THE OLD SANTA FÉ TRAIL.

BY RICHARD BURTON.

I strangamed, with winds for company;

wound through strange scarred hills, down cañons lone

Its mile-stones were the bones of pioneers.

Bronzed, haggard men, often with thirst a-moan,
Lashed on their beasts of burden toward the sea:
An epic quest it was of elder years,

For fabled gardens or for good, red gold,
The trail men strove in iron days of old.

To-day the steam-god thunders through the vast,
While dominant Saxons from the hurtling trains
Smile at the aliens, Mexic, Indian,

Who offer wares, keen-colored, like their past:
Dread dramas of immitigable plains
Rebuke the softness of the modern man;
No menace, now, the desert's mood of sand;
Still westward lies a green and golden land.

Hark, oh, hark!

How the wind in the pine-boughs dark
A wild, sweet music thrills!

Sleep-sleep, till the stars grow pale
Above the hills!

Searching over each swart knoll,
Whistling, forth at morn I stroll.
Half her secrets, stripped of cover,
Nature lays before her lover.
See that tortoise, stolid loafer!
Yonder darts the wooing gopher.
Down from out the speckless sky
Falls the soaring crane's wild cry.
Hark! that cheery roundel, hark!
Always blithe, the meadow-lark!
From the peat-bed calls the drake;
Basking lies the glistering snake;
Like a hunter to his hound,
Pipes the curlew, circling round;
Clasping both her wings above her,
Whistling clear, alights the plover;
Unscorched cowslips gild the bog,
Bower of the prating frog;
Thoughtless, thankless, careless, I
Watch each shape of plain and sky;
See the prairie wild-folk, see
All, and feel its mystery.

Yet my quest is not for thrill
Running down from cloud and hill.
Where the prairie-hen has laid
Pearly treasures, now betrayed
By the white glints which attest
Burnt-up shelter, ruined nest,
Here I fill my basket up;
Cook my meal in tiny cup;
Singing, stray from knoll to knoll,
Nature speaking with my soul.