IRLF

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

CERF LIBRARY

PRESENTED BY

REBECCA CERF *O2

IN THE NAMES OF

CHARLOTTE CERF '95

MARCEL E. CERF '97

BARRY CERF '02

1— Oregon, 1868. « -London, 1870.

3— Cuba, 1876.

4— San Francisco, 1887.

3 — Louisville, Ky., 1897. «— In the Sierras, 1882.

The Complete

IOETICA! WORKS

or

Joaquin

Might*

Revised Edition

(With IU«.tratioi

SAN FRAN

I oo<

RAY

rporatedj

1904

The Complete

POETICAL WORttS

or

Joaquin

THe Hight;

Revised Edition

(With Illustrations)

SAN FRANCISCO THE WHITAHER CgL RAY COMPANY

(Incorporated)

1904

Copyright, 1897

by THE WHITAKER & RAY CO.

Copyright, 1902

by THE WHITAKER & RAY CO.

All Rights Reserved

vioi

TO

COLLIS P. HUNTINGTON,

WHO WAS FIRST TO LEAD THE STEEL-SHOD CAVALRY OF CON QUEST THROUGH THE SlERRAS TO THE SEA OF SEAS, AND WHO HAS DONE THE .GREATER WEST AND SOUTH MORE EN DURING GOOD THAN ANY OTHER LIVING MAN, I DKDICATK THIS FINAL REVISION OF MY COMPLETE POEMS.

MILLER.

THE RIGHTS, CALIFORNIA, 1897.

18567324

PKEFACE.

IN LOOKING OVER MY NOTES at the end of this second edition, wherein I have tried to answer and even anticipate the eager questions of young poets, I find I may have said too much ; given too much encouragement, too little caution.

Let me qualify all I have set down in this book, by saying bluntly, that the poet's trade is the hardest trade of all trades in the world ; his compensation is the poorest ; his triumphs the fewest ; not one in ten thousand can earn his bread at it.

Sir Walter Besant is being laughed at for having advised that a man should secure a competence before writing books. But Sir Walter was right. And the novelist, as a rule, receives fifty dollars to the poet's one.

Another thing to be taken into account before venturing up the stormy steeps of song, poets, like priests or preachers, are not in the line of preferment, either at the polls or at the White House.

Suppose that James Whitcomb Riley should ask to be Governor, or I to be sent to the beautiful land of the Rising Sun ! See? Yet we have managed our affairs fairly well, made fortune and fair name out of nothing, — have practically made bricks without straw. Yet, while there is no more danger of our asking such preferment than there is of our receiving it, you see clearly that the poet must stand alone.

Again, the poet is, must be, as sensitive as a child, and his work wears and wears till his nerves are so threadbare that he dares not take up a newspaper lest he may see something ugly.

Let me say again, frankly, Don't try to be a poet if you can possibly help it. But if you must, you must ; and there will always be plenty who must. My Notes are for those who must. But better be a first-rate plowman than a second-rate poet, so far as fortune, health, and content are concerned. A Burns, of course, can be first at both .

Born a rover and a lover, I have wandered farther, perhaps, than any man living, for my poetry opened all doors and made travel a delight. Then I was paid im mensely for my prose. But if I had depended on poetry, I should have stayed at home, and half starved. Take care !

I traveled so much all my life till late years, that I had to hastily feed my corn out, weed or flower, green or ripe corn, from the four quarters of the world, as I ran. Hence the need of this revision. And yet, even now, after all my cutting and care, I am far from satisfied, and can commend to my lovers only the few last poems in the book. True, the earlier ones have color and clime, and perfume of wood or waste, and I am not ungrateful for the triends they brought me, but I fear they fall short of the large eternal lesson which the seer is born to teach — the vision of worlds beyond. I have tried to mend this fault in my later work ; to give my new poems not only body, but soul.

The purpose here, outside of revising entirely and gathering into this book such

v

VI PREFACE.

poems as are to be preserved, is to blaze some trees along the trail ; a note of warn ing here, a camp-fire there, the experience of a pioneer ; so that those who come after may not falter or go astray in the wilderness that darkens along the foothills of Olympus. George Sand said all Americans are poets. Certainly all American writers are poets, or, as a rule, begin as such. True, many of our great lawyers and jurists began by writing poetry, like Blackstone. Perhaps our greatest poets at heart never took the world into confidence at all in the maturity of power, but kept a cold and severe visage for all men, and went to their graves as practical merchants, lawyers, doctors, and so on, with only one little corner of the heart for flowers and a bird all their own. And what pleasure to write for such readers !

A great land without a great literature, were such a thing possible, must be to the end worse than spouseless. Jerusalem was ever but a small place. You can cover her on the map of the world with a pin's head, yet is she more than all the Babylons that have been. She loved, and devoutly loved, the sublime and the beau tiful. From this love her poets were born. The cedars of Lebanon, the lilies-of-the- valley, these were the first letters of their alphabet. And as there cannot be a great land on the page of history without first a great literature, so there cannot be a great literature without first a deep, broad, devout, and loving religion.

The great poet of this great land of ours, these westmost mountains and the ulti mate sea bank, so like the olive-set Syrian hills, will come when we, too, have learned to love, and religiously love, the sublime and the beautiful.

Why not permit the coming poet to take up his work in the morning of life, where it is now laid down in the twilight of one who is going away?

To this end let us divest the prophets of all that mystery and special evil and special good with which ignorance and superstition have garmented them. They were ever plain men. They were ever human ; and the more human, the broader, richer, deeper, their divine voices.

Is there such a thing as genius, inspiration? I think there is no such thing. Rather let us call it a devout and all-pervading love of the sublime, the beautiful, and the good ; the never-questioning conviction that there is nothing in this world that is not beautiful or trying to be beautiful. "And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."

Genius is love that is born of this truth, leading ever by plain and simple ways, and true toil and care, as all nature toils and cares, as God toils and cares ; that is all. I write this down for those who may come after. We shall have higher results from the plain, sweet truth.

And when your great poet comes, as he surely will, do not mock because he goes apart to meditate. Ever from the first the prophets went up into the mountains to pray. A poet need not be "eccentric " if he turn aside from getting and getting. In truth, he would be no real poet if he did not. A good poet need not be a bad man. He may not be a better man than yourself, but he is not necessarily worse for being a poet. Nor is individuality eccentricity. I repeat, he is merely a plain, sincere human being in love with the beautiful world "and all that is His."

Byron, in a letter to Moore, says, "I read Spenser half the time, as I write Childe Harold, in order to keep the measure and melody in my brain." Burns says, "I keep as many as half a dozen poems maturing in my mind at the same time, and

PREFACE. Vll

write them down when matured and I find time." These and like little side-lights from other great poets have done me so much good that I decided to tell by way of foot-notes so much of my own methods of work as may possibly light the path of some discouraged Keats of coming days. For the greater the poet, the greater his sensibility, and the greater the sensibility, the greater his sufferings in the somber foothill forests of Parnassus.

Also, for the help and good of the poets who may take up my work where I lay it down, divested of all folly and falsehood with which it has been so cruelly garmented from the first, I have written the story, source, purpose of my poems, so far as may be of use and interest. The photographs are put in to show that, whatever there may be in eccentricity of dress and manner, I dressed and bore myself as others, and kept quietly and plainly along about my work like other men mainly.

The first thing of mine in print was the valedictory class poem, Columbia College, Eugene, Oregon, 1859. Oregon, settled by missionaries, was a great place for schools from the first. At this date, Columbia College, the germ of the University, had many students from California, and was famous as an educational center. Divest the mind at once of the idea that the schools of Oregon were in the least inferior to the best in the world. I have never since found such determined students and om nivorous readers. We had all the books and none of the follies of great centers.

I had been writing, or trying to write, since a lad. My two brothers and my sister were at my side, our home with our parents, and we lived entirely to ourselves. We were all school teachers when not at college. In 1861 my elder brother and I were admitted to practice law, under George H. Williams, afterwards Attorney- General under President Grant. Brother went at once to the war, I to the gold mines.

My first act there came near costing my life, and cost me, through snow-blind ness, the best use of my eyes from that time forth. The agony of snow-blindness is unutterable ; the hurt irreparable. In those days men never murmured nor ad mitted themselves put at disadvantage. I gave up the law for the time and laid hand to other things ; but here is a paragraph from the February (1897) Oregon Teacher, telling how this calamity came about : —

"The first man I met among the fevered crowd was Oregon's poet, my old schoolmate, Joaquin Miller. His blue eyes sparkled with kindly greeting, and as I took his hand I knew by its quickening pulse and tightened clasp that he, too, was sharing in the excitement of the gold-hunter. He was then in the first flush of manhood, with buoyant spirits, untiring energy, and among a race of hardy pio neers, the bravest of the brave. He possessed more than ordinary talent, and looked forward with hope to the battle of life, expecting to reap his share of its hon ors and rewards. For years he was foremost in every desperate enterprise, — crossing snow-capped mountains, swollen rivers, and facing hostile Indians. When snow fell fifteen feet on Florence Mountain, and hundreds were penned in camp without a word from wives, children, and loved ones at home, he said, * Boys, I will bring your letters from Lewiston.' Afoot and alone, without a trail, he crossed the moun tain tops, the dangerous streams, the wintry desert of Camas Prairie, fighting back the hungry mountain wolves, and returned bending beneath his load of loving mes sages from home. One day he was found, in defense of the weak, facing the pistol

PREFACE.

or bowie-knife of the desperado ; and the next day he was washing the clothes and smoothing the pillow of a sick comrade. We all loved him, but we were not men who wrote for the newspaper or magazine, and his acts of heroism and kindness were unchronicled, save in the hearts of those who knew him in those times and under those trying circumstances."

In the heart of the then unknown and unnamed Idaho (Ida/i-ho) and Montana, gold-dust was as wheat in harvest-time. I and another, born to the saddle, formed an express line, and carried letters in from the Oregon River and gold-dust out,— gold- dust by the horse-load after horse-load, till we earned all the gold we wanted. Such rides ! and each alone, Indians holding the plunging horses ready for us at relays. I had lived with, and knew, trusted, the red men, and was never betrayed. Those matchless night-rides under the stars, dashing into the Orient doors of dawn before me as the sun burst through the shining mountain pass,— this brought my love of song to the surface. And now, having earned fortune, I traveled Mexico, South America, I had resolved as I rode to set these unwritten lands with the banner of song.

I wrote much as I traveled, but never kept my verses, once published. I thought, and still hold, that, under right conditions, and among a right people, — and these mighty American people are perhaps more nearly right than any other that have yet been,— anything in literature that is worth preserving will preserve itself. As none of my verses, with this following exception, have come down on the river of Time, it is safe to say that nothing of all I wrote could serve any purpose except to feed foolish curiosity. I give the following place, written years after the college valedic tory, not only because it is right in spirit, but because it shows how old, how very old, I was as a boy, and how sad at heart over the cruelties of man to man. This was my first poem printed after the valedictory, about 1866, and has been drifting around ever since.

IS IT WORTH WHILE?

Is it worth while that we jostle a brother

Bearing his load on the rough road of life?

Is it worth while that we jeer at each other

In blackness of heart?— that we war to the knife? God pity us all in our pitiful strife.

God pity us all as we jostle each other ;

God pardon us all for the triumphs we feel

When a fellow goes down ; poor, heart-broken brother, Pierced to the heart ; words are keener than steel, And mightier far for woe or for weal.

Were it not well in this brief little journey,

On over the isthmus, down into the tide, That we give him a fish instead of a serpent,

PREFACE. IX

Ere folding the hands to be and abide For ever and aye in dust at his side?

Look at the roses saluting each other ;

Look at the herds all at peace on the plain —

Man, and man only, makes war on his brother, And dotes in his heart on his peril and pain — Shamed by the brutes that go down on the plain.

Why should we envy a moment of pleasure

Some poor fellow-mortal has wrung from it all?

Oh ! could you look into his life's broken measure — Look at the dregs — at the wormwood and gall — Look at his heart hung with crape like a pall —

Look at the skeletons down by his hearthstone — Look at his cares in their merciless sway, —

I know you would go and say tenderly, lowly, Brother, — my brother, for aye and a day, — Lo ! Lethe is washing the blackness away.

Home again in Oregon, I had a little newspaper in the interest of Peace, my Quaker father's creed, and opposing the invasion of States, the paper was sup pressed for alleged treason. Poor once more, broken in heart and health, the gold mines again; then a campaign against an insurrection of savages; then elected Judge ; and once more my face to books, night and day, as at school.

Had I melted into my surroundings, instead of reading and writing continually, life had not been so dismal ; but I lived among the stars, an abstemious ghost. Then "Specimens," a thin book of verse, and some laughed, and political and personal foes all up and down the land derided. This made me more determined, and the next year " Joaquin et al.," a book of 124 pages, resulted. Bret Harte, of the Overland, behaved bravely ; but, as a rule, ' ' Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?"

The first little book has not preserved itself to me, but from a London pirated copy of the second one I find that it makes up about half of my first book in London ; the songs my heart had sung as I galloped alone under the stars of Idaho years before.

But my health and eyes had failed again ; besides, everything was at sixes and sevens, and, being a "cold-water man," and a sort of preacher and teacher on all political occasions, I was so unpopular, that when I asked a place on the Supreme Bench at the convention, I was derisively told, "Better stick to poetry." Three months later, September 1, 1870, 1 was kneeling at the grave of Burns. I really expected to die there, in the land of my fathers, I was so broken and ill.

PREFACE.

May I proudly admit that I had sought a place on the Supreme Bench in order that I might the more closely * ' stick to poetry " ? I have a serious purpose in saying this. Was Lowell a bad diplomat because he was a good poet? Was Gladstone less great because of his three hundred books and pamphlets? The truth is, there never was, never will be, a great general, judge, lawyer, anything, without being, at heart at least, a great poet. Then let not our conventions, presidents, governors, despise the young poet who does seek expression. We have plenty of lawyers, judges, silent great men of all sorts ; yet the land is songless. Had my laudable ambition, not been despised, how much better I might have sung, who shall say?

Let us quote a few lines from the last pages of my little book, published before setting out. They will show, not poetry perhaps, but resignation, a belief in im mortality, a hope to be read in Europe, and a singularly early desire to not be formally buried, but to pass in clouds and ashes.

ULTIME.

Had I been content to live on the leafy borders of the scene, Communing with neglected dwellers of the fern-grown glen,

And glorious storm-stained peaks, with cloud-knit sheen,

And sullen iron brows, and belts of boundless green, A peaceful, flowery path, content I might have trod,

And caroled melodies that might have been Read with love and a sweet delight. But I kiss the rod. I have done as best I knew. The rest is with my God.

Come forward here to me, ye who have a fear of death, Come down, far down, even to the dark waves' rim.

And take my hand, and feel my calm, low breath ; How peaceful all ! How still and sweet ! The sight is dim, And dreamy as a distant sea. And melodies do swim

Around us here as a far-off vesper's holy hymn. This is Death. With folded hands I wait and welcome him ;

And yet a few, some few, were kind. I would live and so be known,

That their sweet deeds might be as bread on waters thrown.

I go, I know not where, but know I shall not die, And know I shall be gainer going to that somewhere ;

For in that hereafter, afar beyond the bended sky, Bread and butter will not figure in the bill of fare, Nor will the soul be judged by what the flesh may wear.

But with all my time my own, once in the dapple skies, I will collect my fancies now floating in the air,

And arrange them, a jewel set, that in a show-case lies,

And when you come will show you them in a sweet surprise.

PREFACE. XI

It was my boy-ambition to be read beyond the brine, But this, you know, was when life looked fair and tall,

Erewhile this occidental rim was all my dream's confine, And now at last I make no claim to be read at all, And write with this wild hope, and even that is small,

That when the last pick-ax lies rusting in the ravine, And its green bent hillsides echo the shepherd's call,

Some curious wight will thumb this through, saying, "Well, I ween

He was not a poet, but yet, and yet, he might have been."

