Classic Poem

A red-hot sun is blazing fiercely down
On red-hot hills of dreary desert sand;
The ragged sage-brush all is scorched to brown,
And gray with dust the mesquite bushes stand.

Like grizzled ghosts the cactus thickets lift
Their gaunt, gnarled fingers, barbed with spines for claws;
Thorn-girdled, thrusting from a rocky rift,
Are serried teeth of aloes sharp as saws.

A stockade wall surrounds a hut of mud,
Where naked urchins romp with mangy curs;
Dumb as a painted post, with scarlet hood,
A mongrel native stares but never stirs.

An ancient bucket hangs above a well,
The well-rope dangling from a crooked stick;
Here beggars swarm, their harrowing tales to tell,
Where hobbling hunchbacks crowd the maimed and sick.

And here a broken wooden plough is left,
Discarded with a battered wooden wheel,
And here like shipwrecked seamen, all bereft,
Two oxen by a shattered wagon kneel.

On brazen zinnias withering blazes beat,
The hollyhock in thirsty anguish dies;
The prickly-pears, a-blister in the heat,
Ooze out their sickly syrup for the flies.

But here a-swing from cracks of mud-built walls,
There blooms a peerless lovely yellow rose;
Her sweetness all the Northern Spring recalls,
New-born at melting of the northern snows.

And here, like Patience, still she waits and waits
In burning suns that doom her soon to die,
Yet never breathes a murmur at the fates
Who forced her exile from her native sky.

The railroad trains pass thundering North and South,
And bear rich gifts to others far away;
But here she lingers in the land of drought,
Forgotten as she fades from day to day.

Here one by one her golden petals fall,
Yet hear no sighs borne on her fragrant breath;
O Rose of Patience! Life soon takes your all,
And leaves you to an unregretted death.

And so, my heart, in patience still you wait,
While fame and fortune come and pass me by;
The great world rumbles on in pomp and state,—
It would not answer though it heard you cry.

So, glorious dreams, here I can only sit
With folded hands and watch you fade from view;
I smile in silence as I see you flit,
Yet all my life is lost in losing you.