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Best Famous Tropics Poems

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Written by Les Murray | Create an image from this poem

The Dream Of Wearing Shorts Forever

 To go home and wear shorts forever
in the enormous paddocks, in that warm climate,
adding a sweater when winter soaks the grass, 

to camp out along the river bends
for good, wearing shorts, with a pocketknife,
a fishing line and matches, 

or there where the hills are all down, below the plain,
to sit around in shorts at evening
on the plank verandah - 

If the cardinal points of costume
are Robes, Tat, Rig and Scunge,
where are shorts in this compass? 

They are never Robes
as other bareleg outfits have been:
the toga, the kilt, the lava-lava
the Mahatma's cotton dhoti; 

archbishops and field marshals
at their ceremonies never wear shorts.
The very word
means underpants in North America. 

Shorts can be Tat,
Land-Rovering bush-environmental tat,
socio-political ripped-and-metal-stapled tat,
solidarity-with-the-Third World tat tvam asi, 

likewise track-and-field shorts worn to parties
and the further humid, modelling negligee
of the Kingdom of Flaunt,
that unchallenged aristocracy. 

More plainly climatic, shorts
are farmers' rig, leathery with salt and bonemeal;
are sailors' and branch bankers' rig,
the crisp golfing style
of our youngest male National Costume. 

Most loosely, they are Scunge,
ancient Bengal bloomers or moth-eaten hot pants
worn with a former shirt,
feet, beach sand, hair
and a paucity of signals. 

Scunge, which is real negligee
housework in a swimsuit, pyjamas worn all day,
is holiday, is freedom from ambition.
Scunge makes you invisible
to the world and yourself. 

The entropy of costume,
scunge can get you conquered by more vigorous cultures
and help you notice it less. 

To be or to become
is a serious question posed by a work-shorts counter
with its pressed stack, bulk khaki and blue,
reading Yakka or King Gee, crisp with steely warehouse odour. 

Satisfied ambition, defeat, true unconcern,
the wish and the knack of self-forgetfulness
all fall within the scunge ambit
wearing board shorts of similar;
it is a kind of weightlessness. 

Unlike public nakedness, which in Westerners
is deeply circumstantial, relaxed as exam time,
artless and equal as the corsetry of a hussar regiment, 

shorts and their plain like
are an angelic nudity,
spirituality with pockets!
A double updraft as you drop from branch to pool! 

Ideal for getting served last
in shops of the temperate zone
they are also ideal for going home, into space,
into time, to farm the mind's Sabine acres
for product and subsistence. 

Now that everyone who yearned to wear long pants
has essentially achieved them,
long pants, which have themselves been underwear
repeatedly, and underground more than once,
it is time perhaps to cherish the culture of shorts, 

to moderate grim vigour
with the knobble of bare knees,
to cool bareknuckle feet in inland water,
slapping flies with a book on solar wind
or a patient bare hand, beneath the cadjiput trees, 

to be walking meditatively
among green timber, through the grassy forest
towards a calm sea
and looking across to more of that great island
and the further tropics.


Written by Amy Clampitt | Create an image from this poem

Nothing Stays Put

 In memory of Father Flye, 1884-1985


The strange and wonderful are too much with us.
The protea of the antipodes—a great,
globed, blazing honeybee of a bloom—
for sale in the supermarket! We are in
our decadence, we are not entitled.
What have we done to deserve
all the produce of the tropics—
this fiery trove, the largesse of it
heaped up like cannonballs, these pineapples, bossed
and crested, standing like troops at attention,
these tiers, these balconies of green, festoons
grown sumptuous with stoop labor?

