At noon the gulch walls, hewn in lighter soil, Fell back; and coulees dense with shrub and vine Climbed zigzag to the sharp horizon line, Whence one might choose the pilotage of crows. He labored upward through the noonday doze. Of breathless shade, where plums were turning red In tangled bowers, and grapevines overhead Purpled with fruit to taunt the crawler’s thirst. With little effort Hugh attained the first; The latter bargained sharply ere they sold Their luscious clusters for the hoarded gold Of strength that had so very much to buy. Now, having feasted, it was sweet to lie Beneath a sun-proof canopy; and sleep Came swiftly. Hugh awakened to some deep Star-snuffing well of night. Awhile he lay And wondered what had happened to the day And where he was and what were best to do. But when, fog-like, the drowse dispersed, he knew How from the rim above the plain stretched far To where the evening and the morning are, And that ‘twere better he should crawl by night, Sleep out the glare. With groping hands for sight, Skyward along the broken steep he crawled, And saw at length, immense and purple-walled— Or sensed—the dusky mystery of plain. Gazing aloft, he found the capsized Wain In mid-plunge down the polar steep. Thereto He set his back; and far ahead there grew, As some pale blossom from a darkling root, The star-blanched summit of a lonely butte, And thitherward he dragged his heavy limb.
It seemed naught moved. Time hovered over him, An instant of incipient endeavor. ‘Twas ever thus, and should be thus forever— This groping for the same armful of space, An insubstantial essence of one place, Extentless on a weird frontier of sleep. Sheer deep upon unfathomable deep The flood of dusk bore down without a sound, As ocean on the spirits of the drowned Awakened headlong leagues beneath the light.
So lapsed the drowsy æon of the night— A strangely tensile moment in a trance. And then, as quickened to somnambulance, The heavens, imperceptibly in motion, Were altered as the upward deeps of ocean Diluted with a seepage of the moon. The butte-top, late a gossamer balloon In mid-air tethered hovering, grew down And rooted in a blear expanse of brown, That, lifting slowly with the ebb of night, Took on the harsh solidity of light— And day was on the prairie like a flame.