Above his grave the beggar children smile;
And I, who swayed the East in other days,
Am mistress now of many a Western mile:
Crowned with a coronal of snowy flowers,
And armed and guarded with a thousand spears,
I dream--while dim mirages recreate
In shimmering light the splendor of past years.
TO A HOME IN A CANON
Strength of the mighty hills, and peace of them;
Peace of white, silent peaks against the sky,
And silence of far deserts gray and wide;
Freedom of winds that blow in earth’s lone places,
And the brooding rest of night above the pines,
Are in these walls; eternal as the hills,
The desert, and the wind that goes between.
The hands will pass; the written word grow dim;
The name an echo’s echo faint and die;
But when its farthest whisper is forgot
These walls shall speak of human hope and love;
Shall say to unknown men in unguessed years:
“Here one made truce with Time a little hour;
Fought, worked; held hard-won victory--knew defeat;
Drained Life’s cup from the bubbles to the lees
And tossed it down and took him to the dust.”
THE DEATH OF THE OLD HUNTER
For a third of a century William Reavis, the “Old Hunter,” “The Hermit
of Superstition Mountains,” lived alone with his traps and rifle and
burros, and died at last as he had lived: “Alone with the wind and the
stars and the sky.” In his life and death he was a type of frontiersman
now passed and almost forgotten.
Out! Carry me out! I choke in these cabin walls!
Lay me down on the earth under the wide night sky:
Straight on the strong, clean earth--no idle blanket between;
Cheek to cheek with the dust I will watch my last lean hour go by.
Farther! Push back that bough till I face the stars:
North star--Dipper--Pointer that still holds true;
Many a night ye have led--through storm and wind-whipped cloud;
Lead still, old guides--I line my last long course by you.
Hark! The night wind sweeps through the crackling grass,
Nosing the thin, sere weeds that hide in the prairie swale;
Rattling the hunted reeds that shiver and shrink in the marsh,
With whimper and snarl and whine, like a hound that bays on the
trail.
Lift me up! My soul hunts with you tonight,
Old mate of a hundred trails; speed on the eager pack;
There was never a road ye knew too wild for my feet to take--
Tonight they will keep the way when even ye turn back.
Lift me up! To my feet! A hand-clasp each!
May your trail be long as mine--knife keen--and powder dry!
Eye true to the bead! Now go--quick--while I keep my feet!
I die as I lived--alone with the wind and the stars and the sky.
THE MASS OF MANGAS
Mission San Xavier del Bac, near Tucson, Arizona.
Years had the Mission stood alone,
Its silent chapels bat-tenanted;
On its altars the gray owl nested her young,
And the ground squirrels burrowed above the dead
By the western wall, nor stirred their sleep;
Bare lay the fields, sun-scorched and white;--
As black hawks scatter the timorous quail
Padre and soldier and neophyte
Scattered before the Apache hordes
That swept the valley with death and flame--
Now back at last like quail to their nests,
Timorous, fearing, they slowly came,
Priest and people; to wring anew
From the sullen desert a grudging chance
For scanty food and room to toil,
Or a quick-won end on a blood-stained lance.
With fragrant branches of gray mesquite,
And waxen yuccas fair and tall;
Lifting their bells like hands in prayer,
Slender and snowy and virginal;
And desert lilies as frail as hope,
They wreathed the altars, and lit once more
The long-dead altars, and set the rood
Over the arrow-bitten door.
The pale Christ leaned from the iron-wood cross
High in its niche deep-walled and gray;
And under his feet, in order set,
Censer and chalice in rough-wrought clay
Where once was silver shaped in Spain--
Now spoil of fight to the savage foe,
And bandied from careless hand to hand
Unblest uses and lips to know.
The tapers flickered and tenderly
The last words whispered and echoed up
To the painted saints in the dusk above,
As the padre lifted the earthen cup
And the blessed wine--but crash it fell,
Staining the floor with a crimson tide
Unseen of the startled worshipers--
For look! where the door unbarred swings wide!
