192 
OUT WEST 
But mocking-birds are growing less abundant each season. 
Where once four birds were nesting in the garden, a single 
couple are this year striving to raise their interesting family. 
Enemies to their freedom have arrested normal conditions. I 
would as soon shut up in cages our Southern California sunshine 
as to cage a mocker. No one has a right. They belong to the 
freedom of our Paradise. They are found north only through 
Salinas Valle}" and up the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys 
to Marysville. 
Pasadena, Cal. 
A SONG FOR ARIZONA. 
By THOS. WOOD STEVENS. 
HE kings of the world have waxed and died in nar¬ 
rower states than mine ; 
And realms have risen to rampant power, to sink 
in drear decline, 
That were poor by the measure of m3" wealth—the 
creditors of the brine. 
Across my purple peaks the snows fall scant and 
dry away, 
And the breasts of earth that should be full are 
withered and rimed and grey ; 
For the chill is mine of the dewless night, till the 
barren, aching day. 
I call to my heedless, jeweled sky—the shimmering 
wanton smiles, 
Flinging her bacchant robes of cloud across the 
thirsty miles ; 
And the intimate stars come near in the night to 
bare her mocking wiles. 
I call on his hastening trails the wind, where the mad dust- 
demons glide, 
But he answers me with the sting of a lash and only a pause 
to chide, 
And his forefront sweeps as a gloomy flame where the silence 
stretches wide. 
For I was old when the Younger Sea arose to seek my bed, 
And in my tale ’tis but a night that he and I were wed, 
For in the morn I woke again, and the love of him was dead. 
