Serene, vast head, with silver cloud of hair
Lined on the purple dusk of death,
A stern medallion, velvet set—
Old Norseman, throned, not chained upon thy chair,
Thy grasp of hand, thy hearty breath
Of welcome thrills me yet
As when I faced thee there!
Loving my plain as thou thy sea,
Facing the East as thou the West,...
All day and many days I rode,
My horse’s head set toward the sea;
And as I rode a longing came to me
That I might keep the sunset road,
Riding my horse right on and on,
O’ertake the day still lagging at the west,
And so reach boyhood from the dawn,
And be with all the days at rest.
For then the odor of the growing wheat,...
“is water nigh?”
The plainsmen cry,
As they meet and pass in the desert grass.
With finger tip
Across the lip
I ask the sombre Navajo.
The brown man smiles and answers “Sho!”
With fingers high, he signs the miles
To the desert spring,
And so we pass in the dry dead grass,...
Beneath the burning brazen sky,
The yellowed tepees stand.
Not far away a singing river
Sets through the sand.
Within the shadow of a lonely elm tree
The tired ponies keep.
The wild land, throbbing with the sun’s hot magic,
Is rapt as sleep.
From out a clump of scanty willows
A low wail floats,—
The endless...
Do you fear the force of the wind,
The slash of the rain?
Go face them and fight them,
Be savage again.
Go hungry and cold like the wolf,
Go wade like the crane:
The palms of your hands will thicken,
The skin of your cheek will tan,
You ’ll grow ragged and weary and swarthy,
But you ’ll walk like a man!
I saw these dreamers of dreams go by,
I trod in their footsteps a space;
Each marched with his eyes on the sky,
Each passed with a light on his face.
They came from the hopeless and sad,
They faced the future and gold;
Some the tooth of want’s wolf had made mad,
And some at the forge had grown old.
Behind them these serfs of...
We had been long in mountain snow,
In valleys bleak, and broad, and bare,
Where only moss and willows grow,
And no bird wings the silent air.
And so, when on our downward way
Wild roses met us, we were glad:
They were so girlish fair, so gay,
It seemed the sun had made them mad.
All day and all day, as I sit at my measureless turning,
They come and they go,—
The little ones down on the rocks,—and the sunlight is burning
On vineyards below;
All day and all day, as I sit at my stone and am ceaselessly grinding,
The almond boughs blow.
When she was here—O my first-born!—here, grinding and singing,
...
The past walks here, noiseless, unasked, alone;
Knockers are silent, and beside each stone
Grass peers, unharmed by lagging steps and slow
That with the dark and dawn pass to and fro.
The Past walks here, unseen forevermore,
Save by some heart who, in her half-closed door,
Looks forth and hears the great pulse beat afar,—
The hum and...
All in the leafy darkness, when sleep had passed me by,
I knew the surging of the sea—
Though never wave were nigh.
All in the leafy darkness, unbroken by a star,
There came the clamorous call of day,
While yet the day was far.
All in the leafy darkness, woven with hushes deep,
I heard the vulture wings of Fear...
