"The Grand Ronde Valley"

The Grand Ronde Valley

Ah, me! I know how like a golden flower

            The Grand Ronde valley lies this August night,

            Locked in by dimpled hills where purple light

Lies wavering. There at the sunset hour

Sink downward, like a rainbow-tinted shower,

            A thousand colored rays, soft, changeful, bright.

            Later the large moon rises, round and white,

And three Blue Mountain pines against it tower,

Lonely and dark. A coyote’s mournful cry

            Sinks from the cañon―whence the river leaps,

            A blade of silver underneath the moon.

Like restful seas the yellow wheat-fields lie,

            Dreamless and still. And while the valley sleeps,

            O hear!―the lullabies that low winds croon.

"The Grand Ronde Valley" as it appears in Ella Higginson's When the Birds Go North Again (1898).