The exotic is everywhere, it comes to us
before there is a yen or a need for it. The green-
grocers, uptown and down, are from South Korea.
Orchids, opulence by the pailful, just slightly
fatigued by the plane trip from Hawaii, are
disposed on the sidewalks; alstroemerias, freesias
fattened a bit in translation from overseas; gladioli
likewise estranged from their piercing ancestral crimson;
as well as, less altered from the original blue cornflower
of the roadsides and railway embankments of Europe, these
bachelor's buttons. But it isn't the railway embankments
their featherweight wheels of cobalt remind me of, it's

a row of them among prim colonnades of cosmos,
snapdragon, nasturtium, bloodsilk red poppies,
in my grandmother's garden: a prairie childhood,
the grassland shorn, overlaid with a grid,
unsealed, furrowed, harrowed and sown with immigrant grasses,
their massive corduroy, their wavering feltings embroidered
here and there by the scarlet shoulder patch of cannas
on a courthouse lawn, by a love knot, a cross stitch
of living matter, sown and tended by women,
nurturers everywhere of the strange and wonderful,
beneath whose hands what had been alien begins,
as it alters, to grow as though it were indigenous.

But at this remove what I think of as
strange and wonderful, strolling the side streets of Manhattan
on an April afternoon, seeing hybrid pear trees in blossom,
a tossing, vertiginous colonnade of foam, up above—
is the white petalfall, the warm snowdrift
of the indigenous wild plum of my childhood.
Nothing stays put. The world is a wheel.
All that we know, that we're 
made of, is motion.
Written by John Masefield | Create an image from this poem

Cargoes

 QUINQUIREME of Nineveh from distant Ophir, 
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, 
With a cargo of ivory, 
And apes and peacocks, 
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine. 

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus, 
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores, 
With a cargo of diamonds, 
Emeralds, amythysts, 
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores. 

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, 
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days, 
With a cargo of Tyne coal, 
Road-rails, pig-lead, 
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.
Written by Czeslaw Milosz | Create an image from this poem

Conversation with Jeanne

 Let us not talk philosophy, drop it, Jeanne.
So many words, so much paper, who can stand it.
I told you the truth about my distancing myself.
I've stopped worrying about my misshapen life.
It was no better and no worse than the usual human tragedies.

For over thirty years we have been waging our dispute
As we do now, on the island under the skies of the tropics.
We flee a downpour, in an instant the bright sun again,
And I grow dumb, dazzled by the emerald essence of the leaves.

We submerge in foam at the line of the surf,
We swim far, to where the horizon is a tangle of banana bush,
With little windmills of palms.
And I am under accusation: That I am not up to my oeuvre,
That I do not demand enough from myself,
As I could have learned from Karl Jaspers,
That my scorn for the opinions of this age grows slack.

I roll on a wave and look at white clouds.

You are right, Jeanne, I don't know how to care about the salvation of my soul.
Some are called, others manage as well as they can.
I accept it, what has befallen me is just.
I don't pretend to the dignity of a wise old age.
Untranslatable into words, I chose my home in what is now,
In things of this world, which exist and, for that reason, delight us:
Nakedness of women on the beach, coppery cones of their breasts,
Hibiscus, alamanda, a red lily, devouring
With my eyes, lips, tongue, the guava juice, the juice of la prune de Cyth?re,
Rum with ice and syrup, lianas-orchids
In a rain forest, where trees stand on the stilts of their roots.

Death, you say, mine and yours, closer and closer,
We suffered and this poor earth was not enough.
The purple-black earth of vegetable gardens
Will be here, either looked at or not.
The sea, as today, will breathe from its depths.
Growing small, I disappear in the immense, more and more free.
Written by William Carlos (WCW) Williams | Create an image from this poem