Sombre and splendid in paint and plume,
With claws of eagle and puma skin,
Mangas, the dread Apache chief,
And a hundred braves at his back crowd in;
He swept the shards of the cup aside
And its silver mate on the altar set:
“Padre, the boy you stopped to draw
From the lion’s jaw makes good his debt.
“With Death hot-heel on your track you turned
To save a child of the enemy;
Let these, beloved of your hidden God,
Be bond of peace for mine and me;
And these in thanks for that other day.”
Censer and chalice he set them down,
And bared his arms of their turquoise beads,
And stripped the robe from his shoulders brown.
Man by man his men heaped up
The pile till it grew to the Virgin’s feet;
Skin and blanket, and beads that hung
Like jeweled buds in the pale mesquite.
Then swift as they came they went again;
But, so ’tis writ in the Mission rolls,
With wine and incense the padre straight
Said holy mass for their heathen souls,
And held them saved to the Mother Church;
For a grateful heart is a thing indeed
That weighed in the palm of the Savior’s hand
Out-values penance and prayer and creed;
And year by year when the yucca bells
Like flags of truce swung tall and white,
The name of Mangas was blessed anew
With book and taper and solemn rite.
THE WATER TANK AT DUSK
(In the Harqua Hala desert.)
The wild, bare, rock-fanged hills that all day long
Shut in the hand-width valley from the world,
Like wolfish out-posts which no foot might pass,
Creep close as friendly dogs with head on paws
And drowsy eyes that watch the evening fire.
Their sun-baked, tawny brown melts into mist
Of rose and violet and translucent blue,
With gold dust powdered softly through the air
That swims and shimmers as if all the earth
Were carven jewels bathed in golden light.
In the soft dusk the desert seems to pant,
Only half-rested from the burning day;
Yet stirs a little happily to feel
The night wind, cool and gentle, whispering
In the white-flowered mesquite where wild bees hum
Delirious with honey sweets and fragrances;
And through the leafless thorn whose tortured boughs
Were wreathed, men say, to crown the suffering Christ
On his high cross. (And still each Passion Week
The sorrowing tree wears buds like drops of blood
In memory.) With swift, soft whirr of wings
The gray doves flutter down beside the pool,
Cooing their love notes sweet as fairy flutes,
And in the grass the fiddler-crickets chirp.
The spotted night hawk saws his raucous note,
Like some harsh rasp upon an o’er-drawn string;
The squeaking bats drop from the cotton-wood trees,
Dipping and diving round the shining pool
Where night moths hover like moon-elves astray.
It seems the deep blue sky has fallen there
In the blue, star-set water, where the wind
Makes mimic waves that hardly over-toss
The peach-leaf boat on which the dragon fly
Rides sailor-wise to rest his gorgeous wings.
The hot, dry, day-time scent of sun-burned sand
Is drowned in sweetness of the blossoming grape,
And pungent odour of the wax-white cups
Of yerba mansa, hedging the blue pool
With a green wall whose every flower
Blooms twice, once on its tall-leafed stalk, and once
Down where the waves like silver mirrors mix
Its whiteness with the red pomegranate stars.
In the shadow of the plume-branched tamerask
There is a half-hushed, honey-throated call,
And from the cotton-wood’s topmost moonlit bough
Music’s enraptured soul seems waked to answer.
So sweet, so low, so pure, so tender-clear;
So brimmed with joy; so wistful, plaintive-sad;
As if all love o’ the world pulsed in that throat;
As if all pain o’ life beat in the heart below.
It is the mocking bird to his brown mate,
The desert’s vesper song of rest and peace.
DOLORES’ OLLA
In Mexico the fiesta of San Juan, in the heart of June, is a time of
sport and pleasure and love-making. The eve of All Soul’s Night in
November is a time of universal prayer for the dead. Friendless indeed
is the soul for which no word is uttered then, and dearest treasures
go, if need be, to buy prayers and candles for the loved one’s rest.
