In light of this week's momentous events in Seattle, I offer Meditation by Curly Fletcher, who also wrote the Strawberry Roan. This is from a book he published in 1931.

MEDITATION

The soft wind sways the whispering grass,
The sun sinks low o'er the Western pass;
As a coyote mingles his dismal howl,
With the sad, sweet notes of a lone hoot owl.

A hawk soars lazily up on high
A speck of black on a crimson sky,
As a nightingale croons his evening song,
A grey wolf slinks through the shawdows long.

The shadows deepen; then rising moon,
With its silvery radiance all too soon
Dispels the darkness and brings to view
The myriad things of the night anew.

A chuckling porcupine wends his way
To his feeding ground, 'ere the break of day;
A mighty stag comes browsing on,
With a graceful doe and a timid fawn.

Then a sadness grips you like a pall
In the silvery gloom where the shadows fall;
Then you wonder why you feel depressed;
Though you are alone, you have not guessed.

"Tis because you are a poacher there,
Unclean, where nature's breast lies bare,
And you would this spot so sweet, so grand,
Might remain untarnished by human hand.

But e'en this spot shall see the day
When it will fall the easy prey,
Of lust and greed, and in the place
Where yon pine sways in supple grace
An axe-scarred stump will stand, instead,
Bowing in shame its branchless head,
And down the rivers will float the spoils,
All helpless victims to human toils.

The drumming grouse will seek in vain
For the cozy coverts to nest again.
The quaking aspens will tremble ashamed
For the towering forests so torn and maimed.
The work of aeons will fall away
To the reaper's stroke in a single day,
Though the future ages may never mend
The scars of greed till the end of end.