The Midland

VOL. VII

A MAGAZINE OF THE MIDDLE WEST

DECEMBER, 1921

NO. 12

Marcia! . .

Marcia

By ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE

Across the glassy twilit pool

I heard your following playmates call your name.
The pale mists parted, and I saw your cool
Delicate figure poise, and like a flame
Shoot out to the dark water and emerge
Dripping, silent and smiling, where I stood.
You turned again and leaping from the verge
Swam toward the darkness, leaving me to brood
All evening on your slender arms and hands,
Your shadowy breast, your swiftly flushing face..
Some light still glimmers on these somber lands
Where beauty has one moment left its trace. .
Marcia! ... someday your lover shall possess
More of you but no more of loveliness.

Dust

By LEW SARETT

This much I know:

Under the bludgeonings of snow
And sleet and sharp adversity,
From high estate

The seemingly immortal tree

Shall, soon or late,

Go down to dust;

Lo! when a wild wet gust

Of hurricane

Has lain

The vast debris

Under the calm and lone plateau,

The dust shall go

Down with the rain;

Rivers are slow,

Rivers are fast,

But rivers and rains run down to the sea,

All rains go down to the sea at last.

Ho! Shake the red bough

And cover me now,

Cover me now with dreams,

With a blast

Of fallen leaves, with the sifted gleams

Of the moon.

Shake the dead bough

And cover me now,

For soon,

Rivers and rains shall go with me
Down to the vast eternity.

The Gate

By BENNETT WEAVER

I shall not press the heavy gate
To open it. I wait, I wait.

I shall not wake the porter there
Who keeps the keys of paradise;
I shall but hold the fair emprise
Of beauty close above my heart.
When my God wills I shall depart
The windy street and enter in;
The altars are but building where
A priest shall serve the fanes of Fate.
I shall not press the heavy gate
To open it. I wait, I wait.

The Girl in the Valley
By GWENDOLEN HASTE

I

The long grasses are beaten by the wind; The cottonwood shudders;

The magpies plunge and bicker.

Over the mountains clouds writhe.

This land never lies in patterns of peace.

Forever

I watch in the clouds

My soul in torment

And hear its fretful voice

In the cry of the whirling magpie.

II

Sarah Judson was working in her kitchen.

When she spoke to me

Her eyes were hard and dull

Like dead earth in winter;

Then she turned to her task.
Through the little window
The Shining Mountains
Hung clear in a grey sky,

And along the coulee

The cottonwoods shook their lace tops

Into the still air.

When I went home that night

I prayed,

"Dear God,

Let me die

The day I can no longer see

The Shining Mountains

Through the shifting mist.

Dear God,

Let me die

The day the net of cottonwoods

Against a grey sky

Thrills me no more like the lips of a lover."

Gold shiver of leaves

Dripping beauty

Against blue

Like the soul of God.

So shall I one day dance

Glittering,

Trembling

III

Against the blue curtain of my desire.

IV

Winnie and her father, the old sheepherder, stopped by today.

Winnie's eyes were like the sky

When the Chinook chases the thick white clouds be

fore it

And the air is full of its voice;

But the eyes of the old sheepherder

Were silent and blue

Like the sky on the day after the blizzard

When the wind has died

And the clouds are gone

And the cattle move slowly through the drifts.