SAN JUAN’S DAY
San Juan’s Day in Guadalupe; the plaza is astir
With caballeros bold and gay and senoritas shy,
And Miguel the alfarero wends through the crowd to her,
Dolores with the dusky eyes as soft as twilit sky.
Dolores ’neath whose lightest touch his heart is like the clay;
Who molds him as he molds his wares upon the whirring wheel;
Oh! may the Saints be good to him on this auspicious day,
And grant him words to tell her all the love a man may feel.
Mi alma, see, this olla--how it flashes in the sun,
And shimmers with the iris of paloma’s dimpled breast!
Lift thou the lid and look within, querida, little one;
My heart lies warm below your gaze as birds lie in the nest.
ALL SOUL’S NIGHT
“Ay de mi! Valgame Dios! Senor, but a moment, stay!
The jar! The olla! Will you buy it? Very little you shall pay.
Look you, burnished green and copper, flecked with waves of rainbow
light;
Miguel, best alfarero--Good saints keep his soul tonight!
Miguel made it. Ah! The padre--going to the mass so soon!
Father, wait--a prayer for Miguel! Mary, Mother, grant the boon!--
Senor, gracias! When the aves rise tonight for Miguel’s rest,
Know a woman in the darkness prays that you too may be blest.”
NIGHT IN THE PINES
It were mid-day one had said, with a brighter sun o’erhead,
When a little hush came stealing through the branches swaying low;
Such a space of silence tender as the pause that serves to render
Some sweet music even sweeter in its pulsing after-flow.
The gold-sifted light that rested on the bracken plumes green-crested,
Shimmered faintly into silver on the diamond-dusted firs;
Upward where the mountain lifted one brown shoulder seamed and rifted,
Grew a shadow ’gainst the sky line, softly as the shade that stirs
Lightly o’er a sleeper dreaming;--then the star lamps trimmed and
gleaming,
From the dim, blue dome near-bending flashed their jewelled radiance
down:
Where the timid aspens quiver gusty wind-puffs start and shiver,
Like the ghosts of wandering night elves rustling through the
needles brown.
Night that elsewhere silently lays her spell on land and sea,
Soothing restless souls to quiet in the shadow of her wings,
Here with hushing tone and slow through the rocking pines croons low
Earth-old lullabies as tender as a watching mother sings.
Rest ye, weary hearts and lone; lean ye down against mine own;
Put aside the fret of living and be glad in dreamless sleep;
Lose awhile the vain regretting in the balm of sweet forgetting--
Or remember but the promise that the coming mornings keep.
THE DESERT
That silence which enfolds the Great Beyond
Broods in these spaces where the yucca palms
Like gray old votaries chant unworded psalms,
Grand, voiceless harmonies where-to the Heavens respond.
Lone, vast, eternal as Eternity,
The brown wastes crawl to clutch the wrinkled hills,--
Till night lets down her solemn dusk and fills
The waiting void with haunting mystery.
Here Solitude hath made her dwelling place,
As when of old amid untrodden sands,
Slow-journeying, wise men of all alien lands
Sought at her feet life’s hidden roads to trace.
All ways of earth, still glad or sad they go,
The roads of life--till breath of man shall cease--
Silent, the desert keeps her ancient peace,
And that last secret which the dead may know.
THE EAGLE OF SACRAMENTO
This poem is founded upon an incident in Colonel Doniphan’s campaign
with the Army of the West in 1846-47. The battle of Sacramento was
fought Feb. 28, 1847; the Mexican army, accompanied by the governor
and leading citizens of Chihuahua, had taken a strong position in the
rocky foothills of the Sierra de Victoriano, and there awaited Colonel
Doniphan who had about nine hundred men. The Mexican army numbered
2200 men, with heavy artillery and entrenched. They expected to rout
the Americans at the first fire, and amused themselves with feasting
and sports while awaiting their approach.