But to conclude. Do not stick me down in the cold, wet mud,

As if I wished to hide, or was ashamed of what I had done, Or my friends believed me born of slime, with torpid blood.

No, when this the first short quarter of my life is run,

Let me ascend in clouds of smoke up to the sun. And as for these lines, they are a rough, wildwood bouquet,

Plucked from my mountains in the dusk of life, as one Without taste or time to select, or put in good array, Grasps at once rose, leaf, brier, on the brink, and hastes away.

Fault may be found, as with Hawthorne when he gathered up his Tales, that all I have written is not here. Let me answer, with him, that all I wish to answer for is here. The author must be the sole judge as to what belongs to the public and what to the flames. Much that I have written has been on trial for many years. The honest, wise old world of to-day is a fairly safe jury. While it is true the poet must lead rather than be led, yet must he lead pleasantly, patiently, or he may not lead at all. So that which the world let drop out of sight as the years surged by, I have, as a rule, not cared to introduce a second time.

For example, take the lines written on the dead millionaire of New York. There were perhaps a dozen verses at first, but the world found use for and kept before it only the two following : —

The gold that with the sunlight lies

In bursting heaps at dawn, The silver spilling from the skies

At night to walk upon, The diamonds gleaming in the dew, He never saw, he never knew.

He got some gold, dug from the mud,

Some silver, crushed frori stones ; But the gold was red with dead men's blood,

The silver, black with groans ; And when he died he moaned aloud, "They '11 make no pocket in my shroud."

Xll PREFACE.

The antithesis of this ugly truth in poetry, the lines to Peter Cooper's memory, also shared the same fate. The world did not want all I had to say of this gentle old man, and kept only the three little verses : —

Honor and glory for evermore

To this great man gone to rest ; Peace on the dim Plutonian shore ;

Rest in the land of the blest.

I reckon him greater than any man

That ever drew sword in war ; Nobler, better, than king or khan,

Better, wiser, by far.

Aye, wisest he in this whole wide land

Of hoarding till bent and gray ; For all you can hold in your cold, dead hand

Is what you have given away.

May I, an old teacher, in conclusion, lay down a lesson or two for the young in letters? After the grave of Burns, then a month at Byron's tomb, then Schiller, Goethe ; before battle-fields. Heed this. The poet must be loyal, loyal not only to his God and his country, but loyal, loving, to the great masters who have nourished him.

This devotion to the masters led me to first set foot in London, near White- chapel, where Bayard Taylor had lived ; although I went at once to the Abbey. Then I lived at Camber well, because Browning was born there ; then at Hemming- ford Road, because Tom Hood died there.

A thin little book now, called "Pacific Poems," and my hands were empty be fore it was out, for I could not find a publisher. One hundred were printed, bear ing the name of the printer as publisher. What fortune ! With the press notices in hand, I now went boldly to the most aristocratic publisher in London.

One word as to the choice of theme. First, let it be new. The world has no need of two Goethes, or even a second Shakespeare, were he possible. We are all too ready to choose some lurid battle theme or exalted subject. Exalt your theme, rather than ask your theme to exalt you. Braver and better to celebrate the lowly and forgiving grasses underfoot than the stately cedars and sequoias overhead. They can speak for themselves. It has been scornfully said that all my subjects are of the low or savage. It might have been as truly said that some of my heroes and heroines, as Riel and Sophia Petrowska, died on the scaffold. But believe me, the people of heart are the unfortunate. How unfortunate that man who never knew misfortune ! And, thank God, the heart of the world is with the unfortunate ! There never yet has been a great poem written of a rich man or gross. And I glory in the fact that I never celebrated war or warriors. Thrilling as are war themes, you will not find one, purposely, in all my books. If you would have the heart of the world with you, put heart in your work, taking care that you do not try to pass

PREFACE. Xlll

brass for gold. They are much alike to look upon, but only the ignorant can be de ceived.

A true seer will see that which is before him, and about him, in and of his own land and life. " The eyes of the fool are in the ends of the earth. " The real and reasonable should best inspire us. I do not care to explore impossible hells with either dolorous Dante or majestic Milton. I do not believe there are any such places, save as we make them in our own minds. Indeed, life would be fearful could I be made to believe that the heart of this beautiful globe is filled with human beings writhing in eternal torments under my feet. Such books can do no good ; and the only excuse for any book is the pleasure it can give and the good it can do.

Let me again invoke you, be loyal to your craft, not only to your craft, but to your fellow-scribes. To let envy lure you to leer at even the humblest of them is to admit yourself beaten ; to admit yourself to be one of the thousand failures betray ing the one success. Braver it were to knife in the back a holy man at prayer. I plead for something more than the individual here. I plead for the entire Republic. To not have a glorious literature of our own is to be another Nineveh, Babylon, Turkey. Nothing ever has paid, nothing ever will pay, a nation like poetry. How many millions have we paid, are still paying, bleak and rocky little Scotland to behold the land of Burns? Byron led the world to scatter its gold through the ruins of Italy, where he had mused and sung, and Italy was rebuilt. Greece sur vived a thousand years on the melodies of her mighty dead.

Finally, use the briefest little bits of baby words at hand. Write this down in red, and remember.

Shall we ever have an American literature? Yes, when we leave sound and words to the winds. American science has swept time and space aside. American science dashes along at fifty, sixty miles an hour ; but American literature still lumbers along in the old-fashioned English stage-coach at ten miles an hour ; and sometimes with a red-coated outrider blowing a horn. We must leave all this behind us. We have not time for words. A man who uses a great, big, sounding word, when a short one will do, is to that extent a robber of time. A jewel that depends greatly on its setting is not a great jewel. When the Messiah of American literature comes, he will come singing, so far as may be, in words of one syllable.

JOAQUIN MILLER. THE EIGHTS, DIMOND, CALIFORNIA, June 1, 1902.

N. B. — This is the only authorized and complete collection of my poems. A Toronto publisher pirated my first book from London, a Boston house did the same, then a Chicago publisher put out two flashily bound volumes, but the honest old world refused to patronize such frauds, and I never once appealed to the courts.

j. M.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE

SONGS OF THE SIERRAS 1

THE ARIZONIAN 1

WITH WALKER IN NICARAGUA 9

THE TALE OF THE TALL ALCALDE 19

THE LAST TASCHASTAS 31

JOAQUIN MURIETTA 36

INA 41

EVEN So 50

MYRRH 55

KIT CARSON'S RIDE 57

WHEN LITTLE SISTER CAME 61

OLIVE LEAVES 63

AT BETHLEHEM 63

' ' LA NOTTE " 63

IN PALESTINE 63

BEYOND JORDAN 64

FAITH 64

HOPE 64

CHARITY 65

THE LAST SUPPER 66

A SONG FOR PEACE 66

SONGS OF THE SUNLANDS 69

THE SEA OF FIRE 69

ISLES OF THE AMAZONS 82

AN INDIAN SUMMER 109

FROM SEA TO SEA 113

A SONG OF THE SOUTH 116

THE SHIP IN THE DESERT 139

PICTURES 163

THE SIERRAS FROM THE SEA 163

WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 164

XT

CONTENTS.

PICTURE OF A BULL 165

VAQUERO 166

IN THE GEEAT EMERALD LAND 166

PILGRIMS OF THE PLAINS 167

THE HEROES OF MY WEST 169

ENGLAND 170

LONDON 170

ST. PAUL'S 171

WESTMINSTER ABBEY 171

AT LORD BYRON'S TOMB 171

To REST AT LAST 172

BEFORE CORTEZ CAME 173

IN THE SIERRAS 174

PROPHECY * 174

QUESTION 175

THOMAS OF TIGRE 176

MRS. FRANK LESLIE 176

THE POET 177

DYSPEPTIC 177

VALE ! AMERICA 179

THE QUEST OF LOVE 182

AFRICA 183

^ CROSSING THE PLAINS 184

THE MEN OF FORTY-NINE 185

HEROES OF AMERICA 186

ATTILA'S THRONE : TORCELLO 186

^ WESTWARD Ho ! 187

VENICE 188

A HAILSTORM IN VENICE 189

SANTA MARIA : TORCELLO 189

CARMEN 1^

To THE JERSEY LILY 190

IN A GONDOLA 191

LATER POEMS 193

THE GOLD THAT GREW BY SHASTA TOWN 193

THE Sioux CHIEF'S DAUGHTER . 194

To THE CZAR I96

To RUSSIA. . 197

CONTENTS. XV11

To RACHEL IN RUSSIA 197

THE BRAVEST BATTLE 198

RIEL, THE REBEL 198

A CHRISTMAS EVE IN CUBA 199

COMANCHE 200

THE SOLDIERS' HOME, WASHINGTON 201

OLIVE 203

THE BATTLE FLAG AT SHENANDOAH 203

THE LOST REGIMENT 204

CUSTER 206

THE WORLD is A BETTER WORLD 206

OUTSIDE OP CHURCH 206

DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI AT NlGHT 206

A NUBIAN FACE ON THE NILE 206

LA EXPOSICION : NEW ORLEANS 207

LINCOLN PARK 207

THE RIVER OF REST 207

THE NEW PRESIDENT 207

MONTGOMERY AT QUEBEC 208

BY THE BALBOA SEAS 208

MAGNOLIA BLOSSOMS 208

CALIFORNIA'S CHRISTMAS 208

THOSE PERILOUS SPANISH EYES 209

NEWPORT NEWS 209

THE COMING OF SPRING 209

OUR HEROES OF TO-DAY 210

BY THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI 211

HER PICTURE 211

DROWNED 212

AFTER THE BATTLE 213

BY THE PACIFIC OCEAN 213

CHRISTMAS BY THE GREAT RIVER 214

GRANT AT SHILOH 214

TWILIGHT AT THE HIGHTS 215

ARBOR DAY 215

PETER COOPER 215

THE DEAD MILLIONAIRE 215

THE LARGER COLLEGE . 216

XV111 CONTENTS.

THE POEM BY THE POTOMAC 217

A DEAD CARPENTER 218

OLD GIB AT CASTLE ROCKS 218

DON'T STOP AT THE STATION DESPAIR 221

THE FORTUNATE ISLES 221

BACK TO THE GOLDEN GATE 221

DEAD IN THE LONG, STRONG GRASS 222

GARFIELD 222

To THE CALIFORNIA PIONEERS 224

JAVA 224

MOTHER EGYPT 225

THE PASSING OF TENNYSON 225

IN CLASSIC SHADES 226

THAT GENTLE MAN FROM BOSTON 227

WILLIAM BROWN OF OREGON 229

HORACE GREELEY'S DRIVE 230

THE FAITHFUL WIFE OF IDAHO 232

SARATOGA AND THE PSALMIST 233

A TURKEY-HUNT ON THE COLORADO '. 233

THE CAPUCIN OF ROME 235

SUNRISE IN VENICE 236

COMO 237

BURNS 238

BYRON 239

ABOVE THE CLOUDS 241

A CALIFORNIA CHRISTMAS 241

THANKSGIVING, 1896 241

" '49" 242

BATTLES 242

SAN DIEGO 242

PIONEERS TO THE GREAT EMERALD LAND 243

ALASKA 243

"THE FOURTH " IN OREGON 244

AN ANSWER 246

YOSEMITE 247

DEAD IN THE SIERRAS 247

IN PERE-LA-CHAISE 248

ROME . . 249

CONTENTS. XIX

"POVERIS ! POVERIS ! " 249

AMERICA TO AMERICANS 249

FATHER DAMIEN OP HAWAII 250

AT OUR GOLDEN GATE 250

THE VOICE OF THE DOVE 251

rASHINGTON BY THE DELAWARE 251

FOR THOSE WHO FAIL 252

THE LIGHT OF CHRIST'S FACE 252

v COLUMBUS 253

. CUBA LIBRE 253

FINALE 254

JUANITA 256

SONGS OF THE SOUL 257

THE IDEAL AND THE EEAL 257

A DOVE OF ST. MARK 266

SUNSET AND DAWN IN SAN DIEGO 273

SAPPHO AND PHAON 281

ADIOS * 307

NEW POEMS 309

ENGLAND'S LION 309

THE FOURTH OF OUR FATHERS 309

ARTESIA OF TULARE 311

USLAND TO ENGLAND 312

BOSTON TO THE BOERS 313

To YE FIGHTING LORDS OF LONDON TOWN 314

ANGLO-SAXON ALLIANCE 315

INDIA AND THE BOERS 315

AT THE CALEND'S CLOSE 316

As IT is WRITTEN 317

To OOM PAUL KRUGER 317

USLAND TO THE BOERS 318

THAT USSIAN OF USLAND 318

THE CALIFORNIA POPPY 319

THE DEFENSE OF THE ALAMO . . '. 319

CALIFORNIANS 320

NOTES . . .321

SONGS OF THE SIERRAS.

THE ARIZONIAN.

Come to my sunland! Come with me To the land I love ; where the sun and sea Are wed for ever ; where the palm and pine A re filVd with singers ; where tree and vine Are voiced with prophets! O come, and you Shall sing a song with the seas that swirl And kiss their hands to that cold white girl, To the maiden moon in her mantle of blue.

41 And I have said, and I say it ever, As the years go on and the world goes

over,

Twere better to be content and clever, In the tending of cattle and the tossing of

clover, In the grazing of cattle and growing of

grain, Than a strong man striving for fame or

gain;

Be even as kine in the red-tipped clover: For they lie down and their rests are rests, And the days are theirs, come sun, come

rain,

To rest, rise up, and repose again; While we wish and yearn, and do pray in

vain,

And hope to ride on the billows of bosoms, And hope to rest in the haven of breasts, Till the heart is sicken'd and the fair hope

dead —

Be even as clover with its crown of blos soms,

Even as blossoms ere the bloom is shed,

Kiss'd by the kine and the brown sweet bee—

For these have the sun, and moon, and air,

And never a bit of the burthen of care: Yet with all of our caring what more have we?

"I would court content like a lover

lonely, I would woo her, win her, and wear her

only. And would never go over the white sea

wall For gold or glory or for aught at all."

He said these things as he stood with

the Squire

By the river's rim in the field of clover, While the stream flow'd on and the clouds

flew over, With the sun tangled in and the fringes

afire.

So the Squire lean'd with a kindly glory To humor his guest, and to hear his story; For his guest had gold, and he yet was

clever, And mild of manner; and, what was more,

he, In the morning's ramble had praised the

kine.

THE ARIZONIAN.

The clover's reach and the meadows fine, Aiid so made the Squire his friend forever.

His brow was browu'd by the sun and

weather,

And touch'd by the terrible hand of time; His rich black beard had a fringe of rime, As silk and silver inwove together. There were hoops of gold all over his

hands,

And across his breast in chains and bonds, Broad and massive as belts of leather.

And the belts of gold were bright in the

sun, But brighter than gold his black eyes

shone From their sad face-setting so swarth and

dun —

Brighter than beautiful Santau stone, Brighter eveii than balls of fire, As he said, hot-faced, in the face of the

Squire: —

"The pines bow'd over, the stream bent

under, The cabin was cover'd with thatches of

palm

Down in a canon so deep, the wonder Was what it could know in its clime but

calm;

Down in a canon so cleft asunder By sabre-stroke in the young world's

prime,

It look'd as if broken by bolts of thunder, And burst asunder and rent and riven By earthquakes driven that turbulent time The red cross lifted red hands to heaven.

"And this in that land where the sun

goes down And gold is gather'd by tide and by

stream, And the maidens are brown as the cocoa

brown, And life is a love and a love is a dream;

Where the winds come in from the far

Cathay

With odor of spices and balm and bay, And summer abideth with man alway, Nor conies in a tour with the stately

June, And comes too late and returns too soon.

"She stood in the shadows as the sun

went down,

Fretting her hair with her fingers brown, As tall as the silk-tipp'd tassel'd corn — Stood watching, dark brow'd, as I weighed

the gold We had wash'd that day where the river

roll'd; And her proud lip curl'd with a sun-clime

scorn, As she ask'd, ' Is she better, or fairer than

I?—

She, that blonde in the land beyond, Where the sun is hid and the seas are

high- That you gather in gold as the years go

by,

And hoard and hide it away for her As the squirrel burrows the black pine- burr?

