C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Virginia Peyton Fauntleroy
Rivals
G
Gray in the west, and a moon.
Dim gleam the lamps of the ended feast
Through the misty dawn of June;
And I turn to watch her go
Swift as the swallows flee,
Side by side with Joaquin Castro,
Heart by heart with me.
In her soft hair’s dusky strands;
Jasmine white is her swelling throat,
And jasmine white her hands.
Ah, the plea of that clinging hand
Through the whirl of that wild waltz tune!
Lost—lost for a league of land,
Lying dark ’neath the sinking moon!
The casa rests on its hard clay floor,
Its red tiles dim in the misty gleam;
Old Pedro Vidal at the door,
And his small eye ranges keen
Over vistas of goodly land—
Brown hills, with wild-oat sweeps between,
Bought with his daughter’s hand.
The wild boughs over the wild streams meet;
And over the swamp flowers musky-breathed,
And the cresses at their feet;
And over the dimpled springs,
Where the deep brown shadows flaunt,
And the heron folds his ivory wings
And waits in his ferny haunt.
Where the gray sage hangs like a smoke,
And the vultures wipe their bloody beaks,
From the feast in the crotchèd oak,—
You are Castro’s, hemming his acres in;
And I his vaquero, who o’er you rove,
Hold wealth he would barter you all to win,—
The wealth of her broad sweet love.
Rides up from her home where the stream-mists hang,
And the cañon sides toss to and fro
The tread of his black mustang—
Half wild, a haughty beast,
Scarce held by the taut-drawn rein;
And a madness leaps into my breast,
And that wild waltz whirls in my brain.
We meet, and the waves glint through the shades;
And we light the morn with long thin gleams,
And wake it with clash of blades.
From some pale crag is borne
The owl’s derisive laugh;
And the gray deer flies, like a shadow of dawn,
From the tide it fain would quaff.
Then away, away, and the far hush rings
With hoof-beat, and chime of spurrñd heel;
And the blue air winds and sings
In the coils from each round gathering strength,
Ere I rise in my saddle for truer throw,
That the rope may spring its serpent length,
And drag from his seat my foe.
Speedily flitting the trail across,
Or a twisted bough in its monk-like cowl
And robe of the long gray moss?
Or the race has frenzied the black’s wild brain?
He rears, to the stout rein gives no heed,
Then backward, backward—curls and mane
Intermingled, necks broken, rider and steed.
She is mine. It was all long years ago:
And at eve, when we sit in our vine-hung door,
She speaks of Joaquin Castro,
How they found him there; and sweet drops start
From sweeter eyes. And who shall know
That the brand of Cain burns red on my heart,
Since the scar was spared my brow?