The lean coyote, prowler of the night, <br />Slips to his rocky fastnesses, <br />Jack-rabbits noiselessly shuttle among the sage-brush, <br />And from the castellated cliffs, <br />Rock-ravens launch their proud black sails upon the day. <br />The wild horses troop back to their pastures. <br /> <br />The poplar-trees watch beside the irrigation-ditches. <br />Orioles, whose nests sway in the cotton-wood trees by the ditch-side, begin to twitter. <br />All shy things, breathless, watch <br />The thin white skirts of dawn, <br />The dancer of the sky, <br />Who trips daintily down the mountain-side <br />Emptying her crystal chalice…. <br />And a red-bird, dipped in sunrise, cracks from a poplar's top <br />His exultant whip above a silver world.<br /><br />Charles Erskine Scott Wood<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sunrise-30/
