Classic Poem

Behold silver-kirtled Dawn, the life-renewer,
The comforter, bringer of a new hope.
The skies are listening to Earth's silence,
The Desert is asleep, cool, grey, silent.
A shy little breeze runs across her face
And presently her fretful babies stir upon her bosom.
The comforter casts abroad her gossamer mantle.
A lean coyote, prowler of the night,
Slips to his rocky fastness
And noiselessly, through the grey sage,
Jack-rabbits shuttle.
From castellated cliffs rock ravens launch
On broad black sails.
Wild horses, neighing and tossing their manes,
Having drunk their fill, troop back to pasture;
A sage-brush thrasher warbles a varied ecstasy:
And the waking Desert watches breathlessly
The thin, white skirts of Dawn, Dancer of the sky,
Tripping daintily down the sunrise-molten mountain,
Emptying a golden basin, filled with roses.
Now along the irrigation ditch, from cottonwoods,
Tremulous with caress of unseen fingers,
Orioles begin a rivalry of joy,
And from a pointed poplar top
A red bird, dipped in sunrise,
Cracks an exultant whip above a silver world.