The Ute Lover

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 repetition of a lover’s Melancholy notes, So sad, so sweet, so elemental, All lovers’ pain Seems borne upon its sobbing cadence,— The love-song of the plain. From frenzied cry forever falling, To the wind’s wild moan, It seems the voice of anguish calling Alone! alone! Caught from the winds forever moaning On the plain, Wrought from the agonies of woman In maternal pain, It holds within its simple measure All death of joy, Breathed though it be by smiling maiden Or lithe brown boy. It hath this magic, sad though its cadence And short refrain— It helps the exiled people of the mountain Endure the plain; For when at night the stars a-glitter Defy the moon, The maiden listens, leans to seek her lover Where waters croon. Flute on, O lithe and tuneful Utah,— Reply, brown jade; There are no other joys secure to either Man or maid. Soon you are old and heavy-hearted, Lost to mirth; While on you lies the white man’s gory Greed of earth. Strange that to me that burning desert Seems so dear. The endless sky and lonely mesa, Flat and drear, Calls me, calls me as the flute of Utah Calls his mate,— This wild, sad, sunny, brazen country, Hot as hate. Again the glittering sky uplifts star-blazing; Again the stream From out the far-off snowy mountains Sings through my dream; And on the air I hear the flute-voice calling The lover’s croon, And see the listening, longing maiden Lit by the moon.