REED-SONG

A crescent moon

Behind the pines,
The cry of a loon

Where the river winds.

The blackened trees

On the long gray shore,
A sob in the breeze

That the day is no more.

DIRGE

A night of strange longing

- Of dark unrest

Has fallen over the sands.

Like ghosts that are thronging,
Pale shapes from the waters

Arise and I see their hands.

I hear a faint weeping;

Autumn is dead;

Withered the leaves on the ground.

A gray mist is creeping

Out of the north

With the stealth of an Indian's hound.

Helen Dudley

SONGS FOR PLACES

Old Mexico

GUADALUPE

No matter how you love me

You cannot keep me home.
Along the airy lane of bells
Beyond the peacock dome,

I know the way to travel,
And I shall go at will-

Where the stone sails await the wind
Upon the holy hill.

The mariners who made them,
They have been long away:

But when a wind from Heaven blows,
They will come back some day;

And I shall hear them singing
And watch the stone sails fill,
Till the white city like a ship
Moves out across the hill.

POPOCATAPETL

Dusk, and the far volcano wears
A film of sunset sky.

The valley glimmers like the sea,
And little winds go by.

CUERNAVACA

You would not keep me near you,

You could not hold me far,

And now it does not matter

Where you are.

My heart has long forgotten
The ardent words you said,
But not the great stars blazing
Overhead.

DURANGO

The cactus candelabra
Are lit with yellow flowers:
Oh, take my jocund mornings,
My glancing April hours!

Do you not know the desert
Is slow to bloom again?—
The trail is long to April,
Across an arid plain;

And it is but a moment

The time of cactus flowers.

Before the dusty journey,

Come share my April hours!

ORIZABA

Is it long to Orizaba?
Have I far to go?

When I ask the carrier-pigeons,

They don't know.

There's a mountain I am seeking,

Feathered all with snow. When I ask the valley orchids,

They don't know.

Like an orchid pale and folded,

Like a snowy bird,

That's the mountain I am seeking:

Have you heard?

You can see it on the sunrise

When the clear winds blow.

Is it far to Orizaba,

Do you know?

AMECAMECA

I climb the sacred hillside

Up through the evening blue:
The ancient steps are silvered
By starlight and the dew.

And if the gray church vanish,
My soul may worship still,