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   1st Edition

   Prepared for the University of Virginia Library Electronic Text Center.

poetry; fiction; feminine LCSH Bruce Horsfall illustrations grayscale

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Revisions to the electronic version
July 1997 corrector Craig A. Simmons

Added header and TEI.2 tags; parsed SGML tags; created digital images.

etextcenter@virginia.edu. Commercial use prohibited; all usage governed by our Conditions of Use: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/conditions.html

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THE RHYME OF THE PRONGHORNS

   BY MARY AUSTIN

   

This is the tale that the howlers tell
At the end of the hunting weather,
When the quick rain rills
On the bare, burnt hills,
And they talk in the lair together.
Gray coyote and lean gray mate
And little gray cubs that cry
When the wet wind shrills
In the lone, waste hills,
And the rains go roaring by.


N OW this is the law the pronghorn makes
     For himself and the fawn and the doe,
When the rank wild oats are belly-deep,
     And the waning poppies blow:
The young must run at the mother's flank,
     But the bucks they run alone
From the time the old year's horns are cast,
     Till the new year's horns are grown.


And up they go by the tumbled hills
     Where the windy mesas lie,
And the black rock slips from the ruined lips
     Of the craters stark and high;
And far they range, and fast they run;
     But the howlers mark them go.
Oh, still and fleet are the padding feet,
     And many a trick we know!

   

We bay them down from the feeding-ground,
     We fend them back from the pool,
And ever we raise the hunting howl
     When the sun-warmed mesas cool.
And well they need both wind and speed
     When the gray coyote pack,
By twos and threes from the hidden hills,
     Breathes hot on the pronghorn's track.


Oh, the red hawk knows where the gophers run,
     The mice hear the elf-owl call,
The badger hunts for the squirrel hills;
     But man he hunts for us all.
And he has taken the pronghorn doe
     And the buck with the gun and the snare;
He has set him a price on the howler's skin,
     And tracked us home to the lair.

   

And now we lurk in the scrub by day,
     And now we slink in the dark;
And only the foolish rabbits quake,
     And only the squirrels hark.
And we must bark at the mesa moon,
     And round by the sheep-folds prowl,
With never a kill that is worth our skill,
     To raise at our hunting howl.
And we must eat of the sun-dried meat
     Of the herds when the pastures fail,
And we who were lords of the mesa-lands
     Must skulk from the white man's trail.


Gray coyote and lean gray mate
And little gray cubs that bark,
Hearing the tale that their fathers tell
Up in the lair in the dark.

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