Page:The Poet in the Desert.djvu/70

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

See, the night has shrunk away over the edge of the

Desert ; The coyote has ceased from his lamentations ; The hill-tops are touched with pink, And presently, like a fiery harlequin. The sun will vault over the purple barriers ; And shepherds will call to their woolly flocks.

TRUTH: So shall the Revolution come. And Freedom, the dawn of the new day.

POET:

I rejoice in the silent consolations of the Desert

And am soothed by the tenderness of the morning-breeze,

But what of the accusing groans

From the prisons which Man has builded.

Wherein his victims die the living death?

I rejoice in the aromatic smell of the sage-brush after the

rain; The circling of hawks and buzzards ; The cooing of plaintive doves.

And complaining of little cuckoo-owls from their burrows. These things, and more, infinitely, Penetrate my heart with gladness; But shall my soul be satisfied if I alone am glad, And not my brother?

Shall I be content to see the laughing nymphs Spread a carpet to invite the gleaming feet of Spring, The twinkling feet of shy, persuasive, mystic, rhythmic

Spring? Or, if I fly from this Desert to the mountains. What to me is the hushed, persistent laughter of summer

woods. Glimpses of brown-armed dryads, lying beneath the oaks, Rejoicing in the coquetry of the trees? Or all the winds of Freedom,

64