The Plains of Mexico

From the New York Tribune, November 9, 1912.
By C. Fox Smith.
 

 There’s a country wide and weary, and a scorching sun looks down
 On the thirsty cattle ranges and a queer old Spanish town,
 And it’s there my heart goes roving by the trails I used to know;
 Dusty trails by camps deserted where the tinkling mule trains go,
 On the sleepy sunlit ranges and the plains of Mexico.
 
 Is it only looking backward that the past seems now so fair?
 Was the sun then somehow brighter, was there something in the air
 Made no day seem ever weary, never hour that went too slow,
 When we rode the dusty ranges on the plains of Mexico?
 
 Then the long, hot, scented evenings, and the fiddle’s squeaky tune,
 When we danced with Spanish lasses underneath the golden moon,
 Girls with names all slow and splendid, hot as fire and cold as snow,
 In the spicy summer night time on the plains of Mexico.
 
 I am growing tired and lonely, and the town is dull and strange—
 I am restless for the open sky and wandering wings that range;
 I will get me forth a-roving, I will get me out and go,
 But no more, no more my road is to the plains of Mexico.
 
 For the sun is on the plateau, and the dusty trails go down
 By the same old cactus hedges to the sleepy Spanish town,
 But I’ll never find my comrade that I lost there long ago,
 Never, never more (O, lad I loved loved and left a-lying low!)
 Where the coward bullet took him on the plains of Mexico.