By arrangement with Mr. Davies' London publisher, A. C. Fifield.
Say what you like,
All things love me!
Horse, Cow, and Mouse,
Bird, Moth and Bee.
MOUNTAIN SONG
I have not where to lay my head;
Upon my breast no child shall lie;
For me no marriage feast is spread:
I walk alone under the sky.
My staff and scrip I cast away
Light-burdened to the mountain height! Climbing the rocky steep by day,
Kindling my fire against the night.
The sky-ships, radiant-masted,
Move out, bear low our way.
Oh, Life was dark while it lasted,
Now for enduring day.
Now with the world far under,
To draw up drowning men
And show them lands of wonder
Where they may build again.
There earthly sorrow falters,
There longing has its wage;
There gleam the ivory altars
Of our lost pilgrimage.
-Swift flame-then shipwrecks only
Beach in the ruined light;
Above them reach up lonely
The headlands of the night.
A hurt bird cries and flutters
Her dabbled breast of brown;
The western wall unshutters
To fling one last rose down.
A rose, a wild light after
And life calls through the years,
"Who dreams my fountains' laughter
Shall feed my wells with tears."
As I rode down the arroyo through yuccas belled with bloom
I saw a last year's stalk lift dried hands to the light,
Like age at prayer for death within a careless room,
Like one by day o'ertaken whose sick desire is night.
And as I rode I saw a lean coyote lying
All perfect as in life upon a silver dune,
Save that his feet no more could flee the harsh light's spying,
Save that no more his shadow would cleave the sinking moon.
O cruel land, where form endures, the spirit fled!
You chill the sun for me with your gray sphinx's smile,
Brooding in the bright silence above your captive dead,
Where beat the heart of life so brief, so brief a while!
Patrick Orr
THE LAST DAYS
The russet leaves of the sycamore
Lie at last on the valley floor-
By the autumn wind swept to and fro
Like ghosts in a tale of long ago.
Shallow and clear the Carmel glides
Where the willows droop on its vine-walled sides.
The bracken-rust is red on the hill;
The pines stand brooding, somber and still;
Gray are the cliffs, and the waters gray,
Where the seagulls dip to the sea-born spray.
Sad November, lady of rain,
Sends the goose-wedge over again.
Wilder now, for the verdure's birth,
Falls the sunlight over the earth;
Kildees call from the fields where now
The banding blackbirds follow the plow;
Rustling poplar and brittle weed
Whisper low to the river-reed.
Days departing linger and sigh:
Stars come soon to the quiet sky;
Buried voices, intimate, strange,
Cry to body and soul of change;
Beauty, eternal, fugitive,
Seeks the home that we cannot give.
THE BLACK VULTURE
Aloof upon the day's immeasured dome,
He holds unshared the silence of the sky.
Far down his bleak, relentless eyes descry
The eagle's empire and the falcon's home-
Far down, the galleons of sunset roam;
His hazards on the sea of morning lie;
Serene, he hears the broken tempest sigh
Where cold sierras gleam like scattered foam.
And least of all he holds the human swarm-
Unwitting now that envious men prepare
To make their dream and its fulfillment one,
When, poised above the caldrons of the storm,
Their hearts, contemptuous of death, shall dare
His roads between the thunder and the sun.
In the Santa Clara Valley, far away and far away,
Cool-breathed waters dip and dally, linger towards another dayFar and far away-far away.
Slow their floating step, but tireless, terraced down the great Plateau. Towards our ways of steam and wireless, silver-paced the brook-beds
Past the ladder-walled Pueblos, past the orchards, pear and quince, Where the back-locked river's ebb flows, miles and miles the valley glints,
Shining backwards, singing downwards, towards horizons blue and bay.
All the roofs the roads ensconce so dream of visions far away-
Santa Cruz and Ildefonso, Santa Clara, Santa Fé.
Ancient, sacred fears and faiths, ancient, sacred faiths and fears-
Some were real, some were wraiths-Indian, Franciscan years,
Built the Khivas, swung the bells; while the wind sang plain and free,
"Turn your eyes from visioned hells!-look as far as you can see!"
In the Santa Clara Valley, far away and far away,
Dying dreams divide and dally, crystal-terraced waters sally—
Linger towards another day, far and far away-far away.
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