Yuma

by Charles Henry Phelps English

Weary, weary, desolate,
Sand-swept, parched, and cursed of fate;
Burning, but how passionless!
Barren, bald, and pitiless!

Through all ages baleful moons
Glared upon thy whited dunes;

And malignant, wrathful suns
Fiercely drank thy streamless runs;

So that Nature’s only tune
Is the blare of the simoon,
Piercing burnt unweeping skies
With its awful monodies.

Not a flower lifts its head
Where the emigrant lies dead;

Not a living creature calls
Where the Gila Monster crawls,
Hot and hideous as the sun,
To the dead man’s skeleton;

But the desert and the dead,
And the hot hell overhead,
And the blazing, seething air,
And the dread mirage are there.

More poems by Charles Henry Phelps

All poems by Charles Henry Phelps →