Cactus and pine: Songs of the Southwest

by Sharlot Mabridth Hall

To horse! as rode the knights of old for tourney and affray;
To horse! the world is wide, and ours, free heart and summer day:
Oh! Laughter now shall be our god and every care take wings,
And we’ll take our marching orders from the song the saddle sings.
The gipsey blood is coursing red along each leaping vein;
We are brothers to the bursting flower and kindred with the rain:
How the voice of nature calls us! How it beckons! How it rings,
In the echoes of the marching song the old saddle sings!
The fir trees standing sentinel upon the mountain’s crest
Have sent their message on the wind to fill us with unrest;
To mingle with our dreams the scent the healing balsam flings,
And blend the forest whispers with the song the saddle sings.
O jingling spur and rattling rein, brown earth and bending sky,
We turn to you to brim again the cup of life run dry;
Take toll of all the fancied gain that hard-spent striving brings,
But set our days in measure with the song the saddle sings.

AT MISSION PURISSIMA

The hands are dust that piled these rough brown walls,
Yet still the sunshine falls
Like a touch warm with love upon the gilded cross,
Whose yearly loss
By wind and rain has worn its gilt away,
As youth, which cannot stay
When life frets hard upon its shining stuff:
Yet ’tis enough
That once the cross was gold, the heart alive to joy.
The dark-faced altar boy
Still lights the candles at the Virgin’s feet;
And strange and sad and sweet
The air is dim with long-dead incense-smoke:
Wan Joseph draws his cloak,
Faded and torn, still ’round the Holy Child;
And woman-wise and mild
Pure Mary bends her soft eyes to the floor,
Where from the far-off door,
Through which the sky looks and the green-branched trees,
On bended, praying knees
Sad penitents have worn a weary trail
There to the altar rail.
Down that old road of pain a woman glides;
The dim place hides
Her eyes that plead and lips that wince and pray:
The saints that stay
Up on the painted walls in the sweet dusk
Of sandal-smoke and musk,
And scent of withering altar flowers, and holy myrrh,
Look down on her
With pity—for a saint must understand.
In one slim hand
She bears a small, rude-shapen earthen jar,
Whose roughness cannot mar
The rare, green grace of the mimosa tree
Whose lace-like tracery
Of leaf and stem she touches as she prays.
Suppliant she lays
Her fingers gently, and each little leaf,
Feeling her grief,
Folds to its green mate like two hands in prayer:
The branches share
Her heart’s hurt tremble, as if they would plead
For her at need.
Above the candles in her deep-niched place
Pure Mary’s face,
Compassionate and tender, bids her speak.
Entreating, passion-weak,
The slow words come: “O Queen of Heaven!
Who yet on earth was even
Woman as I—hear this my woman’s plea;
Grant this to me,—
Thou in whose white breast a woman’s heart hath beat.
O Pure! O Sweet!
Keep me, thy little one, still clean and pure.
Let me endure
All pain of life, so that thou make me strong.
Hold me from wrong;
And as these leaves that tremble over-much
Close at my touch,
Shut thou my heart against this evil love.
As the gray dove
Beside the water pool would flee the snare,
Keep me aware
How he who seeks seeks not my soul at all,
Which flies beyond his call;
But for his careless joy one idle hour
Would bind his power
Like Eve’s snake round me, laughing as he crushed.”
There in the hushed,
Sweet darkness, pierced by points of candle light
Like stars at night,
She left the green mimosa at the Virgin’s feet,
Continually to entreat
Her soul’s safety—then across the worn old floor
She walked, with face transfigured, to the door.

POPPIES OF WICKENBURG

Where Coronado’s men of old
Sought the Pecos’ fabled gold
Vainly many weary days,
Now the land is all ablaze.
Where the desert breezes stir,
Earth, the old sun-worshiper,
Lifts her shining chalices
Up to tempt the priestly bees.
Every golden cup is filled
With a nectar sun-distilled;
And the perfume, Nature’s prayer,
Sweetens all the desert air.
Poppies, poppies, who would stray
O’er the mountains far away,
Seeking still Quivira’s gold,
When your wealth is ours to hold?

BOOT HILL

In the old days of the Frontier, the cemetery in every town and mining camp was called “Boot Hill,” because many of its inmates died, literally, “With their boots on.” Today these graveyards, with their sunken, half-obliterated graves, are all that is left of many a once-thriving camp. Their nameless dead are the drift that mark forgotten channels where once the tide of human life flowed full and strong.

Go softly, you whose careless feet
Would crush the sage brush, pungent, sweet,
And brush the rabbit weed aside
From burrows where the ground squirrels hide,
And prairie dog his watch-tower keeps
Among the ragged gravel heaps.
Year long the wind blows up and down
Each lessening mound, and drifts the brown,
Dried wander-weed there at their feet—
Who no more wander, slow or fleet.
Sun-bleached, rain-warped, the head boards hold
One story, all too quickly told:
That here some wild heart takes its rest
From spent desire and fruitless quest.
Here in the greasewood’s scanty shade
How many a daring soul was laid!
Boots on, full-garbed as when he died;
The pistol belted at his side;
The worn sombrero on his breast—
To prove another man the best.
Arrow or knife, or quick-drawn gun—
The glad, mad, fearless game was done,
A life for stakes—play slow or fast—
Win—lose—yet Death was trumps at last.
Some went where bar-room tinsel flared,
Or painted dance-hall wantons stared;
Some, where the lone, brown ranges bared
Their parched length to a parching sky,
And God alone might hear the cry
From thirst-dried lips that, stiff and cold,
Seemed still to babble: “Gold, gold, gold!”
Woman, or wine, or greed, or Chance;—
A comrade’s shot; an Indian lance;
By camp or cañon, trail or street—
Here all games end; here all trails meet.
The ground squirrels chatter in the sun;
The dry, gray sage leaves, one by one,
Drift down, close-curled, in odorous heaps;
Above, wide-winged, a wild hawk sweeps;
And on the worn board at the head
Of one whose name was fear and dread,
A little, solemn ground owl sits.
Ah, here the Man and Life are quits!
Go softly, nor with careless feet—
Here all games end; here all trails meet.

THE DESERT QUEEN

Cereus Giganteus; the “Giant Cactus” of the Southwest.