Classic Poem

Stretched helpless on the burning sands I lie,
While scorching suns beat on me as they pass.
Day after day I watch the glaring sky,
A fiery furnace reared like burnished brass.

Spread like a tawny lion's shaggy hide,
The yellow plains reach hillocks red and brown;
See here the bones where dogs and men have died,
While imp-faced rocks in hideous hate looked down!

No living thing will come to share my grief,
Save when at night the famished coyotes howl,
Or, coiled at twilight by some withered sheaf,
The rattler hisses at the screeching owl.

Ah, if I only once could hear the birds
Trill songs of joy in woodlands fresh and cool!
Ah, if I only once could see the herds
Wade, lowing, knee-deep in some dark-green pool!

Ah, if I only once could feel the tide
Come thundering with its giant foaming waves;
Through all my burning veins cool streams should glide,
And raise the corpses from my world of graves!

But year by year I wait and wait and wait,
And year by year I linger in despair;
Yet still I hear the stern decree of Fate;
“No rain, No rain!” through white-hot noons a-glare.

O God, remember I was dear to Thee
In green, glad mornings ere I felt Thy frown.
I am Thy daughter; hear and pity me,
Accurst and fruitless, withered, barren, brown!

A gray-haired virgin, still unwooed, unwed,
I waste away unloved and all alone;
My bosom is a dried-up river bed,
The heart within it but a dusty stone.

O, all Thy gifts are held beyond my grasp;
I am a woman; let me sweetly rest,
To feel a lover's arms around me clasp,
A tiny infant cooing on my breast!

No rain, no dew, from cruel sky or sea;
In restless, raging passion here I lie.
Like Rachel I am crying out to Thee,
“God, give me children, or else let me die!”