Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Hopi Sun-Christening

Emma Hawkridge

CHILD,

High aloft you are held to the dawn,

Naked,

To feel the sun’s first rays.

The welcoming god will come,

Leaping

Out of the under-world,

To greet you, to bathe, to engulf you

Child,

Straining the brown arms of your grandmother.

Silent upon the mesa top,

Above a desert of silence,

We, your people, wait

To strip you, earth-strange, to the sun-god,

Child who have lain in the darkness,

Child who shall live in the sun.

Do you see

The lifting of the dusk,

The white line of the dawn,

The yellow coming of light?

Wailing child,

Behold! He has touched you—the Sun!