"Now the gold weigh'd well, but was

lighter of weight

Than we two had taken for days of late, So I was fretted, and brow a-frown, I said, half - angered, with head held

down — ' Well, yes, she is fairer; and I loved her

first: And shall love her last, come worst to the

worst.'

' ' Her lips grew livid, and her eyes

afire As I said this thing; and higher and

higher

The hot words ran, when the booming thunder

THE ARIZONIAN.

Peal'd in the crags and the pine-tops

under,

While up by the cliff in the murky skies It look'd as the clouds had caught the

fire—

The flash and fire of her wonderful eyes!

"She turn'd from the door and down to the river,

And mirror'd her face in the whimsical tide,

Then threw back her hair as one throwing a quiver,

As an Indian throws it back far from his side

And free from his hands, swinging fast to the shoulder

When rushing to battle; and, turning, she sigh'd

And shook, and shiver'd as aspens shiver.

Then a great green snake slid into the river,

Glistening green, and with eyes of fire;

Quick, double-handed she seized a boulder,

And cast it with all the fury of passion,

As with lifted head it went curving across,

Swift darting its tongue like a fierce de sire,

Curving and curving, lifting higher and higher,

Bent and beautiful as a river moss;

Then, smitten, it turn'd, bent, broken and doubled

And lick'd, red-tongued, like a forked fire,

Then sank and the troubled waters bub bled

And so swept on in the old swift fashion.

"I lay in my hammock: the air was

heavy

And hot and threat'ning; the very heaven Was holding its breath; and bees in a bevy Hid under my thatch; and birds were

driven

In clouds to the rocks in a hurried whirr As I peer'd down by the path for her.

"She stood like a bronze bent over the

river,

The proud eyes fix'd,thepassion unspoken. Then the heavens broke like a great dyke

broken ;

And ere I fairly had time to give her A shout of warning, a rushing of wind And the rolling of clouds and a deafening

din And a darkness that had been black to the

blind Came down, as I shouted 'Come in! Come

in! Come under the roof, come up from the

river, As up from a grave — come now, or come

never!' The tassel'd tops of the pines were as

weeds, The red-woods rock'd like to lake-side

reeds, And the world seemed darken'd and

drown'd forever, While I crouched low; as a beast that

bleeds.

"One time in the night as the black

wind shifted, And a flash of lightning stretch'd over the

stream, I seemed to see her with her brown hands

lifted—

Only seem'd to see as one sees in a dream — With her eyes wide wild and her pale lips

press'd, And the blood from her brow, and the

flood to her breast; When the flood caught her hair as flax in

a wheel, And wheeling and whirling her round like

a reel; Laugh'd loud her despair, then leapt like

a steed, Holding tight to her hair, folding fast to

her heel, Laughing fierce, leaping far as if spurr'd

to its speed!

THE ARIZONIAN,

' ' Now mind, I tell you all this did but

seem — Was seen as you see fearful scenes in a

dream ;

For what the devil could the lighting show In a night like that, I should like to know ?

" And then I slept, and sleeping I

dream 'd Of great green serpents with tongues of

fire, And of death by drowning, and of after

death —

Of the day of judgment, wherein it seem'd That she, the heathen, was bidden higher, Higher than I; that I clung to her side, And clinging struggled, and struggling

cried, And crying, wakened all weak of my

breath.

"Long leaves of the sun lay over the

floor,

And a chipmunk chirp'd in the open door, While above on his crag the eagle screain'd, Scream'd as he never had scream'd before. I rush'd to the river: the flood had gone Like a thief, with only his tracks upon The weeds and grasses and warm wet sand, And I ran after with reaching hand. And call'd as I reach'd, and reach'd as I ran, And ran till I came to the canon's van, Where the waters lay in a bent lagoon, Hook'd and crook'd like the horned moon.

' { And there in the surge where the waters

met, And the warm wave lifted, and the winds

did fret The wave till it foam'd with rage on the

land, She lay with the wave on the warm white

sand; Her rich hair trailed with the trailing

weeds, While her small brown hands lay prone or

lifted

As the waves sang strophes in the broken

reeds,

Or paused in pity, and in silence sifted Sands of gold, as upon her grave.

" And as sure as you see yon browsing kine,

And breathe the breath of your meadows fine,

When I went to my waist in the warm white wave

And stood all pale in the wave to my breast,

And reach'd my hands in her rest and un rest,

Her hands were lifted and reach'd to mine.

"Now mind, I tell you, I cried, 'Come

in! Come into the house, come out from the

hollow, Come out of the storm, come up from the

river!'

Aye, cried, and call'd in that desolate din, Though I did not rush out, and in plain

words give her

A wordy warning of the flood to follow, Word by word, and letter by letter; But she knew it as well as 1, and better; For once in the desert of New Mexico When we two sought frantically far and

wide

For the famous spot where Apaches shot With bullets of gold their buffalo, And she stood faithful to death at my

side,

I threw me down in the hard hot sand Utterly farnish'd, and ready to die; Then a speck arose in the red-hot sky — A speck no larger than a lady's hand- While she at my side bent tenderly over, Shielding my face from the sun as a

cover, And wetting my face, as she watch'd by

my side, From a skin she had borne till the high

noontide,

THE ARIZONIAN.

(I had emptied mine in the heat of the

morning) When the thunder mutter'd far over the

plain

Like a monster bound or a beast in pain: She sprang the instant, and gave the

warning, With her brown hand pointed to the

burning skies,

For I was too weak unto death to rise. But she knew the peril, and her iron will, With a heart as true as the great North

Star,

Did bear me up to the palm-tipp'd hill, Where the fiercest beasts in a brother hood, Beasts that had fled from the plain and

far,

In perfectest peace expectant stood, With their heads held high, and their

limbs a-quiver.

Then ere she barely had time to breathe The boiling waters began to seethe From hill to hill in a booming river, Beating and breaking from hill to hill — Even while yet the sun shot fire, Without the shield of a cloud above — Filling the canon as you would fill A wine-cup, drinking in swift desire, With the brim new-kiss'd by the lips you

love!

" So you see she knew — knew perfectly

well,

As well as I could shout and tell, That the mountain would send a flood to

the plain,

Sweeping the gorge like a hurricane, When the fire flash'd and the thunder fell.

"Therefore it is wrong, and I say

therefore Unfair, that a mystical, brown-wing'd

moth

Or midnight bat should forevermore Fan past my face with its wings of air,

And follow me up, down, everywhere, Flit past, pursue me, or fly before, Dimly limning in each fair place The full fixed eyes and the sad, brown face, So forty times worse than if it were wroth!

"I gather'd the gold I had hid in the

earth,

Hid over the door and hid under the hearth: Hoarded and hid, as the world went over, For the love of a blonde by a sun-brown'd

lover,

And I said to myself, as I set my face To the East and afar from the desolate

place, ' She has braided her tresses, and through

her tears

Look'd away to the West for years, the years That I have wrought where the sun tans

brown; She has waked by night, she has watch'd

by day,

She has wept and wonder'd at my delay, Alone and in tears, with her head held down, Where the ships sail out and the seas

swirl in, Forgetting to knit and refusing to spin.

"She shall lift her head, she shall see

her lover, She shall hear his voice like a sea that

rushes, She shall hold his gold in her hands of

snow, And down on his breast she shall hide her

blushes,

And never a care shall her true heart know, While the clods are below, or the clouds

are above her.

"On the fringe of the night she stood

with her pitcher

At the old town fountain: and oh! pass ing fair.

'I am riper now,' I said, 'but am richer,' And I lifted my hand to my beard and hair:

THE ARIZONIAN.

'I am burnt by the sun, I am brown 'd by

the sea; I am white of my beard, and am bald, may

be; Yet for all such things what can her heart

care ? '

Then she moved; and I said, 'How mar velous fair!' She look'd to the West, with her arm arch'd

over;

•Looking for me, her suii-brown'd lover,' I said to myself, and my heart grew bold, And I stepp'd me nearer to her presence

there, As approaching a friend; for 'twas here of

old Our troths were plighted and the tale was

told.

" How young she was and how fair she

was!

How tall as a palm, and how pearly fair, As the night came down on her glorious

hair! Then the night grew deep and my eyes

grew dim,

And a sad-faced figure began to swim And float by my face, flit past, then pause, With her hands held up and her head held

down, Yet face to my face; and that face was

brown!

"Now why did she come and confront me there,

With the flood to her face and the moist in her hair,

And a mystical stare in her marvelous eyes ?

I had call'd to her twice, 'Come in! come in!

Come out of the storm to the calm with in!'

Now, that is the reason I do make complain

That for ever and ever her face should rise,

Facing face to face with her great sad eyes.

"I said then to myself, and I say it

again,

Gainsay it you, gainsay it who will, I shall say it over and over still, And will say it ever; for I know it true, That I did all that a man could do (Some men's good doings are done in vain) To save that passionate child of the sun, With her love as deep as the doubled main, And as strong and fierce as a troubled sea — That beautiful bronze with its soul of fire, Us tropical love and its kingly ire — That child as fix'd as a pyramid, As tall as a tule and pure as a nun — And all there is of it, the all I did, As often happens was done in vain. So there is no bit of her blood on me.

' She is marvelous young and is wonder ful fair,'

I said again, and my heart grew bold,

And beat and beat a charge for my feet.

'Time that defaces us, places, and replaces us,

And trenches our faces in furrows for tears.

Has traced here nothing in all these years.

'Tis the hair of gold that I vex'd of old,

The marvelous flowing, gold-flower of hair,

And the peaceful eyes in their sweet sur prise

That I have kiss'd till the head swam round.

And the delicate curve of the dimpled chin,

And the pouting lips and the pearls with in

Are the same, the same, but so young, so fair!'

My heart leapt out and back at a bound,

As a child that starts, then stops, then lingers.

'How wonderful young!' I lifted my fin gers

And fell to counting the round years down

That I had dwelt where the sun tans brown.

THE ARIZONIAN.

"Four full hands, and a finger over! ' She does not know me, her truant lover, ' I said to myself, for her brow was a-frown As I stepp'd still nearer, with my head

held down, All abash'd and in blushes my brown face

over;

' She does not know me, her long lost lover, For my beard's so long and my skin's so

brown

That I well might pass myself for another.' So I lifted my voice and I spake aloud: 'Annette, my darling! Annette Macleod ! ' She started, she stopped, she turn'd,

amazed,

She stood all wonder, her eyes wild-wide, Then turii'd in terror down the dusk way side, And cried as she fled, 'The man he is

crazed, And he calls the maiden name oi my

mother!'

"Let the world turn over, and over, and

over,

And toss and tumble like beasts in pain, Crack, quake, arid tremble, and turn full

over

And die, and never rise up again; Let her dash her peaks through the purple

cover, Let her plash her seas in the face of the

sun —

I have no one to love me now, not one, In a world as full as a world can hold; So I will get gold as I erst have done, I will gather a coffin top-full of gold, To take to the door of Death, to buy — Buy what, when I double my hands and

die? "Go down, go down to your fields of

clover, Go down with your kine to the pastures

fine,

And give no thought, or care, or labor For maid or man, good name or neighbor;

For I gave all as the years went over — Gave all my youth, my years and labor, And a heart as warm as the world is cold, For a beautiful, bright, and delusive lie: Gave youth, gave years, gave love for gold; Giving and getting, yet what have I?

"The red ripe stars hang low overhead, Let the good and the light of soul reach up, Pluck gold as plucking a butter-cup: But I am as lead, and my hands are red.

"So the sun climbs up, and on, and

over,

And the days go out and the tides come in, And the pale moon rubs on her purple

cover

Till worn as thin and as bright as tin; But the ways are dark aud the days are

dreary, And the dreams of youth are but dust in

age, And the heart grows harden'd and the

hands grow weary, Holding them up for their heritage.

" For we promise so great and we gain

so little;

For we promise so great of glory and gold, And we gain so little that the hands grow

cold, And the strained heart-strings wear bare

and brittle,

And for gold and glory we but gain instead A fond heart sicken'd and a fair hope dead.

"So I have said, and I say it over, And can prove it over and over again, That the four-footed beasts in the red-

crown'd clover,

The pied and horned beasts on the plain That lie down, rise up, and repose again, And do never take care or toil or spin, Nor buy, nor build, nor gather in gold, As the days go out and the tides come in, Are better than we by a thousand-fold; For what is it all, in the words of fire, But a vexing of soul and a vain desire?"

THE ARIZONIAN.

I had left school in Oregon in the early fifties; ran away, it is told. The truth is new gold mines had been found a few hundred miles to the south, near the California line, and, as we were always poor, my elder brother and I thought it a good thing that I should rush in and locate a mining claim. We could not get heart to tell our parents and I left at night, taking my school books. As was so often the case, the rich mines were "a little far ther on," and I could not turn back; for an Indian war was impending between where I was and home, so I kept on. Once in sight of Mount Shasta I must see more, and finally found an old mountaineer who had often camped by us in Oregon with his pack animals and companioned with Papa. He had been with Fremont, was a graduate of Heidelberg, and gladly helped me along with my Latin. His trade was the buying of wild horses by the herd from the Mexicans far south and driving them up to his Soda Spring ranch and rich grasses at the base of Mount Shasta, then on to Oregon till tamed, then returning to California with a pack train of Oregon produce. By attach ing myself to him the way seemed clear to get back home, in the course of time.

He finally gave me a share in his wild ranch and ventures, and I made two of these long, glorious trips of mountains, deserts, snow, color; gorgeousness and gorgeousness. My position was rather that of cook and servant than companion and partner, for he had some rough men with him and left things to them. But I could live on horseback by day and read by our camp-fire at night, and that was enough.

Mountain Jo was a good man at heart, but a sad drunkard and a hopelessly helpless business man. Besides, the Indians were continually provoked to war by his rough men as well as by heartless gold hunters, and we could do little but fight. He lost an eye and when I got back home after years, I had little to show on my return except some ugly and still painful wounds. But I had not been idle, and with help from Papa and some indulgence soon took my place in my class and wrote a part of this poem crudely, about that time.

The sudden storm, cloud-burst and flood here described is as I saw it in Arizona; the comely Indian girl I saw perish as described, near Mount Shasta. I located the final scene and the hero in Scotland because I first set foot there in Europe, and because our family was of Scotland. Mountain Jo used to carry in his pocket a rough gold bullet which he said he cut from the neck of his horse after a battle with Apaches. The whole story was not written down till in London. I liked it best, and so put it first in "The Songs of the Sierras." I tell all this to the young writer for a purpose.

In Rome I once watched a great sculptor fashion a noble statue, and I noticed that he had many models. From one he shaped the arms, from another the legs, from another the pose of the head.

So, my coming poet of the Sierras and great sea, you may gather your bouquet of song from many hillsides but do not entirely imagine all your flowers. For however beautiful they may seem to you, they will not seem quite real to others.

This book, in the following lines, was dedicated To MAUD:

Because the skies were blue, because The sun in fringes of the sea Was tangled, and delightfully Kept dancing on as in a waltz, And tropic trees bowed to the seas And bloomed and bore years through and through. And birds in blended gold and blue Were thick and sweet as swarming bees, And sang as if in Paradise And all that Paradise was spring- Did I too sing with lifted eyes, Because I could not choose but sing.

With garments full of sea winds blown From isles beyond of spice and balm Beside the sea, beneath her palm, She waits, as true as chiseled stone. My childhood's child, my June in May, So wiser than thy father is, These lines, these leaves, and all of this Are thine— a loose, uncouth bouquet — So, wait and watch for sail or sign, A ship shall mount the hollow seas Blown to thy place of blossomed trees, And birds, and song, and Bummer-shine.

I throw a kiss across the sea, I drink the winds as drinking wine, And dream they all are blown from thee— I catch the whispered kiss of thine. Shall I return with lifted face, Or head held down as in disgrace To hold thy two brown hands in mine? ENGLAND, 1871.

