I pray you, what ’s asleep?
The lily-pads, and riffles, and the reeds;
No longer inward do the waters creep,
No longer outwardly their force recedes,
And widowed Night, in blackness wide and deep,
Resumes her weeds.
I pray you, what ’s awake?
A host of stars, the long, long milky way
That stretches out, a glistening...
The heavy mists have crept away,
Heavily swims the sun,
And dim in mystic cloudlands gray
The stars fade one by one;
Out of the dusk enveloping
Come marsh and sky and tree,
Where erst has rested night’s dark ring
Over the Kankakee.
“Mark right!” Afar and faint outlined
A flock of mallards fly,
We crouch...
Under the shadows of a cliff
Crowned with a growth of stately pine
An angler moors his rocking skiff
And o’er the ripple casts his line,
And where the darkling current crawls
Like thistle-down the gay lure falls.
Then from the depths a silver gleam
Quick flashes, like a jewel bright,
Up through the waters of the stream
...
Beside that tent and under guard
In majesty alone he stands,
As some chained eagle, broken-winged,
With eyes that gleam like smouldering brands,—
A savage face, streaked o’er with paint,
And coal-black hair in unkempt mane.
Thin, cruel lips, set rigidly,—
A red Apache Tamerlane.
As restless as the desert winds,
Yet here...
I fear no power a woman wields
While I can have the woods and fields,
With comradeship alone of gun,
Gray marsh-wastes and the burning sun.
For aye the heart’s most poignant pain
Will wear away ’neath hail and rain,
And rush of winds through branches bare
With something still to do and dare,
The lonely watch beside the shore,...
