{
 "id": "henry-van-dyke-jr/sierra-madre",
 "title": "Sierra Madre",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Henry van Dyke Jr.",
 "poet_slug": "henry-van-dyke-jr",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Poems of Henry Van Dyke",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 23,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1920,
  "venue": "The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1920)",
  "note": "Taken from the 1920 collected edition. That is the printing this text comes from, not the poem's first appearance: the volume gathers work published from 1897 onward, and which earlier book or magazine printed this poem first has not been established here.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofhenryvand00vandrich"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/henry-van-dyke-jr_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16229",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16134",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10679",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3525",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9372",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29314",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43094",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofhenryvand00vandrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/buildersotherpoe00vandrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/toilingoffelixan00vandiala",
   "https://archive.org/details/musicotherpoems0000henr_c7v6",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsnowfirstcol00vanduoft",
   "https://archive.org/details/songsoutofdoors0000vand",
   "https://archive.org/details/thyseaisgreatour00vandiala",
   "https://archive.org/details/chosenpoems0000vand"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 28,
  "n_stanzas": 7,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 60,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "O Mother mountains! billowing far to the snow-lands,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Robed in aerial amethyst, silver, and blue,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Why do ye look so proudly down on the lowlands?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What have their groves and gardens to do with you?",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Theirs is the languorous charm of the orange and myrtle,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Theirs are the fruitage and fragrance of Eden of old⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Broad-boughed oaks in the meadows fair and fertile,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dark-leaved orchards gleaming with globes of gold.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "You, in your solitude standing, lofty and lonely,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bear neither garden nor grove on your barren breasts;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Rough is the rock-loving growth of your canyons, and only",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Storm-battered pines and fir-trees cling to your crests.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Why are ye throned so high, and arrayed in splendour",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Richer than all the fields at your feet can claim?",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "What is your right, ye rugged peaks, to the tender",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Queenly promise and pride of the mother-name?",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Answered the mountains, dim in the distance dreaming:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Ours are the forests that treasure the riches of rain;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Ours are the secret springs and the rivulets gleaming",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Silverly down through the manifold bloom of the plain.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "“Vain were the toiling of men in the dust of the dry land,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Vain were the ploughing and planting in waterless fields,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Save for the life-giving currents we send from the sky-land,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Save for the fruit our embrace with the storm-cloud yields.”",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O mother mountains, Madre Sierra, I love you!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rightly you reign o’er the vale that your bounty fills⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Kissed by the sun, or with big, bright stars above you⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I murmur your name and lift up mine eyes to the hills.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}