WITH WALKER IN NICARAGUA.

WITH WALKER IN NICARAGUA.

That man who lives for self alone. Lives for the meanest mortal known.

He was a brick: let this be said

Above my brave dishonor'd dead.

I ask no more, this is not much,

Yet I disdain a colder touch

To memory as dear as his;

For he was true as God's north star,

And brave as Yuba's grizzlies are,

Yet gentle as a panther is,

Mouthing her young in her first fierce kiss.

A dash of sadness in his air, Born, may be, of his over care, And may be, born of a despair In early love — I never knew; I question'd not, as many do, Of things as sacred as this is; I only knew that he to me Was all a father, friend, could be; I sought to know no more than this Of history of him or his.

A piercing eye, a princely air, A presence like a chevalier, Half angel and half Lucifer; Sombrero black, with plume of snow That swept his long silk locks below; A red serape with bars of gold, All heedless falling, fold on fold; A sash of silk, where flashing swung A sword as swift as serpent's tongue, In sheath of silver chased in gold; And Spanish spurs with bells of steel That dash'd and dangled at the heel; A face of blended pride and pain, Of mingled pleading and disdain, With shades of glory and of grief — The famous filibuster chief Stood front his men amid the trees That top the fierce Cordilleras, With bent arm arch'd above his brow; — Stood still — he stands, a picture, now — Long gazing down the sunset seas.

II.

What strange, strong, bearded men were

these

He led above the tropic seas ! Men sometimes of uncommon birth, Men rich in histories untold, Who boasted not, though more than bold, Blown from the four parts of the earth.

Men mighty-thew'd as Samson was, That had been kings in any cause, A remnant of the races past; Dark-brow'd as if in iron cast, Broad-breasted as twin gates of brass,— Men strangely brave and fiercely true, Who dared the West when giants were, Who err'd, yet bravely dared to err , A remnant of that early few Who held no crime or curse or vice As dark as that of cowardice; With blendings of the worst and best Of faults and virtues that have blest Or cursed or thrill'd the human breast.

They rode, a troop of bearded men, Kode two and two out from the town, And some were blonde and some were

brown,

And all as brave as Sioux; but when From San Bennetto south the line That bound them in the laws of man Was pass'd, and peace stood mute be hind

And stream'd a banner to the wind The world knew not, there was a sign Of awe, of silence, rear and van.

Men thought who never thought before; I heard the clang and clash of steel From sword at hand or spur at heel And iron feet, but nothing more. Some thought of Texas, some of Maine, Bat one of rugged Tennessee, —

10

WITH WALKER IN NICARAGUA.

And one of Avon thought, and one Thought of an isle beneath the sun, And one of Wabash, one of Spain, And one turned sadly to the Spree.

Defeat meant something more than

death;

The world was ready, keen to smite, As stern and still beneath its ban With iron will and bated breath, Their hands against their fellow-man, They rode — each man an Ishmaelite. But when we topped the hills of pine, These men dismounted, doffd their cares, Talk'd loud and laugh'd old love affairs, And on the grass took meat and wine, And never gave a thought again To land or life that lay behind, Or love, or care of any kind Beyond the present cross or pain.

And I, a waif of stormy seas, A child among such men as these, Was blown along this savage surf And rested with them on the turf, And took delight below the trees. I did not question, did not care To know the right or wrong. I saw That savage freedom had a spell, And loved it more than I can tell, And snapp'd my fingers at the law. I bear my burden of the shame, — I shun it not, and naught forget, However much I may regret: I claim some candor to my name, And courage cannot change or die, — Did they deserve to die? they died! Let justice then be satisfied, And as for me, why, what am I?

The standing side by side till death, The dying for some wounded friend, The faith that failed not to the end, The strong endurance till the breath And body took their ways apart, I only know. I keep my trust. Their vices! earth has them by heart. Their virtues! they are with their dust.

How we descended troop on troop, As wide-winged eagles downward swoop! How wound we through the fragrant wood, With all its broad boughs hung in green, With sweeping mosses trail'd between! How waked the spotted beasts of prey, Deep sleeping from the face of day, And clashed them like a troubled flood Down some defile and denser wood!

And snakes, long, lithe and beautiful As green and graceful bough'd bamboo, Did twist and twine them through and

through

The boughs that hung red-fruited full. One, monster-sized, above me hung, Close eyed me with his bright pink eyes, Then raised his folds, and sway'd and

swung,

And lick'd like lightning his red tongue, Then oped his wide mouth with surprise; He writhed and curved and raised and

lower'd

His folds like liftings of the tide, Then sank so low I touch'd his side, As I rode by, with my bright sword.

The trees shook hands high overhead, And bow'd and intertwined across The narrow way, while leaves and moss And luscious fruit, gold-hued and red, Through all the canopy of green, Let not one shaft shoot between.

Birds hung and swung, green-robed and

red,

Or droop'd in curved lines dreamily, Rainbows reversed, from tree to tree, Or sang low hanging overhead- Sang low, as if they sang and slept, Sang faint like some far waterfall, And took no note of us at all, Though nuts that in the way were spread Did crush and crackle where we stept.

Wild lilies, tall as maidens are, As sweet of breath, as pearly fair As fair as faith, as pure as truth,

WITH WALKER IN NICARAGUA.

II

Fell thick before our every tread, In fragrant sacrifice of ruth. The ripen'd fruit a fragrance shed And hung in hand-reach overhead, In nest of blossoms on the shoot, The very shoot that bore the fruit.

How ran lithe monkeys through the

leaves! How rush'd they through, brown clad and

blue,

Like shuttles hurried through and through The threads a hasty weaver weaves!

How quick they cast us fruits of gold, Then loosen'd hand and all foothold, And hung limp, limber, as if dead, Hung low and listless overhead; And all the time with half-oped eyes Bent full on us in mute surprise — Look'd wisely, too, as wise hens do That watch you with the head askew.

The long day through from blossom'd

trees

There came the sweet song of sweet bees, With chorus-tones of cockatoo That slid his beak along the bough, And walk'd and talk'd and hung and

swung,

In crown of gold and coat of blue, The wisest fool that ever sung, Or wore a crown, or held a tongue.

Oh! when we broke the somber wood And pierced at last the sunny plain, How wild and still with wonder stood The'proud mustangs with banner'd mane, And necks that never knew a rein, And nostrils lifted high, and blown, Fierce breathing as a hurricane: Yet by their leader held the while In solid column, square and file And ranks more martial than our own!

Some one above the common kind, Some one to look to, lean upon, I think is much a woman's mind; But it was mine, and I had drawn

A rein beside the chief while we Rode through the forest leisurely; When he grew kind and question'd me Of kindred, home, and home affair, Of how I came to wander there, And had my father herds and land And men in hundreds at command? At which I silent shook my head, Then, timid, met his eyes and said: " Not so. Where sunny foothills run Down to the North Pacific sea, And Willamette meets the sun In many angles, patiently My father tends his flocks of snow, And turns alone the mellow sod And sows some fields not over broad, And mourns my long delay in vain, Nor bids one serve-man come or go; While mother from her wheel or churn, And may be from the milking shed, Oft lifts an humble, weary head To watch and wish her boy's return Across the camas' blossom'd plain."

He held his bent head very low, A sudden sadness in his air; Then turn'd and touch'd my yellow hair And tossed the long locks in his hand, Toy'd with them, smiled, and let them go, Then thrumm'd about his saddle bow As thought ran swift across his face; Then turning sudden from his place, He gave some short and quick command. They brought the best steed of the band, They swung a rifle at my side, He bade me mount and by him ride, And from that hour to the end I never felt the need of friend.

Far in the wildest quinine wood We found a city old — so old, Its very walls were turned to mould, And stately trees upon them stood. No history has mention'd it, No map has given it a place; The last dim trace of tribe and race— The world's forgetfulness is fit.

12

WITH WALKER IN NICARAGUA.

It held one structure grand and moss'd, Mighty as any castle sung, And old when oldest Ind was young, With threshold Christian never cross'd; A temple builded to the sun, Along whose somber altar-stone Brown, bleeding virgins had been strown Like leaves, when leaves are crisp and dun, In ages ere the Sphinx was born, Or Babylon had birth or morn. My chief led up the marble step — He ever led, through that wild land- When down the stones, with double hand To his machete, a Sun priest leapt, Hot bent to barter life for life. The chieftain drave his bowie knife, Full through his thick and broad breast bone,

And broke the point against the stone, The dark stone of the temple wall. I saw him loose his hold and fall Full length with head hung down the step; I saw run down a ruddy flood Of smoking, pulsing human blood. Then from the wall a woman crept And kiss'd the gory hands and face, And smote herself. Then one by one Some dark priests crept and did the same, Then bore the dead man from the place. Down darken'd aisles the brown priests

came,

So picture-like, with sandal'd feet And long, gray, dismal, grass-wove gowns, So like the pictures of old time, And stood all still and dark of frowns, At blood upon the stone and street. So we laid ready hand to sword And boldly spoke some bitter word; But they were stubborn still, and stood Fierce frowning as a winter wood, And mutt'ring something of the crime Of blood upon a temple stone, As if the first that it had known.

We strode on through each massive door With clash of steel at heel, and with Some swords all red and ready drawn.

I traced the sharp edge of my sword Along both marble wall and floor For crack or crevice; there was none. From one vast mount of marble stone The mighty temple had been cored By nut-brown children of the sun, When stars were newly bright and blithe Of song along the rim of dawn, A mighty marble monolith!

in.

Through marches through the mazy wood And may be through too much of blood, At last we came down to the seas. A city stood, white wall'd, and brown With age, in nest of orange trees; And this we won and many a town And rancho reaching up and down, Then rested in the red-hot days Beneath the blossom'd orange trees, Made drowsy with the drum of bees, And drank in peace the south-sea breeze, Made sweet with sweeping boughs of bays.

Well! there were maidens, shy at first, And then, ere long, not over shy, Yet pure of soul and proudly chare. No love on earth has such an eye! No land there is, is bless'd or curs'd With such a limb or grace of face, Or gracious form, or genial air! In all the bleak North-land not one Hath been so warm of soul to me As coldest soul by that warm sea, Beneath the bright hot centred sun.

No lands where northern ices are Approach, or ever dare compare With warm loves born beneath the sun — The one the cold white steady star, The lifted shifting sun the one. I grant you fond, I grant you fair, I grant you honor trust and truth, And years as beautiful as youth, And many years beneath the sun,

WITH WALKER IN NICARAGUA.

And faith as fix'd as any star;

But all the North-land hath not one

So warm of soul as sun-maids are.

I was but in my boyhood then,— I count my fingers over, so, And find it years and years ago, And I am scarcely yet of men. But I was tall and lithe and fair, With rippled tide of yellow hair, And prone to mellowness of heart, While she was tawny-red like wine, With black hair boundless as the night. As for the rest I knew my part, At least was apt, and willing quite To learn, to listen, and incline To teacher warm and wise as mine.

O bright, bronzed maidens of the Sun! So fairer far to look upon Than curtains of the Solomon, Or Kedar's tents, or any one, Or any thing beneath the Sun! What follow'd then ? What has been done ? And said, and writ, and read, and sung? What will be writ and read again, While love is life, and life remain? — While maids will heed, and men have tongue?

What follow'd then? But let that pass. I hold one picture in my heart, Hung curtaiu'd, and not any part Of all its dark tint ever has Been look'd upon by any one Beneath the broad all-seeing sun.

Love well who will, love wise who can, But love, be loved, for God is love; Love pure, as cherubim above; Love maids, and hate not any man. Sit as sat we by orange tree, Beneath the broad bough and grape-vine Top-tangled in the tropic shine, Close face to face, close to the sea, And full of the red-centred sun, With grand sea-songs upon the soul,

Roll'd melody on melody,

As echoes of deep organ's roll,

And love, nor question any one.

If God is love, is love not God ? As high priests say, let prophets sing, Without reproach or reckoning; This much 1 say, knees knit to sod, And low voice lifted, questioning.

Let hearts be pure and strong and. true, Let lips be luscious and blood-red, Let earth in gold be garmented And tented in her tent of blue. Let goodly rivers glide between Their leaning willow walls of green, Let all things be fill'd of the sun, And full of warm winds of the sea, And I beneath my vine and tree Take rest, nor war with any one; Then I will thank God with full cause, Say this is well, is as it was.

Let lips be red, for God has said Love is as one gold-garmented, And made them so for such a time. Therefore let lips be red, therefore Let love be ripe in ruddy prime, Let hope beat high, let hearts be true, And you be wise thereat, and you Drink deep and ask not any more.

Let red lips lift, proud curl'd to kiss, And round limbs lean and raise and reach In love too passionate for speech,

Too full of blessedness and bliss For anything but this and this; Let luscious lips lean hot to kiss And swoon in love, while all the air Is redolent with balm of trees, And mellow with the song of bees, While birds sit singing everywhere — And you will have not any more Than I in boyhood, by that shore Of olives, had in years of yore.

Let the unclean think things unclean; I swear tip-toed, with lifted hands,

WITH WALKER IN NICARAGUA.

That we were pure as sea-wash'd sands, That not one coarse thought came between; Believe or disbelieve who will, Unto the pure all things are pure; As for the rest, I can endure Alike your good will or their ill.

Aye! she was rich in blood and gold — More rich in love, grown over-bold From its own consciousness of strength. How warm! Oh, not for any cause Could I declare how warm she was, In her brown beauty and hair's length. We loved in the sufficient sun, We lived in elements of fire, For love is fire in fierce desire; Yet lived as pure as priest and nun.

We lay slow rocking by the bay In slim canoe beneath the crags Thick-topp'd with palm, like sweeping

flags

Between us and the burning day. The alligator's head lay low Or lifted from his rich rank fern, And watch'd us and the tide by turn, As we slow cradled to and fro.

And slow we cradled on till night, And told the old tale, overtold, As misers in recounting gold Each time to take a new delight. With her pure passion-given grace She drew her warm self close to me; And her two brown hands on my knee, And her two black eyes in my face, She then grew sad and guess'd at ill, And in the future seem'd to see With woman's ken of prophecy; Yet proffer 'd her devotion still. And plaintive so she gave a sign, A token cut of virgin gold, That all her tribe should ever hold Its wearer as some one divine, Nor touch him with a hostile hand. And I in turn gave her a blade, A dagger, worn as well by maid

As man, in that half lawless land.

It had a massive silver hilt,

It had a keen and cunning blade,

A gift by chief and comrades made

For reckless blood at Rivas spilt.

" Show this, " said I, " too well 'tis known,

And worth a hundred lifted spears,

Should ill beset your sunny years;

There is not one in Walker's band,

But at the sight of this alone,

Will reach a brave and ready hand,

And make your right, or wrong, his own,"

IV.

Love while 'tis day; night cometh soon, Wherein no man or maiden may; Love in the strong young prime of day; Drink drunk with love in ripe red noon, Ked noon of love and life and sun; Walk in love's light as in sunshine, Drink in that sun as drinking wine, Drink swift, nor question any one; For fortunes change, as man or moon. And wane like warm full days of June.

Oh Love, so fair of promises. Bend here thy brow, blow here thy kiss, Bend here thy bow above the storm But once, if only this once more. Comes there no patient Christ to save, Touch and re-animate thy form Long three days dead and in the grave ! Spread here thy silken net of Jet; Since fortunes change, turn and forget, Since man must fall for some sharp sin, Be thou the pit that I fall in; I seek no safer fall than this. Since man must die for some dark sin, Blind leading blind, let come to this, And my death crime be one deep kiss.

v.

Ill comes disguised in many forms: Fair winds are but a prophecy Of foulest winds full soon to be— The brighter these, the blacker they; The clearest night has darkest day,

WITH WALKER IN NICARAGUA.

And brightest days bring blackest storms. There came reverses to our arms; I saw the signal-light's alarms All night red-crescenting the bay. The foe poured down a flood next day As strong as tides when tides are high, And drove us bleeding to the sea, In such wild haste of flight that we Had hardly time to arm and fly.

