Classic Poem

Morning is a great architect, gilding the dome
Of our habitation.
Hope grows brighter with the clouds
And I steep my soul in meditation.
Night has slipped away over the edge of the desert
Coyotes have ceased their lamentation and
The shepherd calls his faithful dog to move the bleating flock;
Rosy hilltops waken into gladness,
And presently, like a fiery harlequin,
The Sun will vault over the purple barrier
And swing his golden sword

I rejoice in the silent consolation of the Desert
And am soothed by the tenderness
Of the new-waked breeze.
The aromatic smell of the sage-brush is good,
And wormwood in the damp places.
Beautiful the circling of hawks and of buzzards;
Plaintively sweet the cooing of doves
And the mourning of little cuckoo-owls,
Complaining from their burrows.
These things, and more,
Penetrate my heart with gladness.
I have heard the morning merriment of nymphs
Who spread a carpet to invite the gleaming
Feet of Spring;
The twinkling feet
Of shy, persuasive, mystic, rhythmic Spring;
And I have heard the hushed, persistent laughter
Of brown-armed dryads
Who on a tawny hillside lie beneath the oaks in Summer,
Rejoicing in a coquetry with trees.
I love the voices of my little brothers, the frogs,
Who wake to Spring, well knowing the appointed hour;
The monodies of crickets and grasshoppers,
Insistently composing anthems of love and death;
Drums of the sea and trumpets of the wind.
Each may receive his separate message if he will.
My ear is tuned to the voice with which
They speak to me, separate and apart:
The mysterious trees who reserve their
Confidences, wonderful, for those they love;
The grass to which you must listen very carefully,
And all those shy things of the forest, tremulously hiding;
The vagabond army of the roadside, and weedy pools
Which shout to me as I go by, " Hello comrade. "

The bellowing of bulls, calling of rams, ewes and goats,
Bringing the last messages from the first pastures;
I rejoice in the clear exultance of birds
When buds put forth again;
The pridefulness of anxious mothers in the safe thickets
Teaching their young to fly.
My chained heart gossips with them
As in painted Autumn they gather together
Before they travel Southward on the unruled air.

But my soul rejoices most in the unheard song
Which Earth sings in the brooding silence of the desert.
The mighty mystery of sand and lava, preciously holding
Echoes of the awful detonations of fiery Creation.
Have you not heard the utterance of guardian rocks,
The low psalming of mountains
And the hushed communion of the brotherhood under the snow?
I hear in the desert the still small voice of a grain of sand
And the humming of the jeweled tops which spin above me, through the night.