• What great yoked brutes with briskets low,
    With wrinkled necks like buffalo,
    With round, brown, liquid, pleading eyes,
    That turned so slow and sad to you,
    That shone like love’s eyes soft with tears,
    That seemed to plead, and make replies,
    The while they bowed their necks and drew
    The creaking load; and looked at you.
    Their sable...

  • His broad-brimmed hat pushed back with careless air,
    The proud vaquero sits his steed as free
    As winds that toss his black abundant hair.
    No rover ever swept a lawless sea
    With such a haught and heedless air as he
    Who scorns the path, and bounds with swift disdain
    Away, a peon born, yet born to be
    A splendid king; behold him ride and...

  • Here room and kingly silence keep
    Companionship in state austere;
    The dignity of death is here,
    The large, lone vastness of the deep;
    Here toil has pitched his camp to rest:
    The west is banked against the west.

    Above yon gleaming skies of gold
    One lone imperial peak is seen;
    While gathered at his feet in green
    Ten...

  • The brave young city by the Balboa seas
    Lies compassed about by the hosts of night—
    Lies humming, low, like a hive of bees;
    And the day lies dead. And its spirit’s flight
    Is far to the west; while the golden bars
    That bound it are broken to a dust of stars.

    Come under my oaks, oh, drowsy dusk!
    The wolf and the dog; dear incense hour...

  •   his footprints have failed us,
    Where berries are red,
    And madroños are rankest,—
    The hunter is dead!

      The grizzly may pass
    By his half-open door;
    May pass and repass
    On his path, as of yore;

      The panther may crouch
    In the leaves on his limb;
    May scream and may scream,—
    It is nothing to him.

    ...
  •   give honor and love for evermore
    To this great man gone to rest;
    Peace on the dim Plutonian shore,
    Rest in the land of the blest.

      I reckon him greater than any man
    That ever drew sword in war;
    I reckon him nobler than king or khan,
    Braver and better by far.

      And wisest he in this whole wide land
    Of hoarding till...

  • Who tamed your lawless Tartar blood?
    What David bearded in her den
    The Russian bear in ages when
    You strode your black, unbridled stud,
    A skin-clad savage of your steppes?
    Why, one who now sits low and weeps,
    Why, one who now wails out to you,—
    The Jew, the Jew, the homeless Jew.

    Who girt the thews of your young prime
    ...

  • Come listen, O Love, to the voice of the dove,
    Come, hearken and hear him say,
    There are many To-morrows, my Love, my Love,—
    There is only one To-day.

    And all day long you can hear him say
    This day in purple is rolled,
    And the baby stars of the milky-way—
    They are cradled in cradles of gold.

    Now what is thy secret, serene gray...

  •   you will come, my bird, Bonita?
    Come! For I by steep and stone
    Have built such nest for you, Juanita,
    As not eagle bird hath known.

      Rugged! Rugged as Parnassus!
    Rude, as all roads I have trod—
    Yet are steeps and stone-strewn passes
    Smooth o’erhead, and nearest God.

      Here black thunders of my cañon
    Shake its walls...

  • What was my dream? Though consciousness be clear,
      I hold no memory of the potent thing,
    Yet feel the force of it—a creeping fear,
    A hope, a horror, and a sense austere
        Of revelation, stayed at thought’s extreme:
      As when the wind is passed, the pines still swing;
      Or when the storm has blown, the waves yet fling
        To shore the...