-breasted desert lark
Cries shrill and lonely from a dead mesquite,
In quivering notes set in a minor key;
The endless round of sunny days, of starry nights,
The desert's blank immutability.
The coyote's howl is heard at dark from some
Low-lying hill; companioned by the loafer wolf
They yelp in concert to the far off stars,
Or gnaw the bleached bones in savage rage
That lie unburied by the grass-grown paths.
The prairie dogs play sentinel by day
And backward slips the badger to his den;
The whir, the fatal strike of rattlesnake,
A staring buzzard floating in the blue,
And, now and then, the curlew's eerie call,--
Lost, always lost, and seeking evermore.
All else is mute and dormant; vacantly
The sun looks down, the days run idly on,
The breezes whirl the dust, which eddying falls
Smothering the records of the westward caravans,
Where silent heaps of wreck and nameless graves
Make milestones for the old Mackenzie Trail.

Across the Brazos, Colorado, through
Concho's broad, fair valley, sweeping on
By Abilene it climbs upon the plains,
The Llano Estacado (beyond lie wastes
Of alkali and hunger gaunt and death),--
And here is lost in shifting rifts of sand.
Anon it lingers by a hidden spring
That bubbles joy into the wilderness;
Its pathway trenched that distant mountain side,
Now grown to gulches through torrential rain.
De Vaca gathered pinons by the way,
Long ere the furrows grew on yonder hill,
Cut by the creaking prairie-schooner wheels;
La Salle, the gentle Frenchman, crossed this course,
And went to death and to a nameless grave.
For ages and for ages through the past
Comanches and Apaches from the north
Came sweeping southward, searching for the sun,
And charged in mimic combat on the sea.
The scions of Montezuma's low-browed race
Perhaps have seen that knotted, thorn-clad tree;
Or sucked the cactus apples growing there.
All these have passed, and passed the immigrants,
Who bore the westward fever in their brain,
The Norseman tang for roving in their veins;
Who loved the plains as sailors love the sea,
Braved danger, death, and found a resting place
While traveling on the old Mackenzie Trail.

Brave old Mackenzie long has laid him down
To rest beyond the trail that bears his name;
A granite mou