Moral.
You see the point? Don't be too quick
To break bad habits: better stick,
Like the Mission folk, to your _arsenic_.
On a Cone of the Big Trees.
_Sequoia Gigantea_.
Brown foundling of the Western wood,
Babe of primeval wildernesses!
Long on my table thou hast stood
Encounters strange and rude caresses;
Perchance contented with thy lot,
Surroundings new and curious faces,
As though ten centuries were not
Imprisoned in thy shining cases!
Thou bring'st me back the halcyon days
Of grateful rest; the week of leisure,
The journey lapped in autumn haze,
The sweet fatigue that seemed a pleasure,
The morning ride, the noonday halt,
The blazing slopes, the red dust rising,
And then--the dim, brown, columned vault,
With its cool, damp, sepulchral spicing.
Once more I see the rocking masts
That scrape the sky, their only tenant
The jay-bird that in frolic casts
From some high yard his broad blue pennant.
I see the Indian files that keep
Their places in the dusty heather,
Their red trunks standing ankle deep
In moccasins of rusty leather.
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