Cactus and pine: Songs of the Southwest

by Sharlot Mabridth Hall

WINE OF DREAMS

With wine of dream-land fill the cup
And pledge the past, my soul, with me;
Drink deep, old friend, and summons up
The ghost of all the Used-To-Be.
Here’s to the joys we knew erstwhile;
Look how they troop, a motley crew!
Here’s to the laugh, the jest, the smile,
That cheered our way when life was new.
“Comrades, good cheer! Good luck be yours!
Long may you follow on our track;
Until we pass to farther shores—
Then to our place here turn you back
And laugh with those we leave behind;
Ring merry music in their ears;
Crack joke with joke in merry kind,
Till they shall give no place to tears.”
We crave no grief, my soul and I;
Each life enough of sorrow knows;
Let none mourn darkly when we lie
In silence under rue and rose.
And you, gray wraith in cowl and gown,
Who “Closer than a brother” pressed;
Here on this last couch lay you down—
Together neath Death’s touch we rest.
For you were fashioned of our tears;
You were the shadow which Life’s real,
With broken hopes and bitter fears,
Cast o’er our shining, high ideal.
Your power is done—hide in the dust
Of that wild heart which gave you birth—
But all our joys we leave in trust
To cheer some toiling child of earth.

MY GARDEN

My heart is a little garden
Set in a desert waste;
The walls are rough, the door is small,
And high the key is placed.
None guess my hidden riches,
My wealth of leaf and bloom;
The gold of chaliced lilies,
The roses rare perfume.
Here climbs the starry jasmine,
Hope’s ladder to the skies;
And here like thoughts too pure for words
The silken moonflowers rise.
Here falls the plashing fountain
With Fancy’s waters bright;
Here flit Ambition’s butterflies,
Winged jewels in the light.
And all sweet birds are singing
Their happy songs together;
So brings the year whatever cheer
My heart holds summer weather.

SUMMER APPLES

Apples of Hesperides,
Jugglers’ golden balls are these;
Look within them and you’ll see
Many a magic mystery:
Winter snows are prisoned here;
April showers, May sunshine clear;
All the witchery of June,
Rose’s red and robin’s tune;
Wrought by Nature’s alchemy
Into sweet reality.

HER FINGER FATE

“A friend, a foe, a true love, a beau, a journey to go.”

The old superstition of naming the spots on the fingernails still survives in country places, where some old lady may say gravely: “You have an enemy; look at the spots on your finger nails,” and young girls count them for friend or lover. “I knew he would be a wanderer,” said one woman of an absent son, “there was always a journey on both his hands.”

Softly she whispered it over,
Knee deep in the scented grass,
Where I and the first wild roses
Lingered to watch her pass.
She kissed her hand to the swallows
Skimming the pond below,
And turned with a face all archness
As she chanted ‘Friend or foe?’
“See, here is my life before me,
All that I keep or fail;”
And she counted the spots that glistened
On each rose-leaf finger nail;
Like baby pearls in the sunshine,
Or wind-rocked, cloudy flecks;
The little white dots that dappled
Her nails with snowy specks.
“A friend—but look, how many!
A foe—” Not one, I said;
“A true love”—Sweet, he is near you—
She blushed as the roses red.
He is waiting, dear, to claim you;
Your truest love and beau—
Ah! why did my eyes turn misty
As she murmured “A journey to go”?
The roses bloom in the meadow
As they bloomed that other day,
And I and the spring and the swallows
Wander the old sweet way;
We call but we cannot wake her,
So still in the vale below;
And my heart and the blossoms whisper,
“A journey, a journey to go.”