Of old she called with her lips of song,
She called with her breath of musk
From peaks where the sunlight lingers long,
And the values in the purpled dusk;
She called to the seas with their tides of tang,
To the ships of the far-off fleet,
And they came in the lure of the song she sang,
With their white sails, to her feet.
So, like a mother with bursting breast,
She claimed the brood of the seas,
and the flaming lips of her wild love pressed
Upon them, about her knees;
She crooned them to sleep on her bosom fair,
Where their happy hearts were lain;
And they basked in her smile, above them there
Like their old, warm skies of Spain.
With cheeks of olive and eyes of night,
They laughed in her glad caress,
And she gave them her Land of the Living Light
For their wandering feet to press;
She gave them her Land of the Sun and Shine,
Where the seas and the deserts part;
And they brought their gifts of the fig and vine,
And wound them around her heart.
Yet, oft, in the light of the mellow moons
From the jaspered heavens hung,
'Mid the tinkle of soft Castilian tunes
And bells from the Missions rung,
She dreamed of her bounty brimming o'er
With its largess of field and plain,
And then from the sweep of the sunlit shore
Her fond lips called again.
Again she called, and from far away,
Over desert and mountain keep,
In lands where the wind-swept prairies lay,
And the ice-clasped torrents sleep,
They heard her voice, like a golden chime,
And in dreams they saw her rise
From golden streams in a golden clime
'Neath the blue of faithful skies.
Then forth from the toil of grudging field
And their grinding marts they fled,
While the good ship Argo sailed, new-keeled,
Where the long sea journey led;
And anon through forests and wastes they fared,
Over trackless plain and hill,
And many a blood-stained trail they dared
To the Voice that called them still.
They came, and she dowered with spendthrift hands
The hopes of their wildest dreams;
She flung at their feet the golden sands
That slept in her shining streams—
Saxon and Teuton and Celt that trod
The paths of her treasured springs,
With shoon of silver their feet she shod,
And clothed them in robes of kings.
So hath she called with her lips of song,
Of old, with her breath of musk,
From hills where the sunlight lingers long,
And the vales in the purple dusk;
And so, from her soul's unwearied love,
Rings the voice with its olden thrill—
From the seas below and the skies above,
She is calling, calling still.
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