A jeweled crown for an old man’s brow,
That mystical, splendid, tropic sky
Arched low o’er the desert, reaching far
Its weary leagues wind-parched and dry:
So bare and lone and sad it lay,
The gray old land that seemed to yearn
With a human longing for some caress
From its granite barriers, grim and stern.
Shouldering up to the very stars
The strong peaks lifted their solemn might;
And through their rock-gapped pinnacles burned
The wondrous glory that charmed the night.
Like a giant’s scimeter wrought in gold
The late moon rose in the dawn-touched east,
And close beside white Venus shone,
As once she shone on shrine and priest.
Like a soul’s white flame the planet passed—
Alone the moon rode proud and high—
O wait of God! the lost star swung
A silver sphere in the hither sky;—
(Is it so, O Life, that thy light is lost
In the disk of Death if we could but know?)
And the old land blushed with sudden youth
In the tender fire of the morning-glow.
A FOREST LULLABY
Wind among the green leaves singing,
Bend the branches as you go;
Gently, gently, that their swinging
Hush the little heart below;
Still the busy little fingers,
Softly close the dark-fringed eyes,
For no gleam of daylight lingers
In the dusky, twilight skies.
Silver stars, come peeping, peeping,
Weaving with your shining beams,
Round my drowsy blossom sleeping,
Fairy spells of happy dreams:
Lullaby, O captive rover,
All your playmates are at rest;
Bees have left the scented clover,
Baby birds are in the nest.
Little rabbits warmly cuddle
In the grasses soft and deep;
And the wee white daisies huddle
In the shadow fast asleep:
Lullaby my bird, my blossom;
Sleep my light-winged butterfly,
Cradled safe on earth’s brown bosom
Till the morning you shall lie.
THE COLORADO RIVER
Long, silent leagues of ever-shifting sand,
White-hot and shimmering to the distant hills
Where wheeling slow the whirlwind dips and fills,
Or beckons like some shadowy, giant hand.
Gray wisps of greenwood and mesquite that stand
In withered patches like an old man’s beard,
Ragged and grizzled: nearer, dark and weird,
The river slips along the cringing land,
Swift to possess and loath to give again.
Foam-ribbed and sullen, staggering with the weight
Of forests spoiled, he takes his price in full,
Stern toll for every drop to land and men;
In witness there—Poor pawn of love or hate!—
Caught in a drift a grinning human skull.
THE END OF THE TRAIL
Sunset—and the end of the Trail;
Here the last faint footsteps fail
And I go on alone
Into the untracked ways;
I who in other days
Blazed many a road straight up
To the peaks that touch the sun—
But now is the climbing done.
No more to my feet the trail;
No more to my hand the rein;
No more—Ah! never again
The sun and the wind, and free!
The far stars over me!
As the Wilderness called I went;
Now deep and solemn and low
A Mightier calls—and I go.
Nor guide nor compass nor sign;
Face out, to the uttermost dark;
And the wind in the strong boughs—Hark!
Paean and dirge for a king!
Life, I have loved you well;
Forget the rest when you tell—
This soul did not falter, nor quail,
Nor shrink at the end of the Trail.
THE RANGE RIDER
Up and saddle at daybreak,
Into the hills with the light,
While still on piñon and cedar
Lingers the wings of night;
Clatter of hoofs in the cañon,
Scatter of horns on the trail;
Dim forms lost in the chaparral,
Fleeing like frightened quail.
Follow! the deer behind them
Pant in a beaten race;
Light in its flight is slower
Than a mountain steer in chase.
’Ware! That black bull charges;
Head down, red eyes aglow;
Crack! Crack! the pistol flashes—
God, but a noble foe!
His black bulk reels from the pathway,
The horses reek and sweat;
Unsaddle a space and breathe them,
The day’s before us yet:
Look back from our bed of bracken
Here on the world’s green roof,
You’d lie at less ease in the green below
But for pistol and sure-set hoof.
What! Is your nerve so shaken?
A man can die but once!
Who shirks the game for the chance-sent end
Is a coward soul, or a dunce.—
The turn of a loose-cinched saddle,
The plunge of a keen-curved horn—
Play down to-day—and to-morrow
Who cares that we were born!