The Yucca Palms

Gray pilgrims without pouch or staff, Or dust-stained robe, or cockle shell; Seek ye the path to some lost shrine Here in the desert grim as Hell?

No arched cathedral dome bends down; The earth is iron, the sky is brass; ’Tis ages since these blistered sands Forgot the touch of flower and grass.

Stern penance do ye for old wrongs Mayhap, or saintship seek from pain; With suppliant hands that never win The benison of cooling rain.

In beggar rags like that wild throng That once in old Perugia stood, Ye bear your serried scourges high, A flagellante brotherhood.

IN THE BRACKEN.

Scent of the pine on the hilltops, Rush of the mountain breeze, And long, deep slopes of bracken fern Like sun-lit emerald seas.

Gray old rocks where the lizards hide And chattering chipmunks play; Where the brown quail leads her timorous brood Through the fronds that bend and sway.

Home of the doe and her spotted fawns, (Shyest of woodland things.) Haunt of the hawks that dip and dive On circling, fearless winds.

The skies bend down with a deeper blue Where the white clouds drift and hover; And the tall peaks drowse in the golden haze That dapples their forest cover.

The needles whisper an endless song As the brown cones bend and nod: “O rest, O rest, with the bracken and pine In the strong, green hills of God.”