Blown from the shore, borne far at sea, I lifted my two hands on high With wild soul plashing to the sky, And cried, " O more than crowns to me, Farewell at last to love and thee!" I walked the deck, I kiss'd my hand Back to the far and fading shore, And bent a knee as to implore, Until the last dark head of land Slid down behind the dimpled sea.

At last I sank in troubled sleep, A very child, rock'd by the deep, Sad qiiestioning the fate of her Before the savage conqueror.

The loss of comrades, power, place, A city wall'd, cool shaded ways, Cost me no care at all; somehow I only saw her sad brown face, And— I was younger then than now.

Red flashed -the sun across the deck, Slow flapped the idle sails, and slow The black ship cradled to and fro. Afar my city lay, a speck Of white against a line of blue; Around, half lounging on the deck, Some comrades chatted two by two. I held a new-fill'd glass of wine, And with the Mate talk'd as in play Of fierce events of yesterday, To coax his light life into mine.

He jerked the wheel, as slow he said, Low laughing with averted head, And so, half sad: " You bet they'll fight; They follow'd in canim, canoe, A perfect fleet, that on the blue

Lay dancing till the mid of night. Would you believe! one little cuss" — (He turned his stout head slow sidewise, And 'neath his hat-rim took the skies) — " In petticoats did follow us The livelong night, and at the dawn Her boat lay rocking in the lee, Scarce one short pistol-shot from me." This said the mate, half mournfully, Then peck'd at us; for he had drawn, By bright light heart and homely wit, A knot of men around the wheel, Which he stood whirling like a reel, For the still ship reck'd not of it.

" And where's she now? " one careless

said,

With eyes slow lifting to the brine, Swift swept the instant far by mine-; The bronzed mate listed, shook his head, Spirted a stream of ambier wide Across and over the ship side, Jerk'd at the wheel, and slow replied:

"She had a dagger in her hand, She rose, she raised it, tried to stand, But fell, and so upset herself; Yet still the poor brown savage elf, Each time the long light wave would toss And lift her form from out the sea, Would shake a sharp bright blade at me. With rich hilt chased a cunning cross. At last she sank, but still the same She shook her dagger in the air, As if to still defy and dare, And sinking seem'd to call your name."

I let my wine glass crashing fall, I rush'd across the deck, and all The sea I swept and swept again, With lifted hand, with eye and glass, But all was idle and in vain. I saw a red-bill'd sea-gull pass, A petrel sweeping round and round, I heard the far white sea-surf sound, But no sign could I hear or see Of one so more than seas to me.

i6

WITH WALKER IN NICARAGUA.

I cursed the ship, the shore, the sea, The brave brown mate, the bearded men; I had a fever then, and then Ship, shore and sea were one to me; And weeks we on the dead waves lay, And I more truly dead than they. At last some rested on an isle; The few strong-breasted, with a smile, Returning to the hostile shore, Scarce counting of the pain or cost, Scarce recking if they won or lost; They sought but action, ask'd 110 more; They counted life but as a game, With full per cent, against them, and Staked all upon a single hand, And lost or won, content the same.

I never saw my chief again, I never sought again the shore, Or saw my white- walled city more. I could not bear the more than pain At sight of blossom'd orange trees, Or blended song of birds and bees, The sweeping shadows of the palm Or spicy breath of bay and balm. And, striving to forget the while, I wandered through a dreary isle, Here black with juniper, and there Made white with goats in shaggy coats, The only things that anywhere We found with life in all the land, Save birds that ran long-bill'd and brown, Long legg'd and still as shadows are, Like dancing shadows up and down The sea-rim on the swelt'ring sand.

The warm sea laid his dimpled face, With all his white locks smoothed in place, As if asleep against the land; Great turtles slept upon his breast, As thick as eggs in any nest; I could have touch'd them with my hand.

VI.

I would some things were dead and hid, Well dead and buried deep as hell, With recollection dead as well,

And resurrection God forbid. They irk me with their weary spell Of fascination, eye to eye. And hot mesmeric serpent hiss, Through all the dull eternal days. Let them turn by, go on their ways, Let them depart or let me die; For life is but a beggar's lie, And as for death, I grin at it; I do not care one whiff or whit Whether it be or that or this.

I give my hand; the world is wide; Then farewell memories of yore, Between us let strife be no more; Turn as you choose to either side; Say, Fare-you-well, shake hands and say — Speak fair, and say with stately grace, Hand clutching hand, face bent to face — Farewell forever and a day.

O passion-toss'd and piteous past, Part now, part well, part wide apart, As ever ships on ocean slid Down, down the sea, hull, sail, and mast: And in the album of my heart Let hide the pictures of your face, With other pictures in their place, Slid over like a coffin's lid.

VII.

The days and grass grow long together; They now fell short and crisp again, And all the fair face of the main Grew dark and wrinkled as the weather. Through all the summer sun's decline Fell news of triumphs and defeats, Of hard advances, hot retreats — Then days and days and not a line.

At last one night they came. I knew Ere yet the boat had touched the land That all was lost; they were so few I near could count them on one hand; But he, the leader, led no more. The proud chief still disdain'd to fly, But like one wreck'd, clung to the shore. And struggled on, and struggling fell

WITH WALKER IN NICARAGUA.

From power to a prison-cell, And only left that cell to die.

My recollection, like a ghost, Goes from this sea to that sea-side, Goes and returns as turns the tide, Then turns again unto the coast. I know not which I mourn the most, My chief or my un wedded wife. The one was as the lordly sun, To joy in, bask in, and admire; The peaceful moon was as the one, To love, to look to, and desire; And both a part of my young life.

VIII.

Years after, shelter'd from the sun

Beneath a Sacramento bay,

A black Muchacho by me lay

Along the long grass crisp and dun,

His brown mule browsing by his side,

And told with all a Peon's pride

How he once fought; how long and well,

Broad breast to breast, red hand to hand,

Against a foe for his fair land,

And how the fierce invader fell;

And, artless, told me how he died:

How walked he from the prison-wall Dress'd like some prince for a parade, And made no note of man or maid, But gazed out calmly over all. He look'd far off, half paused, and then Above the mottled sea of men He kiss'd his thin hand to the sun; Then smiled so proudly none had known But he was stepping to a throne, Yet took no note of any one.

A nude brown beggar Peon child, Encouraged as the captive smiled, Look'd up, half scared, half pitying; He stopp'd, he caught it from the sands, Put bright coins in its two brown hands, Then strode on like another king.

Two deep, a musket's length, they stood A-front, in sandals, nude, and dun

As death and darkness wove in one, Their thick lips thirsting for his blood. He took each black hand one by one, And, smiling with a patient grace, Forgave them all and took his place.

He bared his broad brow to the sun,

Gave one long, last look to the sky,

The white wing'd clouds that hurried by,

The olive hills in orange hue;

A last list to the cockatoo

That hung by beak from mango-bough

Hard by, and hung and sung as though

He never was to sing again,

Hung all red-crown'd and robed in green,

With belts of gold and blue between. —

A bow, a touch of heart, a pall Of purple smoke, a crash, a thud, A warrior's raiment rolled in blood, A face in dust and — that was all.

Success had made him more than king; Defeat made him the vilest thing In name, contempt or hate can bring; So much the leaded dice of war Do make or mar of character.

Speak ill who will of him, he died In all disgrace; say of the dead His heart was black, his hands were red- Say this much, and be satisfied; Gloat over it all undenied. I simply say he was my friend "When strong of hand and fair of fame: Dead and disgraced, I stand the same i To him, and so shall to the end.

I lay this crude wreath on his dust, Inwove with sad, sweet memories KecalPd here by these colder seas. I leave the wild bird with his trust, To sing and say him nothing wrong; I wake no rivalry of song.

He lies low in the levell'd sand, Unshelter'd from the tropic sun, And now of all he knew not one

i8

WITH WALKER IN NICARAGUA.

Will speak him fair in that far land. Perhaps 'twas this that made me seek, Disguised, his grave one winter-tide; A weakness for the weaker side, A siding with the helpless weak.

A palm not far held out a hand, Hard by a long green bamboo swung, And bent like some great bow unstrung, And quiver'd like a willow wand; Perch'd on its fruits that crooked hang, Beneath a broad banana's leaf, A bird in rainbow splendor sang A low, sad song of temper'd grief.

No sod, no sign, no cross nor stone But at his side a cactus green Upheld its lances long and keen; It stood in sacred sands alone, Flat-palm'd and fierce with lifted spears; One bloom of crimson crown'd its head,

A drop of blood, so bright, so red, Yet redolent as roses' tears.

In my left hand I held a shell, All rosy lipp'd and pearly red; I laid it by his lowly bed, For he did love so passing well The grand songs of the solemn sea.

0 shell! sing well, wild, with a will, When storms blow loud and birds be still, The wildest sea-song known to thee!

I said some things with folded hands, Soft whisper'd in the dim sea-sound, And eyes held humbly to the ground, And frail knees sunken in the sands. He had done more than this for me, And yet I could not well do more:

1 turn'd me down the olive shore, And set a sad face to the sea.

LONDON, 1871.

I first wrote this poem for John Brown. You can see John Brown of Harper's Ferry in his bearing, for Walker was not of imposing presence; also in his tenderness to the colored child on his way to death. But when about to publish I saw a cruel account of Gen. Walker and his grave at Truxillo, Honduras, in a London news paper. It stated, among other mean things, that a board stood at the head of his grave with this inscription: "Here lies buried W. W., Who never more will trouble you, trouble you."

I by good fortune had ready for my new book an account of a ride through a Central American forest. Putting this and the John Brown poem together in haste and anger, and working them over, I called the new poem " With Walker in Nicaragua."

I had known Walker in California, as a brave and gentle man of books. After I had been hurt a second time in the Indian wars, Gen. Crook, with whom I had been as guide and interpreter, sent me to San Francisco to be treated, where an officer asked me to go East with him to finish school, and I gladly set out with him, as there was a possibility of West Point ahead of me. We found trouble between the transit ship line and Gen. Walker, and we could not pass through Nicaragua. I should like, were it possible, to say how much I owe to these army officers of the remote border. They were, many of them, years after, the heroes of the Civil war. Yet were they ever, even there in the most savage wilderness the gentlest of gentle men. With such men on the one hand and the wild red men on the other I touched and took in at once the very extremes of existence, and the stream of life, even this early, flowed swift and strong and deep and wide. See here again how fortunate were my misfortunes ! For had it not been for my many cruel wounds in Indian wars these men, busy with graver things, would not have been drawn to their "Boy veteran" and helped him along with his books and their sympathy and their better sense in so many ways. And how true they were, and still are, the very few survivors, as witness, more than a quarter of a century after the old Modoc days, in their loyalty and love they made me a comrade in the Army of the Potomac. Truly, as Bayard Taylor says:

"The bravest are the tenderest; The loving are the daring."

The officer returned but I stayed with Walker a little time till a ship from Chile going to the Columbia for lumber took me away. And so, knowing how good and dauntless he was, I determined to defend the grave of my dead, even though it should wreck my book and fortunes. For it was the English who, indirectly, put him to death, and now to heap disgrace upon his lowly grave, it was to me intolerable, and made me reckless of results. However, the British showed their greatness by treating me all the better for hitting back hard as I could for my helpless dead. I was teaching school in Washington Territory when the story of John Brown's raid and death reached me and then and there I began this poem.

THE TALE OF THE TALL, ALCALDE.

THE TALE OF THE TALL ALCALDE.

Shadows that shroud the to-morrow, Glists from the life that's within,

Traces of pain and of sorrow, And maybe a trace of sin,

Heachings for God in the darkness, And for — what should have been.

Stains from the gall and the wormwood,

Memories bitter like myrrh, A sad brown face in a fir wood,

Blotches of heart's blood here, But never the sound of a tvailing,

Never the sign of a tear.

Where mountains repose in their blue- ness,

Where the sun first lands in his newness, And marshals his beams and his lances, Ere down to the vale he advances With visor erect, and rides swiftly On the terrible night in his way, And slays him, and, dauntless and deftly, Hews out the beautiful day With his flashing sword of silver, — Lay nestled the town of Renalda, Far famed for its stately Alcalde, The iron judge of the mountain mine, With heart like the heart of woman, Humanity more than human; — Far famed for its gold and silver, Fair maids and its mountain wine.

The feast was full, and the guests afire, The shaven priest and the portly squire, The solemn judge and the smiling dandy, The duke and the don and the comman dant e,

All, save one, shouted or sang divine, Sailing in one great sea of wine; Till roused, red-crested knight Chanticleer Answer'd and echo'd their song and cheer,

Some boasted of broil, encounter, in

battle, Some boasted of maidens most cleverly

won,

Boasted of duels most valiantly done, Of leagues of land and of herds of cattle, These men at the feast up in fair Renalda. All boasted but one, the calm Alcalde: Though hard they press'd from first of

the feast, Press'd commandante, press'd poet and

priest,

And steadily still an attorney press'd, With lifted glass and his face aglow, Heedless of host and careless of guest — " A tale! the tale of your life, so ho! For not one man in all Mexico Can trace your history two decade." A hand on the rude one's lip was laid: " Sacred, my son," the priest went on, " Sacred the secrets of every one, Inviolate as an altar-stone. Yet what in the life of one who must Have lived a life that is half divine — Have been so pure to be so just, What can there be, O advocate, In the life of one so desolate

20

THE TALE OF THE TALL ALCALDE.

Of luck with matron, or love with maid,

Midnight revel or escapade,

To stir the wonder of men at wine ?

But should the Alcalde choose, you

know," —

(And here his voice fell soft and low, As he set his wine-horn in its place, And look'd in the judge's careworn face) — " To weave us a tale that points a moral, Out of his vivid imagination, Of lass or of love, or lover's quarrel, Naught of his fame or name or station Shall lose in luster by its relation."

Softly the judge set down his horn, Kindly look'd on the priest all shorn, And gazed in the eyes of the advocate With a touch of pity, but none of hate; Then look'd he down in the brimming

horn, Half defiant and half forlorn.

Was it a tear? Was it a sigh? Was it a glance of the priest's black eye? Or was it the drunken revel-cry That smote the rock of his frozen heart And forced his pallid lips apart ? Or was it the weakness like to woman Yearning for sympathy Through the dark years, Spurning the secrecy, Burning for tears, Proving him human, — As he said to the men of the silver mine, With their eyes held up as to one divine, With his eyes held down to his untouch'd wine:

"It might have been where moonbeams

kneel

At night beside some rugged steep; It might have been where breakers reel, Or mild waves cradle one to sleep; It might have been in peaceful life,, Or mad tumult and storm and strife, I drew my breath; it matters not. A silver'd head, a sweetest cot,

A sea of tamarack and pine,

A peaceful stream, a balmy clime,

A cloudless sky, a sister's smile,

A mother's love that sturdy Time

Has strengthen'd as he strengthens wine,

Are mine, are with me all the while,

Are hung in memory's sounding halls,

Are graven on her glowing walls.

But rage, nor rack, nor wrath of man,

Nor prayer of priest, nor price, nor ban

Can wring from me their place or name,

Or why, or when, or whence I came;

Or why I left that childhood home,

A child of form yet old of soul,

And sought the wilds where tempests roll

O'er snow peaks white as driven foam.

" Mistaken and misunderstood, I sought a deeper wild and wood, A girlish form, a childish face, A wild waif drifting from place to place.

" Oh for the skies of rolling blue, The balmy hours when lovers woo, When the moon is doubled as in desire, And the lone bird cries in his crest of tire, Like vespers calling the soul to bliss In the blessed love of the life above, Ere it has taken the stains of this!

" The world afar, yet at my feet, Went steadily and sternly on; I almost fancied I could meet The crush and bustle of the street, When from my mountain I look'd down. And deep down in the canon's mouth The long-torn ran and pick-ax rang, And pack-trains coming from the south Went stringing round the mountain high In long gray lines, as wild geese fly, While mul'teers shouted hoarse and high, And dusty, dusky mul'teers sang — ' Senora with the liquid eye! No floods can ever quench the flame, Or frozen snows my passion tame, O Juanna with the coal-black eye! O senorita. bide a bye!'