from Asphodel That Greeny Flower

 Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
 like a buttercup
 upon its branching stem-
save that it's green and wooden-
 I come, my sweet,
 to sing to you.
We lived long together
 a life filled,
 if you will,
with flowers. So that
 I was cheered
 when I came first to know
that there were flowers also
 in hell.
 Today
I'm filled with the fading memory of those flowers
 that we both loved,
 even to this poor
colorless thing-
 I saw it
 when I was a child-
little prized among the living
 but the dead see,
 asking among themselves:
What do I remember
 that was shaped
 as this thing is shaped?
while our eyes fill
 with tears.
 Of love, abiding love
it will be telling
 though too weak a wash of crimson
 colors it
to make it wholly credible.
 There is something
 something urgent
I have to say to you
 and you alone
 but it must wait
while I drink in
 the joy of your approach,
 perhaps for the last time.
And so
 with fear in my heart
 I drag it out
and keep on talking
 for I dare not stop.
 Listen while I talk on
against time.
 It will not be
 for long.
I have forgot
 and yet I see clearly enough
 something
central to the sky
 which ranges round it.
 An odor
springs from it!
 A sweetest odor!
 Honeysuckle! And now
there comes the buzzing of a bee!
 and a whole flood
 of sister memories!
Only give me time,
 time to recall them
 before I shall speak out.
Give me time,
 time.
When I was a boy
 I kept a book
 to which, from time
to time,
 I added pressed flowers
 until, after a time,
I had a good collection.
 The asphodel,
 forebodingly,
among them.
 I bring you,
 reawakened,
a memory of those flowers.
 They were sweet
 when I pressed them
and retained
 something of their sweetness
 a long time.
It is a curious odor,
 a moral odor,
 that brings me
near to you.
 The color
 was the first to go.
There had come to me
 a challenge,
 your dear self,
mortal as I was,
 the lily's throat
 to the hummingbird!
Endless wealth,
 I thought,
 held out its arms to me.
A thousand tropics
 in an apple blossom.
 The generous earth itself
gave us lief.
 The whole world
 became my garden!
But the sea
 which no one tends
 is also a garden
when the sun strikes it
 and the waves
 are wakened.
I have seen it
 and so have you
 when it puts all flowers
to shame.
 Too, there are the starfish
 stiffened by the sun
and other sea wrack
 and weeds. We knew that
 along with the rest of it
for we were born by the sea,
 knew its rose hedges
 to the very water's brink.
There the pink mallow grows
 and in their season
 strawberries
and there, later,
 we went to gather
 the wild plum.
I cannot say
 that I have gone to hell
 for your love
but often
 found myself there
 in your pursuit.
I do not like it
 and wanted to be
 in heaven. Hear me out.
Do not turn away.
I have learned much in my life
 from books
 and out of them
about love.
 Death
 is not the end of it.
There is a hierarchy
 which can be attained,
 I think,
in its service.
 Its guerdon
 is a fairy flower;
a cat of twenty lives.
 If no one came to try it
 the world
would be the loser.
 It has been
 for you and me
as one who watches a storm
 come in over the water.
 We have stood
from year to year
 before the spectacle of our lives
 with joined hands.
The storm unfolds.
 Lightning
 plays about the edges of the clouds.
The sky to the north
 is placid,
 blue in the afterglow
as the storm piles up.
 It is a flower
 that will soon reach
the apex of its bloom.
 We danced,
 in our minds,
and read a book together.
 You remember?
 It was a serious book.
And so books
 entered our lives.
The sea! The sea!
 Always
 when I think of the sea
there comes to mind
 the Iliad
 and Helen's public fault
that bred it.
 Were it not for that
 there would have been
 no poem but the world
 if we had remembered,
 those crimson petals
spilled among the stones,
 would have called it simply
 murder.
The sexual orchid that bloomed then
 sending so many
 disinterested
men to their graves
 has left its memory
 to a race of fools
or heroes
 if silence is a virtue.
 The sea alone
with its multiplicity
 holds any hope.
 The storm
has proven abortive
 but we remain
 after the thoughts it roused
to
 re-cement our lives.
 It is the mind
the mind
 that must be cured
 short of death's
intervention,
 and the will becomes again
 a garden. The poem
is complex and the place made
 in our lives
 for the poem.
Silence can be complex too,
 but you do not get far
 with silence.
Begin again.
 It is like Homer's
 catalogue of ships:
it fills up the time.
 I speak in figures,
 well enough, the dresses
you wear are figures also,
 we could not meet
 otherwise. When I speak
of flowers
 it is to recall
 that at one time
we were young.
 All women are not Helen,
 I know that,
but have Helen in their hearts.
 My sweet,
 you have it also, therefore
I love you
 and could not love you otherwise.
 Imagine you saw
a field made up of women
 all silver-white.
 What should you do
but love them?
 The storm bursts
 or fades! it is not
the end of the world.
 Love is something else,
 or so I thought it,
a garden which expands,
 though I knew you as a woman
 and never thought otherwise,
until the whole sea
 has been taken up
 and all its gardens.
It was the love of love,
 the love that swallows up all else,
 a grateful love,
a love of nature, of people,
 of animals,
 a love engendering
gentleness and goodness
 that moved me
 and that I saw in you.
I should have known,
 though I did not,
 that the lily-of-the-valley
is a flower makes many ill
 who whiff it.
 We had our children,
rivals in the general onslaught.
 I put them aside
 though I cared for them.
as well as any man
 could care for his children
 according to my lights.
You understand
 I had to meet you
 after the event
and have still to meet you.
 Love
 to which you too shall bow
along with me-
 a flower
 a weakest flower
shall be our trust
 and not because
 we are too feeble
to do otherwise
 but because
 at the height of my power
I risked what I had to do,
 therefore to prove
 that we love each other
while my very bones sweated
 that I could not cry to you
 in the act.
Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
 I come, my sweet,
 to sing to you!
My heart rouses
 thinking to bring you news
 of something
that concerns you
 and concerns many men. Look at
 what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
 despised poems.
 It is difficult
to get the news from poems
 yet men die miserably every day
 for lack
of what is found there.
 Hear me out
 for I too am concerned
and every man
 who wants to die at peace in his bed
 besides.


