52 WITH EARTH AND SKY 
of the sky and the wonder of moonlight com- 
mingled, that is the purple aster. 
Here in the desert’s heart and at the crude 
arroyo’s brink where nothing was growing nor 
any green thing gave hint of blossoming, this 
purple aster trimmed its lovely lamps like love 
lights at a casement. What cared this flower 
though the brink of doom was at hand or that 
the desert was at burning noon? It was sweetly 
careless of all this. It was in the bliss of self- 
realization. It was at its sunrise, what cared it 
whose day was hot and sultry as furnace breath? 
Not an imperfectly shaped flower in all the 
cluster. I sat close and looked the blossom 
straight in the face. But it had bloomed for 
God to see. I was an intruder in its room. And 
it watched on, looking only at God. 
And I left it. Did I pluck one flower? Nay, 
friend, I am no vandal. I am a man. Where 
it grew, I left it growing, its purple stars all 
risen and shining. I am a wanderer in the desert: 
it is dweller in the desert but scarcely of it. 
The purple mountains lifted rank on rank 
afar and noble as a noble dream: and the purple 
flowers with watching through many days and 
the remote purple mountains had learned their 
splendor by heart? Who knows? 
I see the solemn purple mountains over the 
drowsy desert now, the light unspeakable of the 
sands and skies now, and the tiny clustering 
purple asters, growing in the desert now. 