Colonel Doniphan was compelled to make his attack across a small plain
in full range of the artillery and cut by a deep gulch which offered
a serious stay to the charge. Just as the column halted on its brink
some of the men saw a bald eagle hovering over the plain and set up a
shout of “Victory! The eagle!” They charged up the hill, sweeping the
Mexican army before them, with the loss of but one man, Major Owens,
who was shot from his horse.
The Chihuahuan army lost 1100 men and all stores, sheep, cattle, hard
bread, and much silver coin. Several wagons were found filled with
ropes cut in lengths with which to tie the captured Americans. The
governor, citizens, and army fled in confusion back to the city of
Chihuahua, which was occupied by Doniphan’s troops and held for some
weeks.
The Hills of Victoriano were gay that winter morning;
Chihuahuan gentlemen looked down tricked out in brave array;
When Trial with the ebon flag rode forth to give us warning.
“Your leader”--“Come and take him--and luck be yours the day!”
“No quarter to the Gringo”! the skull and cross-bones fluttered;
Four thousand throats took up the yell, the echoes flung it back;
How boastfully, exultantly, the taunting threat they uttered--
As coyotes bold with number yelp round a gray wolf’s pack.
Nine hundred men in buckskin, in patches and in tatters;
Lean and hungry as the deserts we had traversed wearily;
But little versed in pipe clay, in gold lace and such matters--
Only our bare brown rifles to match their pageantry.
There on the hills above us the proud senores gathered
As for some rare fiesta, laughed with their men below;
“Now by the flag they jest at they’ll pray they ne’er were fathered;
Their jaunty coats shall sit awry ere this day’s sun is low.”
Their peons manned the cannon, their rabble filled the trenches--
We were too mean a crew to soil the hands of gentlemen;
Their mocking words they fling at us, till Mitchell fiercely
clenches
His fist and shouts: “Now, rangers! Sweep the vermin from their
den!”
Barred with a rain-washed gulley the hill sloped up before us;
A deep-worn trench too wide to leap and like to cost us dear;
Just on its edge we halted--broad wings were hovering o’er us--
“An omen! Look! the eagle!” uprose a mighty cheer.
With one wild charge we crossed the gulch, half on our comrades’
shoulders,
And, the great bald eagle leading, stormed up the rocky hill;
Their grape went wide below us, or crashed among the bowlders,
And when our rifles spoke them back the beaten guns were still:
We scared them from their cover, we sent the peons flying;
We turned on them the cannon they had not wit to fire;
What way the battle led us was strewn with dead and dying,
And we heaped their gaudy trappings to feed the funeral pyre.
One knee around the saddle horn, half lounging in his saddle,
Sat Doniphan, and whistled as he whittled carelessly,
Shaping a cedar splinter to a rough-turned wooden paddle:--
“With my compliments to Trial for his pirate flag,” said he.
The flag was torn and trampled and the throats that cried “No
quarter!”
Were silent on the bloody field or sullen in defeat;
The ropes they’d cut to bind our hands we cut again still shorter,
And we bound the fleeing stragglers as we caught them in retreat.
Back on the road where late they came with pomp and jest and
laughter,
They fled, the governor leading, to Chihuahua’s very gate;
And in their gay-decked carriages our rangers followed after,
Or on their prancing horses rode down in martial state.
What spoil was ours for taking--bread and corn and sheep and cattle!
How the “Gringo beggars” feasted on the feast the Dons had spread!
And the priest Ortiz who cursed us and reviled us through the battle,
Was left to scare the vultures and say masses for the dead.
We had three score captured cannon, guns and gun mules all together;
Our saddle bags were heavy with peso and doubloon;
We had bridles silver-studded and carved of Spanish leather--
Ah! well we turned the tale of them that boasted all too soon!
