Arctic Gentian.

Beyond the reach of the timberline,

The long trail lifting, lifting,

Past wizened gardens of low gaunt pine,

Crouching out of the great storm's path:

The last tree flees from the arctic wrath,

But on is the white trail lifting.

Cities and rivers and fields beseem

A fantasy, fading, fading,

Lost away in the myth of a dream:

And the wide land reaches beyond our eyes,

A Navajo carpet of strange soft dyes:

Patterned with cities the great web lies,

Woven with fantasies, fading.

Rolls in the tide and the cloud waves toss,

The reach of the long land merging:

Where the still white surges part and cross

The quivering vistas seem to be

Of a lost land under the waves of a sea.

O summit flower, what strange waves toss

Below in the long, long surging!