Written by Lewis Carroll | Create an image from this poem

Fit the Second ( Hunting of the Snark )

 The Bellman's Speech 

The Bellman himself they all praised to the skies--
Such a carriage, such ease and such grace!
Such solemnity, too! One could see he was wise,
The moment one looked in his face! 
He had bought a large map representing the sea, 
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand. 

"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?"
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
"They are merely conventional signs! 

"Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we've got our brave Captain to thank"
(So the crew would protest) "that he's bought us the best--
A perfect and absolute blank!" 

This was charming, no doubt: but they shortly found out
That the Captain they trusted so well
Had only one notion for crossing the ocean
And that was to tingle his bell. 

He was thoughtful and grave--but the orders he gave
Were enough to bewilder a crew.
When he cried "Steer to starboard, but keep her head larboard!"
What on earth was the helmsman to do? 

Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes:
A thing, as the Bellman remarked,
That frequently happens in tropical climes,
When a vessel is, so to speak, "snarked". 

But the principal failing occurred in the sailing,
And the Bellman, perplexed and distressed,
Said he had hoped, at least, when the wind blew due East,
That the ship would not travel due West! 

But the danger was past--they had landed at last,
With their boxes, portmanteaus, and bags:
Yet at first sight the crew were not pleased with the view
Which consisted of chasms and crags. 

The Bellman perceived that their spirits were low,
And repeated in musical tone
Some jokes he had kept for a season of woe--
But the crew would do nothing but groan. 

He served out some grog with a liberal hand,
And bade them sit down on the beach:
And they could not but own that their Captain looked grand,
As he stood and delivered his speech. 

"Friends, Romans, and countrymen, lend me your ears!"
(They were all of them fond of quotations:
So they drank to his health, and they gave him three cheers,
While he served out additional rations). 

"We have sailed many months, we have sailed many weeks,
(Four weeks to the month you may mark),
But never as yet ('tis your Captain who speaks)
Have we caught the least glimpse of a Snark! 

"We have sailed many weeks, we have sailed many days,
(Seven days to the week I allow),
But a Snark, on the which we might lovingly gaze,
We have never beheld till now! 

"Come, listen, my men, while I tell you again
The five unmistakable marks
By which you may know, wheresoever you go,
The warranted genuine Snarks. 

"Let us take them in order. The first is the taste,
Which is meagre and hollow, but crisp:
Like a coat that is rather too tight in the waist,
With a flavour of Will-o'-the-Wisp. 

"Its habit of getting up late you'll agree
That it carries too far, when I say
That it frequently breakfasts at five-o'clock tea,
And dines on the following day. 

"The third is its slowness in taking a jest.
Should you happen to venture on one,
It will sigh like a thing that is deeply distressed:
And it always looks grave at a pun. 