And well we cheered the eagle till the hills above us thundered;
We set the old cathedral bells to peal triumphantly--
And in the gray old plaza, while our prisoners scoffed and wondered,
We shamed our sullen foemen when we gave them amnesty.
CACTUS AND ROSE
She wore red roses as a queen
Her jewels when she wills to shine;
She pressed one full bud to her lips,
The while she bent her eyes to mine:
“Were not life cheap for such a flower?”
Was it by chance her fingers strayed
So near my own? But ere the touch
The tempter in my blood was stayed.
A mist was on the laughing eyes,
It veiled her soft, enticing grace;
Beyond her lure of gold and blue
A tender, shadowy, haunting face
Grew like a star in twilit skies
When evening fades to rarer light;
Again I saw the cactus flowers,
Blood red, in braids as black as night.
Again we paced the earthen floor
In waiting measure, till the dance
Swept to its swift and dizzy whirl;
And there were eyes that looked askance
Because her brown hand lay in mine
Like some small, gentle, brown-winged bird;
And there were hearts had given life
For that one shy, low-spoken word
That made the night so more than dear;
That set my years to one strange tune
Of footfalls on the hard-beat earth,
And soft guitar and low-hung moon;
And wind that whispered through the roof’s
Rude thatch of branches interlaced;
And bare, dark, earthen walls whereon
The leaping firelight roughly traced
Her shadow, swaying as we danced.--
Then morning came, as calm and pale
As some dead face where tapers shine;
And through the tule reeds the quail
Called mournfully--as if they knew
No other night would ever be
So dear, so rare, so blessed of God,
From sunrise to eternity.
White-robed as any bride she lay;
Like weary stars the tapers shone;
And what I vowed in that dim place
Was vowed to her dead heart alone:
I went forth old, that had been young;
But still I keep till life’s last hour
The quail call through the tule reeds,
And one dead, crumbling, cactus flower.
OUR LADY OF MIRAGE
She walks across the desert and the shuttle in her hand
Weaves out behind her webs of light that clothe the shifting sand;
Where her swift footstep passes strange, shadowy cities rise,
And chartless seas roll shoreward where never sea-shore lies;
And where no house was builded nor ever home shall be
Stretch green and peaceful homelands with tender witchery:
Like flowers that bend to greet her soft colors glow and gleam
Of gardens never tended beside an unknown stream;
And there like silver shadows move women gentle-eyed,
And children run before them and lovers walk beside;
And all that life has banished and all that love has missed
Comes in that mystic vision to keep a holy tryst.
The restless winds are music, the shifting sands reveal
The truth beyond the substance, the dream forever real--
Across life’s poorest barrens, o’er desert waste and slope,
She weaves her bright illusions, the blest mirage of hope.
THE MAID OF TUCANO
Some years ago a small agate carved with the head of a woman was found
in a pre-historic mound near Phoenix, Arizona. More recently the
explorations made by Dr. J. Walter Fewkes at Casa Grande have proven
these mounds to have been the communal homes of a considerable people,
of whom the Pima Indians of the region retain some traditions. Based
somewhat upon the carved agate and with a slight thread of tradition
in it the poem is still mostly fanciful.
Fair lies the vale of Tucano,
Rich Heart of the Land of the Sun;
Broad spread its emerald mesas,
Sparkling its bright waters run;
Far spread the golden-plumed maize fields,
With orchard and garden between,
To where like sentinels watching
The pines of the uplands lean.
Here in the days long forgotten
Ruled Che-he-ah-pik the Chief,
And here lived a maid of his people,
Fair in her love and her grief.
Sister in grace to the yuccas,
Swaying white-chaliced and tall;
But her heart was the heart of the snow-flower
That blooms on the high mountain wall;
Far from the reach of the many,
Who mar with the dust of their feet
And the plucking of idle fingers
Blossoms that else were sweet.
