The California Birthday Book | Page 7

light
rippled over the wild oats. Here and there stood groves of huge
live-oaks, beneath whose broad, time-bowed heads thousands of cattle

stamped away the noons of summer. Around the old mission, whose
bells have rung o'er the valley for a century, a few houses were grouped;
but beyond this there was scarcely a sign of man's work except the
far-off speck of a herdsman looming in the mirage, or the white walls
of the old Spanish ranch-house glimmering afar through the hazy
sunshine in which the silent land lay always sleeping.
T.S. VAN DYKE,
in Southern California.
FEBRUARY 9.
The surroundings of Monterey could not well be more beautiful if they
had been gotten up to order. Hills, gently rising, the chain broken here
and there by a more abrupt peak, environ the city, crowned with dark
pines and the famous cypress of Monterey (Cypressus macrocarpa.)
Before us the bay lies calm and blue, and away across, can be seen the
town of Santa Cruz, an indistinct white gleam on the mountain side.
JOSEPHINE CLIFFORD McCRACKIN,
in Another Juanita.
LOS ALTOS.
The lark sends up a carol blithe,
Bloom-billows scent the breeze,

Green-robed the rolling foot-hills rise
And poppies paint the leas.
HANNA OTIS BRUN.
FEBRUARY 10.
SANTA BARBARA.
A golden bay 'neath soft blue skies,
Where on a hillside creamy rise

The mission towers, whose patron saint
Is Barbara--with legend
quaint.
HELEN ELLIOTT BANDINI,
in _History of California.
Dare to be free. Free to do the thing you crave to do and that craves the

doing. Free to live in that higher realm where none is fit to criticise
save one's self. Free to scorn ridicule, to face contempt, to brave
remorse. Free to give life to the one human soul that can demand and
grant such a boon--one's own self.
MIRIAM MICHELSON,
in Anthony Overman.
FEBRUARY 11.
In Carmel pines the summer wind
Sings like a distant sea.
O harps
of green, your murmurs find
An echoing chord in me!
On Carmel
shore the breakers moan
Like pines that breast the gale.
O whence,
ye winds and billows, flown
To cry your wordless tale?
GEORGE STERLING,
in A Wine of Wizardry and Other Poems.
OAKLAND--BERKELEY--ALAMEDA.
O close-clasped towns across the bay,
Whose lights like gleaming
jewels stray,
A ruby, golden, splendid way,
When day from earth
has flown.
I watch you lighting night by night,
O twisted strands of
jewels bright,
The altar-fires of home, alight--
I who am all alone.
GRACE HIBBARD,
in Forget-me-nots from California.
FEBRUARY 12.
On the Berkeley Hills for miles away
I went a-roaming one winter's
day,
And what do you think I saw, my dear?
A place where the sky
came down to the hill,
And a big white cloud on the fresh green grass,

And bright red berries my basket to fill,
And mustard that grew in
a golden mass--
All on a winter's day, my dear!
CHARLES KEELER,
in Elfin Songs of Sunland.
FEBRUARY 13.

THE SUNSET GUN AT ANGEL ISLAND
A touch of night on the hill-tops gray;
A dusky hush on the quivering
Bay;
A calm moon mounting the silent East--
White slave the
day-god has released;
Small, scattered clouds
That seemed to wait

Like sheets of fire
O'er the Golden Gate.
And under Bonita,
growing dim.
With a seeming pause on the ocean's rim,
Like a
weary lab'rer, smiles the sun
To the booming crash of the sunset gun.
LOWELL OTUS REESE.
FEBRUARY 14.
MY VALENTINE.
My valentine needs not this day
Of Cupid's undisputed sway
To
have my loving heart disclose
The love for her that brightly glows;

For it is hers alway, alway.
Whate'er the fickle world may say,

There's nought within its fair array
That for a moment could depose
My valentine.
Where'er the paths of life may stray,
'Mid valleys
dark or gardens gay,
With holly wild or blushing rose,
Through
summer's gleam or winter's snows,
Thou art, dear love, for aye and
aye.
My valentine.
CLIFFORD HOWARD.
FEBRUARY 15.
JOAQUIN MILLER'S HOME ON THE HIGHTS.

Rugged! Rugged as Parnassus!
Rude, as all roads I have trod--
Yet
are steeps and stone-strewn passes
Smooth o'erhead, and nearest God.


Here black thunders of my canyon
Shake its walls in Titan wars!

Here white sea-born clouds companion
With such peaks as know the
stars.

Steep below me lies the valley,
Deep below me lies the town,

Where great sea-ships ride and rally,
And the world walks up and
down.
O, the sea of lights far streaming
When the thousand flags
are furled--
When the gleaming bay lies dreaming
As it duplicates
the world.

JOAQUIN MILLER.
FEBRUARY 16.
I have watched the ships sailing and steaming in through the Golden
Gate, and they seemed like doves of peace bringing messages of
good-will from all the world. In the still night, when the scream of the
engine's whistle would reach my ears, I would reflect upon the fact that
though dwelling in a city whose boundaries were almost at the verge of
our nation's great territory, yet we were linked to it by bands of steel,
and Plymouth Rock did not seem so far from Shag Rock, nor Bedloe's
Island from Alcatraz.
LORENZO SOSSO,
in Wisdom of the