To be all you demand of me.

If you cannot do this, a laundress and cook
You can hire with little to pay;
But a woman's heart and a woman's life
Are not to be won that way.

_Lena Lathrop._

Lasca

I want free life and I want fresh air;
And I sigh for the canter after the cattle,
The crack of the whips like shots in battle,
The mellay of horns, and hoofs, and heads
That wars, and wrangles, and scatters, and spreads;
The green beneath and the blue above,
And dash and danger, and life and love;
And Lasca!
Lasca used to ride
On a mouse-gray mustang, close to my side,
With blue _serape_ and bright-belled spur;
I laughed with joy as I looked at her!
Little knew she of books or creeds;
An _Ave Maria_ sufficed her needs;
Little she cared, save to be by my side,
To ride with me, and ever to ride,
From San Saba's shore to Lavaca's tide.
She was as bold as the billows that beat,
She was as wild as the breezes that blow;
From her little head to her little feet
She was swayed, in her suppleness, to and fro
By each gust of passion; a sapling pine,
That grows on the edge of a Kansas bluff
And wars with the wind when the weather is rough,
Is like this Lasca, this love of mine.
She would hunger that I might eat,
Would take the bitter and leave me the sweet;
But once, when I made her jealous for fun,
At something I'd whispered, or looked, or done,
One Sunday, in San Antonio,
To a glorious girl on the Alamo,
She drew from her girdle a dear little dagger,
And--sting of a wasp!--it made me stagger!
An inch to the left or an inch to the right,
And I shouldn't be maundering here to-night;
But she sobbed, and, sobbing, so swiftly bound
Her torn _rebosa_ about the wound
That I quite forgave her. Scratches don't count
In Texas, down by the Rio Grande.

Her eye was brown,--a deep, deep brown;
Her hair was darker than her eye;
And something in her smile and frown,
Curled crimson lip, and instep high,
Showed that there ran in each blue vein,
Mixed with the milder Aztec strain,
The vigorous vintage of old Spain.
She was alive in every limb
With feeling, to the finger tips;
And when the sun is like a fire,
And sky one shining, soft sapphire,
One does not drink in little sips.

The air was heavy, the night was hot,
I sat by her side, and forgot--forgot;
Forgot the herd that were taking their rest;
Forgot that the air was close opprest;
That the Texas norther comes sudden and soon,
In th