APRIL 4.
For all the toll the desert takes of a man it gives compensations, deep breaths, deep sleep, and the communion of the stars. It comes upon one with new force that the Chaldeans were a desert-bred people. It is hard to escape the sense of mastery as the stars move in the wide, clear heavens to risings and settings unobscured. They look large and near and palpitant; as if they moved on some stately service not needful to declare. Wheeling to their stations in the sky, they make the poor world fret of no account. Of no account you who lie out there watching, nor the lean coyote that stands off in the scrub from you and howls and howls.
MARY AUSTIN,
in The Land of Little Rain.
APRIL 5.
DESERT CALLS.
There are breaks in the voice of the shouting street
Where the smoke drift comes sifting down,
And I list to the wind calls, far and sweet—