"The fourth is its fondness for bathing-machines,
Which it constantly carries about,
And believes that they add to the beauty of scenes--
A sentiment open to doubt. 

"The fifth is ambition. It next will be right
To describe each particular batch:
Distinguishing those that have feathers, and bite,
From those that have whiskers, and scratch. 

"For, although common Snarks do no manner of harm,
Yet I feel it my duty to say
Some are Boojums--" The Bellman broke off in alarm,
For the Baker had fainted away.
Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

The Song of the Cities

 BOMBAY

Royal and Dower-royal, I the Queen
 Fronting thy richest sea with richer hands --
A thousand mills roar through me where I glean
 All races from all lands.


 CALCUTTA

Me the Sea-captain loved, the River built,
 Wealth sought and Kings adventured life to hold.
Hail, England! I am Asia -- Power on silt,
 Death in my hands, but Gold!


 MADRAS

Clive kissed me on the mouth and eyes and brow,
 Wonderful kisses, so that I became
Crowned above Queens -- a withered beldame now,
 Brooding on ancient fame.


 RANGOON

Hail, Mother! Do they call me rich in trade?
 Little care I, but hear the shorn priest drone,
And watch my silk-clad lovers, man by maid,
 Laugh 'neath my Shwe Dagon.


 SINGAPORE

Hail, Mother! East and West must seek my aid
 Ere the spent gear may dare the ports afar.
The second doorway of the wide world's trade
 Is mine to loose or bar.


 HONG-KONG

Hail, Mother! Hold me fast; my Praya sleeps
 Under innumerable keels to-day.
Yet guard (and landward), or to-morrow sweeps
 Thy war-ships down the bay!


 HALIFAX

Into the mist my guardian prows put forth,
 Behind the mist my virgin ramparts lie,
The Warden of the Honour of the North,
 Sleepless and veiled am I!


 QUEBEC AND MONTREAL

Peace is our portion. Yet a whisper rose,
 Foolish and causeless, half in jest, half hate.
Now wake we and remember mighty blows,
 And, fearing no man, wait!


 VICTORIA

From East to West the circling word has passed,
 Till West is East beside our land-locked blue;
From East to West the tested chain holds fast,
 The well-forged link rings true!


 CAPE TOWN

Hail! Snatched and bartered oft from hand to hand,
 I dream my dream, by rock and heath and pine,
Of Empire to the northward. Ay, one land
 From Lion's Head to Line!


 MELBOURNE

Greeting! Nor fear nor favour won us place,
 Got between greed of gold and dread of drouth,
Loud-voiced and reckless as the wild tide-race
 That whips our harbour-mouth!


 SYDNEY

Greeting! My birth-stain have I turned to good;
 Forcing strong wills perverse to steadfastness:
The first flush of the tropics in my blood,
 And at my feet Success!


 BRISBANE

The northern stirp beneath the southern skies --
 I build a Nation for an Empire's need,
Suffer a little, and my land shall rise,
 Queen over lands indeed!


 HOBART

Man's love first found me; man's hate made me Hell;
 For my babes' sake I cleansed those infamies.
Earnest for leave to live and labour well,
 God flung me peace and ease.


 AUCKLAND

Last, loneliest, loveliest, exquisite, apart --
 On us, on us the unswerving season smiles,
Who wonder 'mid our fern why men depart
 To seek the Happy Isles!
Written by D. H. Lawrence | Create an image from this poem

Whales Weep Not!

 They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains
the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.

All the whales in the wider deeps, hot are they, as they urge
on and on, and dive beneath the icebergs.
The right whales, the sperm-whales, the hammer-heads, the killers
there they blow, there they blow, hot wild white breath out of
 the sea!

And they rock, and they rock, through the sensual ageless ages
on the depths of the seven seas,
and through the salt they reel with drunk delight
and in the tropics tremble they with love
and roll with massive, strong desire, like gods.
Then the great bull lies up against his bride
in the blue deep bed of the sea,
as mountain pressing on mountain, in the zest of life:
and out of the inward roaring of the inner red ocean of whale-blood
the long tip reaches strong, intense, like the maelstrom-tip, and
 comes to rest
in the clasp and the soft, wild clutch of a she-whale's
 fathomless body.

