The Road to the Spring: Collected Poems of Mary Austin

The Procession of the Pines

407 The Procession of the Pines I wish I knew what the pines are about Marching over the hill, From the wooded gap where the creek comes out To hurry the saws of the mill, Up and up where the cañon leads, With hardly a gap or a stop, The pines keep on in their stately way; But never quite to the top. The quaking aspens are stay-at-homes And flutter their twinkling leaves To the gossip of quiet neighborhoods Which only the wind believes; And round by the foothill coasts are set The evergreen oaks, each one, Like reverend grandsires of afternoons, Taking their ease in the sun; The willows follow the white-foot streams And grow at the water’s will; But ever and always the pines keep on Marching over the hill. Darkly they troop by butte and pass, Riving great rocks for place, And the foremost ones are bent and bowed Like runners stretched in a race. But if I look from the highest peaks, Which never the pines attain, There they go down on the other side And over the hill again. Down where the high walled cañon leads, Into the valleys and out, Still the procession of pines keeps on; 408 But what is it all about? Editor’s Notes AU 465; manuscript noted “Independence Cal.”; two more drafts and a carbon copy. ...