Yet the fleet-footed, venturesome climber
May win to the snowy peaks;
And to him who is true in his loving
At last turns the love that he seeks.
When the signal-smoke rose on the mountain
Like a gray banner tossed in the wind,
Or the watch fires at night glimmered star-like
Against the grim darkness behind;
The Chief said: “My forts are still holden,
No enemy strives at the pass;”
But the maid with eyes misty and tender
Looked upward and whispered “Alas!
“For the distance that lieth between us!
O Heart of my Heart! Do you dream
Of me here in the vale as you wander
By rock-riven cañon and stream,
Where in childhood we gathered the pine nuts,
Or plundered the blue pigeon’s nest,
Or standing knee deep in the bracken
Watched the sun burn to gold in the west?
“The red roses bloom for my taking,
But fairer the roses we knew,
Swaying over the cliffs in the spring time,
Their pale blossoms dappled with dew;
And sweet is the mocking bird’s music,
And the laughter in garden and hall;
But sweeter the wind in the pine trees
And the slow-pacing sentinel’s call.”
So the maiden dreamed, twining the garlands
To lay on the Harvest God’s shrine,
And mingling the fruits of the lowland
With balsamic cedar and pine;
Till the chief on his roof-terrace lying
A-weary of rule and of sport,
Let his gaze idly rest on the worker,
Alone in the old temple court.
The gray walls seemed bright with her presence,
As when a stray moonbeam illumes
With its silvery radiance the shadow
That darkens in desolate rooms:
Soft-crooning a melody tender,
And low with her home-longing grief,
She turned at a footstep and, startled,
Looked up from the flowers to the chief.
Smiling into her dark eyes that questioned
He raised the fresh garlands, “Now see
How each blossom you touch, making sweeter,
Is robbed of its sweets by a bee.
Can you wonder that I, being stronger,
And you than the blossoms more sweet,
Was drawn like the bees to the honey
And found myself here at your feet?
“Leave the garlands to fingers less slender,
These rough walls to faces less fair,
And come where love laughs in the sunshine,
And joy waits to welcome you there;
Here is silence and service and shadow,
There is music and gladness and light,
And I, who am chief to all others,
Will serve you and love you to-night.”
“Nay, your bees seek the garden buds only;
Scant honey the cactus flowers hold;
Nor careless hands linger to pluck them,
For all of their crimson and gold;
Desert born with the birthright of freedom,
They wither and fade in the close,
As I pine in the garden-set valley
For the breath of the hills and the snows.
“Think you love can be bought with a jewel?
Or caught in the net of a name?
Or a black mountain eaglet held captive
Sing sweet as your mocking bird tame?
Like to like--go you back to your roses;
For me, warrior’s daughter and bride,
Fitter home is the cloud-beaten fortress
Than here by the green river side.
“When the feast of the Harvest is over
Comes one whom you fighting-men know,
Whose station was won at the spear point,
Whose fortune is bent with the bow;
Stern guard of your battle-swept passes,
As free as the winds are and bold;
Yet with honor and truth above jewels,
And faithfulness dearer than gold.
“So farewell! Nor remember the madness
That tempted your fancy and hour;
Know no bud ever swells in the desert
But thorns hedge the heart of the flower.”
Che-he-ah-pik passed out of the courtyard
And seeking with wonder-lit face
A keen-fingered carver of gem stones,
He bade him to cunningly trace
On red agate the head of the worker,
And set it his necklace within;
“So shall those who forget me remember
The love that a chief could not win.”
* * * * *
Dust is the Harvest God’s altar;
Naught of his people is known--
Only the face of the maiden
Carved on the red agate stone.
A FLOWER ON THE TRAIL
My heart was weary yesterday;
I said: “The road is long;
The busy hum of middle day
Shuts out the morning song;
The rush of careless, hurrying feet
That crowd the upward slope,
Have crushed the daisies into dust,
And spent the dews of hope.”