And over the bridge of the whale's strong phallus, linking the
 wonder of whales
the burning archangels under the sea keep passing, back and
 forth,
keep passing, archangels of bliss
from him to her, from her to him, great Cherubim
that wait on whales in mid-ocean, suspended in the waves of the
 sea
great heaven of whales in the waters, old hierarchies.

And enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale-
 tender young
and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters of
 the beginning and the end.

And bull-whales gather their women and whale-calves in a ring
when danger threatens, on the surface of the ceaseless flood
and range themselves like great fierce Seraphim facing the threat
encircling their huddled monsters of love.
And all this happens in the sea, in the salt
where God is also love, but without words:
and Aphrodite is the wife of whales
most happy, happy she!

and Venus among the fishes skips and is a she-dolphin
she is the gay, delighted porpoise sporting with love and the sea
she is the female tunny-fish, round and happy among the males
and dense with happy blood, dark rainbow bliss in the sea.
Written by Rafael Guillen | Create an image from this poem

El Cafetal

 I came with the rising sun and I've brought
nothing but two eyes, all I have,
simply two eyes, for the harvest
of grief that's hidden in this jungle
like the coffee shrubs. Fewer,
but they fling themselves upwards, untouchable,
are the trees that invidiously shut out
the light from this overwhelming indigence.
With my machete I go through the paths
of the cafetal.

Intricate paths
where the tamags lies in wait, sunk
in the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics,
the carnal luxury that gleams
in the eyes of the Creole overseer; sinuous
paths between junipers and avocados
where human thought, cowed
since before the white man, has never
found any other light than the well
of Quich; blind; drowning in itself.
Picking berries, the guanacos
hope only for a snort to free them
from the cafetal.

Through the humid shade beneath
the giant ceibas, Indian women
in all colors crawl like ants, one
behind the other, with the load balanced
on a waking sleep. They don't exist. They've never been born
and still they are dying daily, rubbed raw,
turned to wet earth with the plantation,
hunkered for days in the road to watch over the man
eternally blasted on booze, as good as dead
from one rain to the next, under the shrubs
of the cafetal.

The population has disappeared
into the coffee bean, and a tide of white lightning
seeps in to cover them. I stretch out a hand, pluck
the red berry, submit it to the test
of water, scrub it, wait for the fermentation
of the sweet pulp to release the bean.
How many centuries, now? How much misery
does it cost to become a man? How much mourning?
With a few strokes of the rake, the stripped bean
dries in the sun. It crackles, and I feel it
under my feet. Eternal drying shed
of the cafetal!

Backwash of consciousness,
soul sown with corn-mush and corn cobs,
blood stained with the black native dye.
Man below. Above, the volcanos.
Guatemala throws me to my knees
while every afternoon, with rain and thunder,
Tohil the Powerful lashes
this newly-arrived back. Lamentation
is the vegetal murmur, tender
of the cafetal.

Glossary:

Cafetal: a coffee plantation
tamag?s: a venomous serpent 
guanaco: a pack animal, used insultingly to indicate the native laborers
ceiba: a tall tropical hardwood tree
Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

