Songs Out of Doors | Page 8

with the sea and the land,-- And the turn o' the tide passes
through it,
In rising and falling with mystical currents, calling
At

morn, to range where the far waves foam,
At night, to a harbour in
love's true home,
With the hearts that understand!
Seal Harbour, August 12, 1911.
SIERRA MADRE
O mother mountains! billowing far to the snowlands,
Robed in aërial
amethyst, silver, and blue,
Why do ye look so proudly down on the
lowlands?
What have their groves and gardens to do with you?
Theirs is the languorous charm of the orange and myrtle,
Theirs are
the fruitage and fragrance of Eden of old,--
Broad-boughed oaks in
the meadows fair and fertile,
Dark-leaved orchards gleaming with
globes of gold.
You, in your solitude standing, lofty and lonely,
Bear neither garden
nor grove on your barren breasts;
Rough is the rock-loving growth of
your canyons, and only
Storm-battered pines and fir-trees cling to
your crests.
Why are ye throned so high, and arrayed in splendour
Richer than all
the fields at your feet can claim?
What is your right, ye rugged peaks,
to the tender
Queenly promise and pride of the mother-name?
Answered the mountains, dim in the distance dreaming:
"Ours are the
forests that treasure the riches of rain;
Ours are the secret springs and
the rivulets gleaming
Silverly down through the manifold bloom of
the plain.
"Vain were the toiling of men in the dust of the dry land,
Vain were
the ploughing and planting in waterless fields, Save for the life-giving
currents we send from the sky land, Save for the fruit our embrace with
the storm-cloud yields."
O mother mountains, Madre Sierra, I love you!
Rightly you reign o'er

the vale that your bounty fills,-- Kissed by the sun, or with big, bright
stars above you,--
I murmur your name and lift up mine eyes to the
hills.
Pasadena, March, 1913.
SCHOOL
I put my heart to school
In the world where men grow wise:
"Go
out," I said, "and learn the rule;
'Come back when you win a prize.'"
My heart came back again:
"Now where is the prize?" I cried.--

"The rule was false, and the prize was pain,
And the teacher's name
was Pride."
I put my heart to school
In the woods where veeries sing
And
brooks run clear and cool,
In the fields where wild flowers spring.
"And why do you stay so long
My heart, and where do you roam?"

The answer came with a laugh and a song,--
"I find this school is
home."
April, 1901.
INDIAN SUMMER
A silken curtain veils the skies,
And half conceals from pensive eyes
The bronzing tokens of the fall;
A calmness broods upon the hills,

And summer's parting dream distils
A charm of silence over all.
The stacks of corn, in brown array,
Stand waiting through the tranquil
day,
Like tattered wigwams on the plain;
The tribes that find a shelter

there
Are phantom peoples, forms of air,
And ghosts of vanished joy and pain.
At evening when the crimson crest
Of sunset passes down the West,
I hear the whispering host returning;
On far-off fields, by elm and oak,

I see the lights, I smell the smoke,--
The Camp-fires of the Past are burning.
_Tertius and Henry van Dyke_.
November, 1903.
LIGHT BETWEEN THE TREES
Long, long, long the trail
Through the brooding forest-gloom,

Down the shadowy, lonely vale
Into silence, like a room
Where the
light of life has fled,
And the jealous curtains close
Round the
passionless repose
Of the silent dead.
Plod, plod, plod away,
Step by step in mouldering moss;
Thick
branches bar the day
Over languid streams that cross
Softly, slowly,
with a sound
Like a smothered weeping,
In their aimless creeping

Through enchanted ground.
"Yield, yield, yield thy quest,"
Whispers through the woodland deep:

"Come to me and be at rest;
I am slumber, I am sleep."
Then the weary feet would fail,
But the never-daunted will
Urges
"Forward, forward still!
Press along the trail!"
Breast, breast, breast the slope
See, the path is growing steep.
Hark!
a little song of hope
Where the stream begins to leap.
Though the
forest, far and wide,
Still shuts out the bending blue,
We shall

finally win through,
Cross the long divide.
On, on, on we tramp!
Will the journey never end?
Over yonder lies
the camp;
Welcome waits us there, my friend,
Can we reach it ere
the night?
Upward, upward, never fear!
Look, the summit must be
near;
See the line of light!
Red, red, red the shine
Of the splendour in the west,
Glowing
through the ranks of pine,
Clear along the mountain-crest!
Long,
long, long the trail
Out of sorrow's lonely vale;
But at last the
traveller sees
Light between the trees!
March, 1904.
THE FALL OF THE LEAVES
I
In warlike pomp, with banners flowing,
The regiments of autumn
stood:
I saw their gold and scarlet glowing
From every hillside,
every wood.
Above the sea the clouds were keeping
Their secret leaguer, gray and
still;
They sent their misty vanguard creeping
With muffled step
from hill to hill.
All day the sullen armies drifted
Athwart the sky with slanting rain;

At sunset for a space they lifted,
With dusk they settled down
again.
II
At dark the winds began to blow
With mutterings distant, low;

From sea and sky