THE TALE OF THE TALL ALCALDE.

21

"Environed by a mountain wall, That caped in snowy turrets stood; So fierce, so terrible, so tall, It never yet had been defiled By track or trail, save by the wild Free children of the wildest wood; An unkiss'd virgin at my feet, Lay my pure, hallow'd, dreamy vale, Where breathed the essence of my tale; Lone dimple in the mountain's face, Lone Eden in a boundless waste It lay so beautiful! so sweet!

" There in the sun's decline I stood By God's form wrought in pink and pearl, My peerless, dark-eyed Indian girl; And gazed out from a fringe of wood, With full-fed soul and feasting eyes, Upon an earthly paradise. Inclining to the south it lay, And long league's southward roll'd away, Until the sable-feat her 'd pines And tangled boughs and amorous vines Closed like besiegers on the scene, The while the stream that intertwined Had barely room to flow between. It was unlike all other streams, Save those seen in sweet summer dreams; For sleeping in its bed of snow, Nor rock nor stone was ever known, But only shining, shifting sands, Forever sifted by nnseen hands. It curved, it bent like Indian bow, And like an arrow darted through, Yet uttered not a sound nor breath, Nor broke a ripple from the start; It was as swift, as still as death, Yet was so clear, so pure, so sweet, It wound its way into your heart As through the grasses at your feet.

" Once, through the tall untangled

grass,

I saw two black bears careless pass, And in the twilight turn to play; I caught my rifle to my face, She raised her hand with quiet grace

And said: ' Not so, for us the day, The night belongs to such as they.'

"And then from out the shadow'd

wood

The antler'd deer came stalking down In half a shot of where I stood; Then stopp'd and stamp'd impatiently, Then shook his head and antlers high, And then his keen horns backward threw Upon his shoulders broad and brown, And thrust his muzzle in the air, Snuffd proudly; then a blast he blew As if to say: "No danger there." And then from out the sable wood His mate and two sweet dappled fawns Stole forth, and by the monarch stood, Such bronzes, as on kingly lawns; Or seen in picture, read in tale. Then he, as if to reassure The timid, trembling and demure, Again his antlers backward threw, Again a blast defiant blew, Then led them proudly down the vale.

" I watch'd the forms of darkness come Slow stealing from their sylvan home, And pierce the sunlight drooping low And weary, as if loth to go. Night stain 'd the lances as he bled, And, bleeding and pursued, he fled Across the vale into the wood. I saw the tall grass bend its head Beneath the stately martial tread Of Shades, pursuer and pursued.

" 'Behold the clouds,' Winnema said, 1 All purple with the blood of day; The night has conquer'd in the fray, The shadows live, and light is dead.'

" She turn'd to Shasta gracefully, Around whose hoar and mighty head Still roll'd a sunset sea of red, While troops of clouds a space below Were drifting wearily and slow, As seeking shelter for the night

22

THE TALE OF THE TALL ALCALDE.

Like weary sea-birds in their flight; Then curved her right arm gracefully Above her brow, and bow'd her knee, And chanted in an unknown tongue Words sweeter than were ever sung.

•• 'And what means this ? » I gently said. 1 1 prayed to God, the Yopitone, Who dwells on yonder snowy throne,' She softly said with drooping head; ' I bow'd to God. He heard my prayer, I felt his warm breath in my hair, He heard me all my wishes tell, For God is good, and all is well.'

" The dappled and the dimpled skies, The timid stars, the spotted moon, All smiled as sweet as sun at noon. Her eyes were like the rabbit's eyes, Her mien, her manner, just as mild, And though a savage war-chief's child, She would not harm the lowliest worm. And, though her beaded foot was firm, And though her airy step was true, She would not crush a drop of dew.

" Her love was deeper than the sea, And stronger than the tidal rise, And clung in all its strength to me. A face like hers is never seen This side the gates of paradise, Save in some Indian Summer scene, And then none ever sees it twice— Is seen but once, and seen no more, Seen but to tempt the skeptic soul, And show a sample of the whole That Heaven has in store.

"You might have plucked beams from

the moon,

Or torn the shadow from the pine When on its dial track at noon, But not have parted us one hour, She was so wholly, truly mine. And life was one unbroken dream Of purest bliss and calm delight, A flow'ry-shored, untroubled stream

Of sun and song, of shade and bower, A full-moon'd serenading night.

'* Sweet melodies were in the air, And tame birds caroll'd everywhere. I listened to the lisping grove And cooing pink-eyed turtle dove, I loved her with the holiest love; Believing with a brave belief That everything beneath the skies Was beautiful and born to love, That man had but to love, believe, And earth would be a paradise As beautiful as that above. My goddess, Beauty, I adored, Devoutly, fervid, her alone; My Priestess, Love, unceasing pour'd Pure incense on her altar-stone.

" I carved my name in coarse design Once on a birch down by the way, At which she gazed, as she would say, ' What does this say? What is this sign ?' And when I gaily said, ' Some day Some one will come and read my name, And I will live in song and fame, Entwined with many a mountain tale, As he who first found this sweet vale, And they will give the place my name,' She was most sad, and troubled much, And looked in silence far away; Then started trembling from my touch, And when she turn'd her face again, I read unutterable pain.

"At last she answered through her

tears,

'Ah! yes; this, too, foretells my fears: Yes, they will come — my race must go As fades a vernal fall of snow; And you be known, and I forgot Like these brown leaves that rust and rot Beneath my feet; and it is well: I do not seek to thrust my name On those who here, hereafter, dwell, Because I have before them dwelt;

THE TALE OF THE TALL, ALCALDE.

They too will have their tales to tell, They too will have their time and fame.

" 'Yes, they will come, come even now; The dim ghosts ou yon mountain's brow, Gray Fathers of my tribe and race, Do beckon to us from their place, And hurl red arrows through the air At night, to bid our braves beware. A footprint by the clear McCloud, Unlike aught ever seen before, Is seen. The crash of rifles loud

Is heard along its farther shore.'

****#* * *

" What tall and tawny men were these, As somber, silent, as the trees They moved among! and sad some way With temper'd sadness, ever they, — Yet not with sorrow born of fear. The shadow of their destinies They saw approaching year by year, And murmur'd not. They saw the sun Go down; they saw the peaceful moon Move on in silence to her rest, Saw white streams winding to the west; And thus they knew that oversoon, Somehow, somewhere, for every one Was rest beyond the setting sun. They knew not, never dream'd of doubt, But turn'd to death as to a sleep, And died with eager hands held out To reaching hands beyond the deep, — And died with choicest bow at hand, And quiver full, and arrow drawn For use, when sweet to-morrow's dawn Should waken in the Spirit Land.

" What wonder that I linger'd there With Nature's children! Could I part With those that met me heart to heart, And made me welcome, spoke me fair, Were first of all that understood My waywardness from others' ways, My worship of the true and good, And earnest love of Nature's God? Go court the mountains in the clouds, And clashing thunder, and the shrouds

Of tempests, and eternal shocks, And fast and pray as one of old In earnestness, and ye shall hold The mysteries; shall hold the rod That passes seas, that smites the rocks Where streams of melody and song Shall run as white streams rush and flow Down from the mountains' crests of snow,

Forever, to a thirsting throng.

* *• * * * * *

"Between the white man and the red There lies no neutral, halfway ground. I heard afar the thunder sound That soon should burst above my head, And made niy choice; I laid my plan, And childlike chose the weaker side; And ever have, and ever will, While might is wrong and wrongs remain, As careless of the world as I Am careless of a cloudless sky. With wayward and romantic joy I gave my pledge like any boy, But kept my promise like a man, And lost; yet with the lesson still Would gladly do the same again.

"'They come! they come! the pale-face

come!'

The chieftain shouted where he stood, Sharp watching at the margin wood, And gave the war-whoop's treble yell, That like a knell on fond hearts fell Far watching from my rocky home.

"No nodding plumes or banners fair Unfurl'd or fretted through the air; No screaming fife or rolling drum Did challenge brave of soul to come: But, silent, sinew-bows were strung, And, sudden, heavy quivers hung And, swiftly, to the battle sprung Tall painted braves with tufted hair, Like death-black banners in the air.

"And long they fought, and firm and

well And silent fought, and silent fell,

24

THE TALE OF THE TALL, ALCALDE.

Save when they gave the fearful yell Of death, defiance, or of hate. But what were feathered flints to fate? And what were yells to seething lead? And what the few and untrained feet To troops that came with martial tread, And moved by wood and hill and stream As thick as people in a street, As strange as spirits in a dream?

' ' From pine and poplar, here and there, A cloud, a flash, a crash, a thud, A warrior's garments roll'd in blood, A yell that rent the mountain air Of fierce defiance and despair, Told all who fell, and when and where. Then tighter drew the coils around, And closer grew the battle-ground, And fewer feather'd arrows fell, And fainter grew the battle yell, Until upon that hill was heard The short, sharp whistle of the bird: Until that blood-soaked battle hill Was still as death, so more than still.

"The calm, that cometh after all, Look'd sweetly down at shut of day, Where friend and foe commingled lay Like leaves of forest as they fall. Afar the somber mountains frown'd, Here tall pines wheel'd their shadows

round,

Like long, slim fingers of a hand That sadly pointed out the dead. Like some broad shield high overhead The great white moon led on and on, As leading to the better land. All night I heard the cricket's trill, That night-bird calling from the hill — The place was so profoundly still.

" The mighty chief at last was down, A broken gate of brass and pride! His hair all dust, and this his crown! His firm lips were compress'd in hate To foes, yet all content with fate; While, circled round him thick, the foe

Had folded hands in dust, and died. His tomahawk lay at his side, All blood, beside his broken bow. One arm stretch'd out, still over-bold, One hand half doubled hid in dust, And clutch'd the earth, as if to hold His hunting grounds still in his trust.

" Here tall grass bow'd its tassel'd head In dewy tears above the dead, And there they lay in crook'd fern, That waved and wept above by turn: And further on, by somber trees, They lay, wild heroes of wild deeds, In shrouds alone of weeping weeds, Bound in a never-to-be-broken peace.

"No trust that day had been betrayed; Not one had falter'd, not one brave Survived the fearful struggle, save One — save I the renegade, The red man's friend, and— they held me

so For this alone — the white man's foe.

" They bore me bound for many a day Through fen and wild, by foamy flood, From my dear mountains far away, Where an adobe prison stood Beside a sultry, sullen, town, With iron eyes and stony frown; And in a dark and narrow cell, So hot it almost took my breath, And seem'd but some outpost of hell, They thrust me — as if I had been A monster, in a monster's den. I cried aloud, I courted death, I call'd unto a strip of sky, The only thing beyond my cell That I could see, but no reply Came but the echo of my breath. I paced — how long I cannot tell — My reason fail'd, I knew no more, And swooning, fell upon the floor. Then months went on, till deep one night, When long thin bars of cool moonlight

THE TALE OF THE TALL ALCALDE.

Lay shimmering along the floor, My senses came to me once more.

«' My eyes look'd full into her eyes — Into her soul so true and tried, I thought myself in paradise, And wonder'd when she too had died. And then I saw the striped light That struggled past the prison bar, And in an instant, at the sight, My sinking soul fell just as far As could a star loosed by a jar From out the setting in a ring, The purpled semi-circled ring That seems to circle us at night.

"She saw my senses had return'd, Then swift to press my pallid face- Then, as if spurn'd, she sudden turn'd Her sweet face to the prison wall; Her bosom rose, her hot tears fell Fast as drip moss-stones in a well, And then, as if subduing all In one strong struggle of the soul Be what they were of vows or fears, With kisses and hot tender tears, There in the deadly, loathsome place, She bathed my pale and piteous face.

14 1 was so weak I could not speak Or press my pale lips to her cheek; 1 only looked my wish to share The secret of her presence there. Then looking through her falling hair, She press'd her finger to her lips, More sweet than sweets the brown bee sips. More sad than any grief untold, More silent than the milk-white moon, She turned away. I heard unfold An iron door, and she was gone.

" At last, one midnight, I was free; Again I felt the liquid air Around my hot brow like a sea, Sweet as my dear Madonna's prayer, Or benedictions on the soul; Pure air, which God gives free to all,

Again I breathed without control — Pure air that man would fain enthrall; God's air, which man hath sei. *d and

sold Unto his fellow-man for gold.

" I bow'd down to the bended sky, I toss'd my two thin hands on high, I call'd unto the crooked moon, I shouted to the shining stars, With breath and rapture uncontroll'd, Like some wild school-boy loosed at

noon,

Or comrade coming from the wars, Hailing his conipaniers of old.

"Short time for shouting or delay, — The cock is shrill, the east is gray, Pursuit is made, I must away. They cast me on a sinewy steed, And bid me look to girth and guide — A caution of but little need. I dash the iron in his side, Swift as the shooting stars I ride; I turn, I see, to my dismay, A silent rider red as they; I glance again — it is my bride, My love, my life, rides at my side.

"By gulch and gorge and brake and all. Swift as the shining meteors fall, We fly, and never sound nor word But ringing mustang hoof is heard, And limbs of steel and lungs of steam Could not be stronger than theirs seem. Grandly as in some joyous dream, League on league, and hour on hour, Far from keen pursuit, or power Of sheriff or bailiff, high or low, Into the bristling hills we go.

tl Into the tumbled, clear McCloud, White as the foldings of a shroud; We dash into the dashing stream, We breast the tide, we drop the rein, We clutch the streaming, tangled mane— And yet the rider at my side Has never look nor word replied.

26

THE TALE OF THE TALL ALCALDE.

"Out in its foam, its rush, its roar, Breasting away to the farther shore; Steadily, bravely, gain'd at last, Gain'd, where never a dastard foe Has dared to come, or friend to go. Pursuit is baffled and danger pass'd.

" Under an oak whose wide arms were Lifting aloft, as if in prayer, Under an oak, where the shining moon Like feather'd snow in a winter noon Quiver'd, sifted, and drifted down In spars and bars on her shoulders brown: And yet she was as silent still As block stones toppled from the hill — Great basalt blocks that near us lay, Deep nestled in the grass untrod By aught save wild beasts of the wood — Great, massive, squared, and chisel'd

stone,

Like columns that had toppled down From temple dome or tower crown, Along some drifted, silent way Of desolate and desert town Built by the children of the sun. And I in silence sat on one, And she stood gazing far away To where her childhood forests lay, Still as the stone I sat upon.

"I sought to catch her to my breast And charm her from her silent mood; She shrank as if a beam, a breath, Then silently before me stood, Still, coldly, as the kiss of death. Her face was darker than a pall, Her presence was so proudly tall, I would have started from the stone Where I sat gazing up at her, As from a form to earth unknown, Had I possess'd the power to stir.

" 'O touch me not, no more, no more; 'Tis past, and my sweet dream is o'er. Impure! Impure! Impure!' she cried, In words as sweetly, wierdly wild As mingling of a rippled tide,

And music on the waters spill'd. . . . ' But you are free, Fly! Fly alone. Yes, you will win another bride In some far clime where nought is known Of all that you have won or lost, Or what your liberty has cost; Will win you name, and place, and power, And ne'er recall this face, this hour, Save in some secret, deep regret, Which I forgive and you'll forget. Your destiny will lead you on Where, open'd wide to welcome you, Rich, ardent hearts and bosoms are, And snowy arms, more purely fair, And breasts — who dare say breasts more true ?

" « They said you had deserted me, Had rued you of your wood and wild. I knew, I knew it could not be, I trusted as a trusting child. I cross'd yon mountains bleak and high That curve their rough backs to the sky, I rode the white-maned mountain flood, And track'd for weeks the trackless wood. The good God led me, as before, And brought me to your prison-door.

11 'That madden'd call! that fever'd

moan!

I heard you in the midnight call My own name through the massive wall, In my sweet mountain-tongue and tone — And yet you call'd so feebly wild, I near mistook you for a child.

