So the sun climbs up, and on, and over,
And the days go out and the tides come in,
And the pale moon rubs on the purple cover
Till worn as thin and as bright as tin;
But the ways are dark and the days are dreary,
And the dreams of youth are but dust in age,
And the heart gets hardened, and the hands grow weary
Holding them up for their heritage.
And the strained heartstrings wear bare and brittle,
And the fond hope dies when so long deferred;
Then the fair hope lies in the heart interred,
So stiff and cold in its coffin of lead.
For you promise so great and you gain so little;
For you promise so great of glory and gold,
And gain so little that the hands grow cold;
And for gold and glory you gain instead
A fond heart sickened and a fair hope dead.
So I have said, and I say it over,
And can prove it over and over again,
That the four-footed beasts on the red-crowned clover,
The pied and hornèd beasts on the plain
That lie down, rise up, and repose again,
And do never take care or toil or spin,
Nor buy, nor build, nor gather in gold,
Though the days go out and the tides come in,
Are better than we by a thousandfold;
For what is it all, in the words of fire,
But a vexing of soul and a vain desire ?
IERRAS, and eternal tents
Of snow that flash o'er battlements
Of mountains! My land of the sun,
Am I not true? have I not done
All things for thine, for thee alone,
O sun-land, sea-land, thou mine own?
From other loves and other lands,
As true, perhaps, as strong of hands,
Have I not turned to thee and thine,
O sun-land of the palm and pine,
And sung thy scenes, surpassing skies,
Till Europe lifted up her face
And marvelled at thy matchless grace,
With eager and inquiring eyes?
Be my reward some little place
To pitch my tent, some tree and vine
Where I may sit above the sea,
And drink the sun as drinking wine,
And dream, or sing some songs of
Or days to climb to Shasta's dome
Again, and be with gods at home,
Salute my mountains-clouded Hood,
Saint Helen's in its sea of wood-
Where sweeps the Oregon, and where
White storms are in the feathered fir.
But he's blind as a badger. Whoa, Paché, boy, whoa!
No, you wouldn't believe it to look at his eyes,
But he is, badger blind, and it happened this wise.
"We lay in the grasses and the sunburnt clover
That spread on the ground like a great brown cover
Northward and southward, and west and away
To the Brazos, to where our lodges lay,
One broad and unbroken sea of brown,
Awaiting the curtains of night to come down
To cover us over and conceal our flight
With my brown bride, won from an Indian town
That lay in the rear the full ride of a night.
"We lounged in the grasses-her eyes were in mine,
And her hands on my knee, and her hair was as wine
In its wealth and its flood, pouring on and all over
Her bosom wine-red, and pressed never by one;
And her touch was as warm as the tinge of the clover
Burnt brown as it reached to the kiss of the sun,
And her words were as low as the lute-throated dove,
And as laden with love as the heart when it beats
In its hot eager answer to earliest love,
Or the bee hurried home by its burthen of sweets.
"We lay low in the grass on the broad plain levels,
Old Revels and I, and my stolen brown bride;
And the heavens of blue and the harvest of brown
And beautiful clover were welded as one,
To the right and the left, in the light of the sun.
Forty full miles if a foot to ride,
Forty full miles if a foot, and the devils
Of red Camanches are hot
When once they strike it.
Let the sun go down Soon, very soon,' muttered bearded old Revels
As he peered at the sun, lying low on his back,
Holding fast to his lasso. Then he jerked at his steed
And he sprang to his feet, and glanced swiftly around,
And then dropped, as if shot, with his ear to the ground;
Then again to his feet, and to me, to my bride,
While his eyes were like fire, his face like a shroud,
His form like a king, and his beard like a cloud,
And his voice loud and shrill, as if blown from a reed,
'Pull, pull in your lassos, and bridle to steed,
And speed you if ever for life you would speed,
And ride for your lives, for your lives you must ride!
For the plain is aflame, the prairie on fire,
And feet of wild horses hard flying before
I hear like a sea breaking high on the shore,
While the buffalo come like a surge of the sea,
Driven far by the flame, driving fast on us three
As a hurricane comes, crushing palms in his ire.'
"We drew in the lassos, seized saddle and rein,
Threw them on, sinched them on, sinched them over again,
And again drew the girth, cast aside the macheers,
Cut away tapaderas, loosed the sash from its fold,
Cast aside the cantinas red-spangled with gold,
And gold-mounted Colt's, the companions of years,
Cast the silken serapes to the wind in a breath,
And so bared to the skin sprang all haste to the horse-
As bare as when born, as when new from the hand
Of God-without word, or one word of command.
Turned head to the Brazos in a red race with death,
Turned head to the Brazos with a breath in the hair
Blowing hot from a king leaving death in his course;
Turned head to the Brazos with a sound in the air
Like the rush of an army, and a flash in the eye
Of a red wall of fire reaching up to the sky,
Stretching fierce in pursuit of a black rolling sea
Rushing fast upon us, as the wind sweeping free
And afar from the desert blew hollow and hoarse.
"Not a word, not a wail from a lip was let fall,
Not a kiss from my bride, not a look nor low call
Of love-note or courage; but on o'er the plain
So steady and still, leaning low to the mane,
With the heel to the flank and the hand to the rein,
Rode we on, rode we three, rode we nose and gray nose,
Reaching long, breathing loud, as a creviced wind blows:
Yet we broke not a whisper, we breathed not a prayer,
There was work to be done, there was death in the air,
And the chance was as one to a thousand for all.
"Gray nose to gray nose, and each steady mustang
Stretched neck and stretched nerve till the arid earth rang,
And the foam from the flank and the croup and the neck
Flew around like the spray on a storm-driven deck.
Twenty miles! . . . thirty miles! . . . a dim distant speck.
Then a long reaching line, and the Brazos in sight,
And I rose in my seat with a shout of delight.
I stood in my stirrup and looked to my right
But Revels was gone; I glanced by my shoulder
And saw his horse stagger; I saw his head drooping
Hard down on his breast, and his naked breast stooping
Low down to the mane, as so swifter and bolder
Ran reaching out for us the red-footed fire.
To right and to left the black buffalo came,
A terrible surf on a red sea of flame
Rushing on in the rear, reaching high, reaching higher.
And he rode neck to neck to a buffalo bull,
The monarch of millions, with shaggy mane full
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