The Song Of The Camp-Fire

 Heed me, feed me, I am hungry, I am red-tongued with desire;
Boughs of balsam, slabs of cedar, gummy fagots of the pine,
Heap them on me, let me hug them to my eager heart of fire,
Roaring, soaring up to heaven as a symbol and a sign.
Bring me knots of sunny maple, silver birch and tamarack;
Leaping, sweeping, I will lap them with my ardent wings of flame;
I will kindle them to glory, I will beat the darkness back;
Streaming, gleaming, I will goad them to my glory and my fame.
Bring me gnarly limbs of live-oak, aid me in my frenzied fight;
Strips of iron-wood, scaly blue-gum, writhing redly in my hold;
With my lunge of lurid lances, with my whips that flail the night,
They will burgeon into beauty, they will foliate in gold.
Let me star the dim sierras, stab with light the inland seas;
Roaming wind and roaring darkness! seek no mercy at my hands;
I will mock the marly heavens, lamp the purple prairies,
I will flaunt my deathless banners down the far, unhouseled lands.
In the vast and vaulted pine-gloom where the pillared forests frown,
By the sullen, bestial rivers running where God only knows,
On the starlit coral beaches when the combers thunder down,
In the death-spell of the barrens, in the shudder of the snows;
In a blazing belt of triumph from the palm-leaf to the pine,
As a symbol of defiance lo! the wilderness I span;
And my beacons burn exultant as an everlasting sign
Of unending domination, of the mastery of Man;
I, the Life, the fierce Uplifter, I that weaned him from the mire;
I, the angel and the devil, I, the tyrant and the slave;
I, the Spirit of the Struggle; I, the mighty God of Fire;
I, the Maker and Destroyer; I, the Giver and the Grave.

II

Gather round me, boy and grey-beard, frontiersman of every kind.
Few are you, and far and lonely, yet an army forms behind:
By your camp-fires shall they know you, ashes scattered to the wind.

Peer into my heart of solace, break your bannock at my blaze;
Smoking, stretched in lazy shelter, build your castles as you gaze;
Or, it may be, deep in dreaming, think of dim, unhappy days.

Let my warmth and glow caress you, for your trails are grim and hard;
Let my arms of comfort press you, hunger-hewn and battle-scarred:
O my lovers! how I bless you with your lives so madly marred!

For you seek the silent spaces, and their secret lore you glean:
For you win the savage races, and the brutish Wild you wean;
And I gladden desert places, where camp-fire has never been.

From the Pole unto the Tropics is there trail ye have not dared?
And because you hold death lightly, so by death shall you be spared,
(As the sages of the ages in their pages have declared).

On the roaring Arkilinik in a leaky bark canoe;
Up the cloud of Mount McKinley, where the avalanche leaps through;
In the furnace of Death Valley, when the mirage glimmers blue.

Now a smudge of wiry willows on the weary Kuskoquim;
Now a flare of gummy pine-knots where Vancouver's scaur is grim;
Now a gleam of sunny ceiba, when the Cuban beaches dim.

Always, always God's Great Open: lo! I burn with keener light
In the corridors of silence, in the vestibules of night;
'Mid the ferns and grasses gleaming, was there ever gem so bright?

Not for weaklings, not for women, like my brother of the hearth;
Ring your songs of wrath around me, I was made for manful mirth,
In the lusty, gusty greatness, on the bald spots of the earth.

Men, my masters! men, my lovers! ye have fought and ye have bled;
Gather round my ruddy embers, softly glowing is my bed;
By my heart of solace dreaming, rest ye and be comforted!

III

I am dying, O my masters! by my fitful flame ye sleep;
 My purple plumes of glory droop forlorn.
Grey ashes choke and cloak me, and above the pines there creep
 The stealthy silver moccasins of morn.
There comes a countless army, it's the Legion of the Light;
 It tramps in gleaming triumph round the world;
And before its jewelled lances all the shadows of the night
 Back in to abysmal darknesses are hurled.

Leap to life again, my lovers! ye must toil and never tire;
 The day of daring, doing, brightens clear,
When the bed of spicy cedar and the jovial camp-fire
 Must only be a memory of cheer.
There is hope and golden promise in the vast portentous dawn;
 There is glamour in the glad, effluent sky:
Go and leave me; I will dream of you and love you when you're gone;
 I have served you, O my masters! let me die.

 A little heap of ashes, grey and sodden by the rain,
 Wind-scattered, blurred and blotted by the snow:
Let that be all to tell of me, and glorious again,
 Ye things of greening gladness, leap and glow!
A black scar in the sunshine by the palm-leaf or the pine,
 Blind to the night and dead to all desire;
Yet oh, of life and uplift what a symbol and a sign!
Yet oh, of power and conquest what a destiny is mine!
A little heap of ashes -- Yea! a miracle divine,
 The foot-print of a god, all-radiant Fire.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things