The keeper with his clinking keys I sought, implored upon my knees That I might see you, feel your breath, Your brow, or breathe you low replies Of comfort in your lonely death. His red face shone, his redder eyes Were like a fiend's that feeds on lies. Again I heard your feeble moan, I cried— unto a heart of stone. Ah! why the hateful horrors tell? Enough! I crept into your cell.

THE TALE OF THE TALL ALCALDE.

" ' I nursed you, lured you back to life, And when you knew, and called me wife And love, with pale lips rife With love and feeble loveliness, I turn'd away, I hid my face, In mad reproach and such distress, In dust down in that loathsome place.

«' 'And then I vow'd a solemn vow That you should live, live and be free. And you have lived — are free; and now Too slow yon red sun comes to see My life or death, or me again. Oh, death! the peril and the pain I have endured! the dark, dark stain That I did take on my fair soul, All, all to save you, make you free, Are more than mortal can endure; But flame can make the foulest pure.

" 'Behold this finished funeral pyre, All ready for the form and fire, Which these, my own hands, did prepare For this last night; then lay me there. I would not hide me from my God Beneath the cold and sullen sod, But, wrapp'd in fiery shining shroud, Ascend to Him, a wreathing cloud.'

"She paused, she turn'd, she lean'd

apace

Her glance and half-regretting face, As if to yield herself to me; And then she cried, ' It cannot be, For I have vow'd a solemn vow, And, God help me to keep it now!'

" I stood with arms extended wide To catch her to my burning breast; She caught a dagger from her side And, ere I knew to stir or start, She plunged it in her bursting heart, And fell into my arms and died — Died as my soul to hers was press'd, Died as I held her to my breast, Died without one word or moan, And left me with my dead— alone.

" I laid her warm upon the pile, And underneath the lisping oak I watch'd the columns of dark smoke Embrace her red lips, with a smile Of frenzied fierceness, while there came A gleaming column of red flame, That grew a grander monument Above her nameless noble mould Than ever bronze or marble lent To king or conqueror of old.

"It seized her in its hot embrace, And leapt as if to reach the stars. Then looking up I saw a face So saintly and so sweetly fair, So sad, so pitying, and so pure, I nigh forgot the prison bars, And for one instant, one alone, I felt I could forgive, endure.

" I laid a circlet of white stone,

And left her ashes there alone

Years after, years of storm and pain, I sought that sacred ground again. I saw the circle of white stone With tall, wild grasses overgrown. I did expect, I know not why, From out her sacred dust to find Wild pinks and daisies blooming fair; And when I did not find them there I almost deern'd her God unkind, Less careful of her dust than I.

" But why the dreary tale prolong? And deem you I coufess'd me wrong, That I did bend a patient kuee To all the deep wrongs done to me? That I, because the prison mould Was on my brow, and all its chill Was in iny heart as chill as night, Till soul and body both were cold, Did curb my free-born mountain will And sacrifice my sense of right ?

"No! no! and had they come that day While I with hands and garments red Stood by her pleading, patient clay, The one lone watcher by my dead,

28

THE TALE OF THE TALL ALCALDE.

With cross-hilt dagger in my hand,

And offer'd me my life and all

Of titles, power, or of place,

I should have spat them in the face,

And spurn'd them every one.

I live as God gave me to live,

I see as God gave me to see.

"Tis not my nature to forgive,

Or cringe and plead and bend the knee

To God or man in woe or weal,

In penitence I cannot feel.

" I do not question school nor creed Of Christian, Protestant, or Priest; I only know that creeds to me Are but new names for mystery, That good is good from east to east, And more I do not know nor need To know, to love my neighbor well. I take their dogmas, as they tell, Their pictures of their Godly good, In garments thick with heathen blood; Their heaven with his harp of gold, Their horrid pictures of their hell — Take hell and heaven undenied, Yet were the two placed side by side, Placed full before me for my choice, As they are pictured, best and worst, As they are peopled, tame and bold, The canonized, and the accursed Who dared to think, and thinking speak, And speaking act, bold cheek to cheek, I would in transports choose the first,

And enter hell with lifted voice.

» * « * *

" Go read the annals of the North And records there of many a wail, Of marshalling and going forth For missing sheriffs, and for men Who fell and none knew how nor when, — Who disappear'd on mountain trail, Or in some dense and narrow vale. Go, traverse Trinity and Scott, That curve their dark backs to the sun: Go, prowl them all. Lo! have they not The chronicles of my wild life?

My secrets on their lips of stone, My archives built of human bone? Go, range their wilds as I have done, From snowy crest to sleeping vales, And you will find on every one

Enough to swell a thousand tales.

# * * • * *

"The soul cannot survive alone, And hate will die, like other things; I felt an ebbing in my rage; I hunger'd for the sound of one, Just one familiar word, — Yearn'd but to hear my fellow speak, Or sound of woman's mellow tone, As beats the wild, imprison'd bird, That long nor kind nor mate has heard, With bleeding wings and panting beak Against its iron cage.

" I saw a low-roof 'd rancho lie, Far, far below, at set of sun, Along the foot-hills crisp and dun — A lone sweet star in lower sky; Saw children passing to and fro, The busy housewife come and go, And white cows come at her command, And none look'd larger than my hand. Then worn and torn, and tann'd and

brown,

And heedless all, I hasten'd down; A wanderer, wandering lorn and late, I stood before the rustic gate.

" Two little girls, with brown feet bare, And tangled, tossing, yellow hair, Play'd on the green, fantastic dress'd, Around a great Newfoundland brute That lay half-resting on his breast, And with his red mouth open'd wide Would make believe that he would bite, As they assail'd him left and right, And then sprang to the other side, And fill'd with shouts the willing air. Oh, sweeter far than lyre or lute To my then hot and thirsty heart, And better self so wholly mute, Were those sweet voices calling there.

THE TALE OF THE TALL ALCALDE.

29

"Though some sweet scenes my eyes

have seen,

Some melody my soul has heard, No song of any maid, or bird, Or splendid wealth of tropic scene, Or scene or song of anywhere, Has my impulsive soul so stirr'd, As those young angels sporting there.

"The dog at sight of me arose, And nobly stood with lifted nose, Afront the children, now so still, And staring at me with a will. ' Come in, come in,' the rancher cried, As here and there the housewife hied; ' Sit down, sit down, you travel late. What news of politics or war? And are you tired? Go you far? And where you from ? Be quick, my Kate, This boy is sure in need of food.' The little children close by stood, And watch'd and gazed inquiringly, Then came and climbed upon my knee.

" 'That there's my Ma,' the eldest said, And laugh'd and toss'd her pretty head; And then, half bating of her joy, ' Have you a Ma, you stranger boy?- And there hangs Carlo on the wall As large as life; that mother drew With berry stains upon a shred Of tattered tent; but hardly you Would know the picture his at all, For Carlo's black, and this is red.' Again she laugh'd, and shook her head, And shower'd curls all out of place; Then sudden sad, she raised her face To mine, and tenderly she said, 'Have you, like us, a pretty home? Have you, like me, a dog and toy? Where do you live, and whither roam? And where's your Pa, poor stranger boy?'

"It seem'd so sweetly out of place Again to meet my fellow-man. I gazed and gazed upon his face As something I had never seen.

The melody of woman's voice

Fell on my ear as falls the rain

Upon the weary, waiting plain.

I heard, and drank and drank again,

As earth with crack'd lips drinks the rain,

In green to revel and rejoice.

I ate with thanks my frugal food,

The first return 'd for many a day.

I had met kindness by the way!

I had at last eucounter'd good!

" I sought my couch, but not to sleep; New thoughts were coursing strong and

deep

My wild, impulsive passion-heart; I could not rest, my heart was moved, My iron will forgot its part, And I wept like a child reproved.

"I lay and pictured me a life Afar from peril, hate, or pain; Enough of battle, blood, and strife, I would take up life's load again; And ere the breaking of the morn I swung my rifle from the horn, And turned to other scenes and lands With lighteu'd heart and whiteu'd hands.

" Where orange blossoms never die, Where red fruits ripen all the year Beneath a sweet and balmy sky, Far from my language or my land, Reproach, regret, or shame or fear, I came in hope, I wander'd here — Yes, here; and this red, bony hand That holds this glass of ruddy cheer — "

"'Tis he! " hiss'd the crafty advocate. He sprang to his feet, and hot with hate He reach'd his hands, and he call'd aloud, " 'Tis the renegade of the red McCloud! "

Slowly the Alcalde rose from his chair; " Hand me, touch me, him who dare! " And his heavy glass on the board of oak He smote with such savage and mighty

stroke, It ground to dust in his bony hand,

THE TALE OF THE TALL, ALCALDE.

And heavy bottles did clink and tip

As if an earthquake were in the land.

He tower'd up, and in his ire

Seem'd taller than a church's spire.

He gazed a moment — and then, the while

An icy cold and defiant smile

Did curve his thin and his livid lip,

He turn'd on his heel, he strode through

the hall

Grand as a god, so grandly tall, Yet white and cold as a chisel'd stone; He passed him out the adobe door Into the night, and he pass'd alone, And never was known or heard of more.

The lesson of this poem is that of persistent toil and endeavor. It certainly is not " a little thing dashed off before breakfast," for it was twice revised and published before its first appearance in London, and has been cut and revised at least half a dozen times since; and is still incomplete and very unsatisfying to the writer, except as to the descriptions. It was my first attempt at telling a story in verse, that was thought worth preserving. It was begun when but a lad, camped with our horses for a month's rest in an old adobe ruin on the Reading Ranch, with the gleaming snows of Mount Shasta standing out above the clouds against the cold, blue north. The story is not new, having been written, or at least lived in every mountain land of intermixed races that has been: a young outlaw in love with a wild mountain beauty, his battles for her people against his own, the capture, prison, brave release, flight, return, and revenge— a sort of modified Mazeppa. But it has been a fat source of feeding for grimly humorous and sensational writers, who long ago claimed to have found in it the story of my early life; and strangely enough I was glad when they did so, and read their stories with wild delight. I don't know why I always encouraged this idea of having been an outlaw, but I recall that when Trelawny told me that Byron was more ambitious to be thought the hero of his wildest poems than even to be king of Greece I could not help saying to myself, as Napoleon said to the thunders preceding Waterloo, " We are of accord."

The only serious trouble about the claim that I made the fight of life up the ugly steeps from a hole in an adobe prison-wall to the foothills of Olympus instead of over the pleasant campus of a college, is the fact that "ourfriends the enemy" fixed the date at about the eame time in which I am on record as reading my class poem in another land. Besides, I was chosen to the bench on the very ticket when the very sheriff who should have kept me in his adobe prison was elected senator, and by some of the very men of my Mount Shasta with whom I had served in war against these same Indians for whom it is said I sold my birthright. Or did I have a double, and was it the other self who was at college? And is it not possible that I am even now the original and only real Joaquin Murietta? For more than once in the old days I was told (and how pleased I was to hear it said) that no other than Joaquin Murietta could ever ride as I rode. But here again is confusion, even more than the confusion of dates and deeds and names. For his hair was as black as a whole midnight, while mine was the hue of hammered gold. And, after all, was it not my vanity and willingness to be thought Joaquin, rather than pity for the brave boy outlaw, driven to desperation by wrongs too brutal to be told, that made me write of him and usurp his bloody name? Anyhow, I'd rather to-day be Joaquin Murietta, dead or living, than the wretch who got the reward for his alleged taking off. And was Joaquin Murietta really killed' when that party of Texans surprised and butchered a band of unarmed Mexicans? Nine men in ten will say not.

Mrs. Gale Page, daughter of an early governor of Oregon, told me at Walla Walla, July 5th, 1896, in her own house, that her father, who knew and liked Joaquin, when a miner, had had two letters from him, dated and postmarked Mexico, years after his alleged death. So he certainly was not killed as told. But pity, pity, that men should so foolishly waste time with either me or mine when I have led them into the mighty heart of ma jestic Shasta. Why yonder, lone as God and white as the great white throne, there looms against the sapphire upper seas a mountain peak that props the very porch of heaven; and yet they bother with and want to torment a poor mote of dust that sinks in the grasses at their feet ! Why, I know a single canon there so deep, so bottom less, and broad and somber that a whole night once housed there and let a gold and silver day glide on and on and over it all the vast day long, and all day long night lay there undiscovered. Yet in this presence there be those who will stoop to look at a mere mote at their feet, or on their shoes, and bother to know whether it be a black speck or a white; preferring, however, to find it black.

THE LAST TASCHASTAS.

THE LAST TASCHASTAS.

The. hills were broivn, the heavens were blue, A woodpecker pounded a pine-top shell.

While a partridge whistled the whole day through For a rabbit to dance in the chapparal, And a grey grouse drummed, "All's well, all's well.3

I.

Wrinkled and brown as a bag of leather, A. squaw sits moaning long and low. Yesterday she was a wife and mother, To-day she is rocking her to and fro, A childless widow, in weeds and woe.

An Indian sits in a rocky cavern Chipping a flint in an arrow head; His children are moving as still as shadows, His squaw is moulding some balls of lead, With round face painted a battle-rede

An Indian sits in a black-jack jungle, Where a grizzly bear has rear'd her young, Whetting a flint on a granite boulder. His quiver is over his brown back hung — His face is streak'd and his bow is strung.

An Indian hangs from a cliff of granite, Like an eagle's nest built in the air, Looking away to the east, and watching The smoke of the cabins curling there, And eagle's feathers are in his hair.

In belt of wampum, in battle fashion An Indian watches with wild desire. He is red with paint, he is black with pas sion;

And grand as a god in his savage ire, He leans and listens till stars are a-fire.

All somber and sullen and sad, a chieftain Now looks from the mountain far into the

sea.

Just before him beat in the white billows, Just behind him the toppled tall tree And woodmen chopping, knee buckled

to knee.

II.

All together, all in council,

In a canon wall'd so high

That no thing could ever reach them

Save some stars dropp'd from the sky.

And the brown bats sweeping by:

Tawny chieftains thin and wiry, Wise as brief, and brief as bold; Chieftains young and fierce and fiery. Chieftains stately, stern and old, Bronzed and battered— battered gold.

Flamed the council-fire brighter, Flash'd black eyes like diamond beads, When a woman told her sorrows, While a warrior told his deeds, And a widow tore her weeds.

Then was lit the pipe of council That their fathers smoked of old, With its stem of manzanita, And its bowl of quartz and gold, And traditions manifold.

How from lip to lip in silence Burn'd it round the circle red, Like an evil star slow passing (Sign of battles and bloodshed) Round the heavens overhead.

Then the silence deep was broken

By the thunder rolling far,

As gods muttering in anger.

Or the bloody battle-car

Of some Christian king at war.

1 'Tis the spirits of my Fathers Mutt'ring vengeance in the skies;

THE LAST TASCHASTAS.

And the flashing of the lightning Is the anger of their eyes, Bidding us in battle rise,"

Cried the war-chief, now uprising, Naked all above the waist. While a belt of shells and silver Held his tamoos to its place, And the war-paint streaked his face.

Women melted from the council, Boys crept backward out of sight, Till alone a wall of warriors In their paint and battle-plight Sat reflecting back the light.

" O my Fathers in the storm-cloud!" (Red arms tossing to the skies, While the massive walls of granite Seem'd to shrink to half their size, And to mutter strange replies) —

" Soon we come, O angry Fathers, Down the darkness you have cross'd: Speak for hunting-grounds there for us; Those you left us we have lost — Gone like blossoms in a frost.

"Warriors!" (and his arms fell folded On his tawny swelling breast, While his voice, now low and plaintive As the waves in their unrest, Touching tenderness confess'd).

"Where is Wrotto, wise of counsel, Yesterday here in his place ? A brave lies dead down in the valley, Last brave of his line and race, And a Ghost sits on his face.

" Where his boy the tender-hearted, With his mother yestermoru ? Lo! a wigwam door is darken'd, Aiid a mother moiirns forlorn, With her long locks toss'd and torn.

