Birch Creek Cañon

THREE pines stand out against the tawny hill,
With long roots reaching down among the moss ;
A slender aspen slants with leaves a-thrill,
And at its foot a charred log leans across
The damp black rocks, the fronded ferns, the thread
Of silver glittering from its gravel bed.

Feeling its way beneath low briers and brush
The stream slips onward, fed by hidden springs;
A crystal murmur in > the cañon’s hush,
Through splintered rocks, and wild sweet growing things,
Into the shade where narrowing pine-walls rise
Dark on the blue of burning stainless skies.

(O my heart’s heart , beyond the purple pines,
A thousand leagues beyond the sunset hill,
I find you here, where yonder wild-rose twines;
Your step has left the aspen leaves a-thrill;
Your voice was here but now — or whence this ache
Of poignant silence, sweet on brier and brake ?)

By shadowed banks the water murmurs on,
Where shelving ledges shut the light away,
With glitters from the darkness come and gone,
And ripples gleaming out against the day,
And silver flash of fins, where lurking trout
From the green shadow of the ledge leap out.

A black birch swings its lustrous branches down,
Flecking the sunlight through its checkered screen,
Above the boulders mossed with lichens brown,
And fallen leaves, and starry tufts of green.
On either slope the serried fir trees wait
Rank after rank, to guard the cañon gate.

(O my heart’s heart , beyond that guarded wall
A world of struggle lies between us still;
Yet you are here ! I felt your shadow fall
But now across the grassy sunlit hill,
And where the fir-boughs yonder interlace
Could I but venture, I should find your face.)