Classic Poem

The Rim of the desert is the Yucca land,
Behind it the snow-peaked ranges stand.
Beyond it, and out, the desert lies,—
And far as the line of the tenting skies.
“The ship of the desert” sails there at dawn
In the swift mirage; and there, up-drawn
From violet seas, in the sunrise glow
Are the coral reefs the mermen know;
And the perfumed plains where the iris grow.
Out there where the web of the gossamer flies
The shoals of the purple islands rise,
Out there are the pink gray mists unrolled,
And the sun goes down on a world of gold,
In the Yucca land.

The grimness of time, is the Yucca land,
When twilight reaches her specter hand,
When the moon bends down, a living thing,
And the midnight stars are whispering!
The Yucca glades are peopled, then,
With naiads and gnomes and the ghosts of men;
From the inner earth, from the Everywhere,
They come, and they walk in the moonlight there.
The dryads step from the Yucca trees
And lean white arms on the wavering breeze.
There, a pallid priestess counts her beads,
Yon arch to a Druid temple leads.
Aye; and yonder Yucca, whose grim shape warns,
Is the cross of Him, and His crown of thorns.
There are stealthy shadows, a phantom whir—
The night vibrates with a soundless stir;
And oh, the silence! so tense, so terse,
You can hear the heart of the Universe.
The desert its mystery unbars
To you and the moon and the whispering stars,
In the Yucca land.

The newness of earth, is the Yucca land,
The tang of the first-made gleam of sand,
Not ever a plow profaned its sod,—
The world is so new you could talk with God,
In the Yucca land.