches of wind-blown sand, brown and barren and old;
Where the creosote, scorched and glazed, clings with a stubborn hold;
And tall and solemn and strange the fluted cactus lifts
Its arms like a cross that pleads from the lonely, rock-hedged rifts;
His place—where the great, near stars lean low and burn and shine
Still and steady and clear, like lamps at the door of a shrine.
This is his land, his land—where the great skies bend
Over the wide, clean sweep of a world without measure or end:
His land—where across and between the pale, swift whirlwinds go
Like souls that may not rest, by their quest sent to and fro:
And down the washes of sand the vague mirages lay
Their spell of enchanted light, moving in ripple and spray
Of waters that gleam and glisten, with joy and color rife—
Streams where no mouth may drink, but fair as the River of Life.
This is his place—the mesquite, like a thin green mist of tears,
Knows the way of his wish, keeps the hope of his years;
Till, one appointed day, comes the with-holden spring;
Then, miracle wrought in gold, that swift, rare blossoming!
This is his place—where silence eternal fills
The still, white, sun-drowsed plain, and the slumbering, iron-rimmed hills;
Where To-day and Forever mingle, and Changeless and Change are one—
Here in his own land he waits till To-day and Forever are done.