And the sculpturesque poetry of the outlying deserts and buttes
pushes and presses hurtingly upon the lonely and introspective gazer
in Body and Soul: I knew it as child and girl and woman.
There is nothing benign, nothing enlightening--no gentleness, no
pity--in its barren beauty. But its hard chaste influence on the
sensitive spirit is beyond any analytic power to gauge.
Its wonderful Aridness starves human nerve-soil till the sad
wide eyes of the Soul grow bright--fever-bright, light-bright,
star-bright--from denial and unconscious prayer: involuntary worship:
homage of the unsuppliant unhoping dévotee.
Because of that--and because of all its long-familiar outsidenesses--
mournful, beautiful, mystic, lavish, madly-mixed, gray-purple--a
fascination beyond plaisance or pain--I feel love for this Butte.
_The subdivided cell_