"Lo! our daughters have been gather'd

From among us by the foe,

Like the lilies they once gather'd

In the spring-time all aglow From the banks of living snow.

11 Through the land where we for ages Laid the bravest, dearest dead, Grinds the savage white man's plow share

Grinding sires' bones for bread — We shall give them blood instead.

"I saw white skulls in a furrow, And around the cursed plowshare Clung the flesh of my own children, And my mother's tangled hair Trailed along the furrow there.

' ' Warriors ! braves \ I cry for vengeance ! And the dim ghosts of the dead Unavenged do wail and shiver In the storm cloud overhead, And shoot arrows battle-red."

Then he ceased, and sat among them, With his long locks backward strowu; They as mute as men of marble, He a king upon the throne, And as still as any stone.

Then uprose the war chief's daughter, Taller than the tassell'd corn, Sweeter than the kiss of morning, Sad as some sweet star of morn. Half defiant, half forlorn.

Robed in skins of striped panther Lifting loosely to the air With a face a shade of sorrow And black eyes that said, Beware! Nestled in a storm or hair;

With her striped robes around her, Fasten'd by an eagle's beak, Stood she by the stately chieftain, Proud and pure as Shasta's peak, As she ventured thus to speak:

" Must the tomahawk of battle

Be unburied where it lies,

O, last war chief of Taschastas ?

THE LAST TASCHASTAS.

33

Must the smoke of battle rise Like a storm cloud in the skies ?

" True, some wretch has laid a brother With his swift feet to the sun, But because one bough is broken, Must the broad oak be undone? All the fir trees fell'd as one?

" True, the braves have faded, wasted Like ripe blossoms in the rain, But when we have spent the arrows, Do we twang the string in vain, And then snap the bow in twain ?"

Like a vessel in a tempest Shook the warrior, wild and grim, As he gazed out in the midnight, As to things that beckon'd him, And his eyes were moist and dim.

Then he turn'd, and to his bosom Battle-scarr'd, and strong as brass, Tenderly the warrior press'd her As if she were made of glass, Murmuring, " Alas! alas!

" Loua Ellah! Spotted Lily! Streaks of blood shall be the sign, On their cursed and mystic pages, Representing me and mine! By Tonatiu's fiery shrine!

' ' When the grass shall grow untrodden In my war path, and the plow Shall be grinding through this canon Where my braves are gather'd now, Still shall they record this vow:

"War and vengeance! rise, my warrior, Rise and shout the battle sign, Ye who love revenge and glory! Ye for peace, in silence pine, And no more be braves of mine."

Then the war yell roll'd and echoed As they started from the ground, Till an eagle from his cedar

Starting, answer'd back the sound, And flew circling round and round.

" Enough, enough, my kingly father," And the glory of her eyes Flash'd the valor and the passion That may sleep but never dies, As she proudly thus replies:

" Can the cedar be a willow, Pliant and as little worth? It shall stand the king of forests, Or its fall shall shake the earth,

Desolating heart and hearth!"

**•**#»

in.

##*#*»

From cold east shore to warm west sea

The red men followed the red sun,

And faint and failing fast as he,

They knew too well their race was run.

This ancient tribe, press'd to the wave,

There fain had slept a patient slave,

And died out as red embers die

From flames that once leapt hot and high;

But, roused to anger, half arose

Around that chief, a sudden flood,

A hot and hungry cry for blood;

Half drowsy shook a feeble hand,

Then sank back in a tame repose,

And left him to his fate and foes,

A stately wreck upon the strand.

* * * * * «

His eye was like the lightning's wing, His voice was like a rushing flood; And when a captive bound he stood His presence look'd the perfect king.

'Twas held at first that he should die: I never knew the reason why A milder council did prevail, Save that we shrank from blood, and save That brave men do respect the brave. Down sea sometimes there was a sail, And far at sea, they said, an isle, And he was sentenced to exile; In open boat upon the sea

34

THE LAST TASCHASTAS.

To go the instant on the main,

And never under penalty

Of death to touch the shore again.

A troop of bearded buckskiun'd men

Bore him hard-hurried to the wave,

Placed him swift in the boat; and then

Swift pushing to the bristling sea,

His daughter rush'd down suddenly,

Threw him his bow, leapt from the shore

Into the boat beside the brave,

And sat her down and seized the oar,

And never question'd, made replies,

Or moved her lips, or raised her eyes.

His breast was like a gate of brass, His brow was like a gather'd storm; There is no chisell'd stone that has So stately and complete a form, In sinew, arm, and every part, In all the galleries of art.

Gray, bronzed, and naked to the waist, He stood half halting in the prow, With quiver bare and idle bow. The warm sea fondled with the shore, And laid his white face to the sands. His daughter sat with her sad face Bent on the wave, with her two hands Held tightly to the dripping oar; And as she sat, her dimpled knee Bent lithe as wand or willow tree, So round and full, so rich and free, That no one would have ever known That it had either joint or bone.

Her eyes were black, her face was brown, Her breasts were bare and there fell down Such wealth of hair, it almost hid The two, in its rich jetty fold— Which I had sometime fain forbid, They were so richer, fuller far Than any polish'd bronzes are, And richer hued than any gold. On her brown arms and her brown hands Were bars of gold and golden bands, Rough hammer 'd from the virgin ore, So heavy, they could hold no more.

I wonder now, I wonder'd then, That men who fear'd not gods nor men Laid no rude hands at all on her, — I think she had a dagger slid Down in her silver'd wampum belt; It might have been, instead of hilt, A flashing diamond hurry-hid That I beheld— I could not know For certain, we did hasten so; And 1 know now less sure than then: Deeds strangle memories of deeds, Red blossoms wither, choked with weeds, And years drown memories of men. Some things have happened since— and

then This happen 'd years and years ago.

» Go, go!" the captain cried, and smote With sword and boot the swaying boat, Until it quiver'd as at sea And brought the old chief to his knee. He turn'd his face, and turning rose With hand raised fiercely to his foes: 44 Yes, I will go, last of my race, Push'd by you robbers ruthlessly Into the hollows of the sea, From this my last, last resting-place. Traditions of my fathers say A feeble few reach'd for this land, And we reach'd them a welcome hand Of old, upon another shore; Now they are strong, we weak as they, And they have driven us before Their faces, from that sea to this: Then marvel not if we have sped Sometime an arrow as we fled, So keener than a serpent's kiss."

He turn'd a time unto the sun That lay half hidden in the sea, As in his hollows rock'd asleep, All trembled and breathed heavily; Then arch'd his arm, as you have done, For sharp masts piercing through the

deep.

No shore or kind ship met his eye, Or isle, or sail, or anything,

THE LAST TASCHASTAS.

35

Save white sea gulls on dipping wing, And mobile sea and molten sky.

"Farewell!— push seaward, child!" he

cried,

And quick the paddle-strokes replied. Like lightning from the panther-skin, That bound his loins round about He snatch'd a poison'd arrow out, That like a snake lay hid within, And twang'd his bow. The captain fell Prone on his face, and such a yell Of triumph from that savage rose As man may never hear again. He stood as standing on the main, The topmast main, in proud repose, And shook his clench'd fist at his foes, And call'd, and cursed them every one. He heeded not the shouts and shot That follow'd him, but grand and grim Stood up against the level sun; And, standing so, seem'd in his ire So grander than some ship on fire.

And when the sun had left the sea, That laves Abrup, and Blanco laves,

And left the land to death and me, The only thing that I could see Was, ever as the light boat lay High lifted on the white-back'd waves, A head as gray and toss'd as they.

We raised the dead, and from his

hands Pick'd out some shells, clutched as he

lay

And two by two bore him away, And wiped his lips of blood and sands.

We bent and scooped a shallow home, And laid him warm-wet in his blood, Just as the lifted tide a-flood Came charging in with mouth a-foam: And as we turn'd, the sensate thing Reached up, lick'd out its foamy tongue, Lick'd out its tongue and tasted blood; The white lips to the red earth clung An instant, and then loosening All hold just like a living thing, Drew back sad-voiced and shuddering, All stained with blood, a striped flood.

Tc'hastas; a name given to King John by the French, a corruption of chaste; for he was a pure, just man and a great warrior. He was kiug of the Rouge (Red) River Indians of Oregon, and his story is glorious with great deeds in defense of his people. When finally overpowered he and his son Moses were put on a ship at Port Orford and sent to Fort Alcatraz in the Golden Gate. In mid-ocean, these two Indians, in irons, rose up, and, after a bloody fight, took the ship. But one had lost a leg, the other an arm, and so they finally had to let loose the crew and soldiers tumbled into the hold and surrender themselves again; for the ship was driving helpless in a storm toward the rocks. The king died a prisoner, but his son escaped and never again surrendered. He lives alone near Yreka and is known as "Prince Peg-leg Moses" A daughter of the late Senator Nesmith sends me a picture, taken in 1896, of the king's devoted daughter, Princess Mary, who followed his fortunes in all his battles. She must be nearly one hundred years old. I remember her as an old woman full forty years ago, tall as a soldier, and most terrible in council. I have tried to picture her and her people as I once saw them in a midnight camp before the breaking out of the war; also their actions and utterances, so like some of the old Israelite councils ai:d prophecies. This was the leading piece in my very first book, "Specimens." published in Oregon in 1867-8, if I remember rightly.

JOAQUIN MURIETTA

JOAQUIN MURIETTA.

Glintings of day in the darkness, Flashings of Jlint and of steel,

Blended in gossamer texture The ideal and the real,

Limn'd like the phantom ship shadow, Crowding up under the keel.

1 stand beside the mobile sea, And sails are spread, and sails are furl'd; From farthest corners of the world, And fold like white wings wearily. Some ships go up, and some go down In haste, like traders in a town.

Afar at sea some white ships flee, With arms stretch'd like a ghost's to me, And cloud-like sails are blown and curl'd, Then glide down to the under world. As if blown bare in winter blasts Of leaf and limb, tall naked masts Are rising from the restless sea. I seem to see them gleam and shine With clinging drops of dripping brine. Broad still brown wings flit here and there, Thin sea-blue wings wheel everywhere, And white wings whistle through the air; I hear a thousand sea gulls call. And San Francisco Bay is white And blue with sail and sea and light.

Behold the ocean on the beach Kneel lowly down as if in prayer, I hear a moan as of despair, While far at sea do toss and reach Some things so like white pleading hands. The ocean's thin and hoary hair Is trail'd along the silver'd sands, At every sigh and sounding moan. The very birds shriek in distress And sound the ocean's monotone. 'Tis not a place for mirthfulness, But meditation deep, and prayer,

And kneelings on the salted sod, Where man must own his littleness, And know the mightiness of God.

Dared I but say a prophecy, As sang the holy men of old, Of rock-built cities yet to be Along these shining shores of gold, Crowding athirst into the sea, What wondrous marvels might be told! Enough, to know that empire here Shall burn her loftiest, brightest star; Here art and eloquence shall reign, As o'er the wolf-rear'd realm of old; Here learn'd and famous from afar, To pay their noble court, shall come, And shall not seek or see in vain, But look and look with wonder dumb.

Afar the bright Sierras lie A swaying line of snowy white, A fringe of heaven hung in sight Against the blue base of the sky.

I look along each gaping gorge, I hear a thousand sounding strokes Like giants rending giant oaks, Or brawny Vulcan at his forge; I see pickaxes flash and shine; Hear great wheels whirling in a mine. Here winds a thick and yellow thread, A moss'd and silver stream instead; And trout that leap'd its rippled tide Have turn'd upon their sides and died.

Lo! when the last pick in the mine Lies rusting red with idleness,

JOAQUIN MURIETTA,

37

And rot you cabins in the mold, And wheels no more croak in distress, And tall pines reassert command, Sweet bards along this sunset shore Their mellow melodies will pour; Will charm as charmers very wise, Will strike the harp with master hand, Will sound unto the vaulted skies, The valor of these men of old — These mighty men of 'Forty-nine; Will sweetly sing and proudly say, Long, long agone there was a day When there were giants in the land. *****

Now who rides rushing on the sight Hard down yon rocky long defile, Swift as an eagle in his flight, Fierce as a winter's storm at night Blown from the bleak Sierra's height! Such reckless rider! — I do ween No mortal man his like has seen. And yet, but for his long serape All flowing loose, and black as crape, And long silk locks of blackest hair All streaming wildly in the breeze, You might believe him in a chair, Or chatting at some country fair He rides so grandly at his ease.

But now he grasps a tighter rein, A red rein wrought in golden chain, And in his tapidaros stands. Turns, shouts defiance at his foe. And now he calmly bares his brow As if to challenge fate, and now His hand drops to his saddle-bow And clutches something gleaming there As if to something more than dare.

The stray winds lift the raven curls, Soft as a fair Castilian girl's, And bare a brow so manly, high, Its every feature does belie The thought he is compell'd to fly; A brow as open as the sky On which you gaze and gaze again

As on a picture you have seen And often sought to see in vain, A brow of blended pride and pain, That seems to hold a tale of woe Or wonder, that you fain would know A boy's brow, cut as with a knife, With many a dubious deed in life.

Again he grasps his glitt'ring rein, And, wheeling like a hurricane, Defying wood, or stone, or flood, Is dashing down the gorge again. Oh, never yet has prouder steed Borne master nobler in his need! There is a glory in his eye That seems to dare and to defy Pursuit, or time, or space, or race. His body is the type of speed, While from his nostril to his heel Are muscles as if made of steel.

What crimes have made that red hand

red?

What wrongs have written that young face With lines of thought so out of place? Where flies he? And from whence has

fled?

And what his lineage and race? What glitters in his heavy belt, And from his furr'd cantenas gleam? What on his bosom that doth seem A diamond bright or dagger's hilt ? The iron hoofs that still resound Like thunder from the yielding ground Alone reply; and now the plain, Quick as you breathe and gaze again,

Is won, and all pursuit is vain.

* * * * *

I stand upon a mountain rim, Stone-paved and pattern'd as a street; A rock-lipp?d canon plunging south, As if it were earth's open'd mouth, Yawns deep and darkling at my feet; So deep, so distant, and so dim Its waters wind, a yellow thread, And call so faintly and so far, I turn aside my swooning head.

JOAQUIN MURIETTA,

I feel a fierce impulse to leap Adown the beetling precipice, Like some lone, lost, uncertain star; To plunge into a place unknown, And win a world, all, all my own; Or if I might not meet that bliss, At least escape the curse of this.

I gaze again. A gleaming star Shines back as from some mossy well Reflected from blue fields afar. Brown hawks are wheeling here and there, And up and down the broken wall Clings clumps of dark green chapparal, While from the rent rocks, grey and

bare; Blue junipers hang in the air.

Here, cedars sweep the stream and here, Among the boulders moss'd and brown That time and storms have toppled down From towers undefiled by man, Low cabins nestle as in fear, And look no taller than a span. From low and shapeless chimneys rise Some tall straight columns of blue smoke, And weld them to the bluer skies; While sounding down the somber gorge I hear the steady pickax stroke, As if upon a flashing forge.

*****

Another scene, another sound! — Sharp shots are fretting through the air, Red knives are flashing everywhere, And here and there the yellow flood Is purpled with warm smoking blood. The brown hawk swoops low to the

ground,

And nimble chipmunks, small and still, Dart striped lines across the sill That manly feet shall press no more. The flume lies warping in the sun, The pan sits empty by the door, The pickax on its bedrock floor, Lies rusting in the silent mine. There comes no single sound nor sign

Of life, beside yon monks in brown That dart their dim shapes up and down The rocks that swelter in the sun; But dashing down yon rocky spur, Where scarce a hawk would dare to

whin*,

A horseman holds his reckless flight. He wears a flowing black capote, While over all do flow and float Long locks of hair as dark as night, And hands are red that erst were white.

All up and down the land to-day Black desolation and despair It seems have set and settled there, With none to frighten them away. Like sentries watching by the way Black chimneys topple in the air, And seem to say, Go back, beware! While up around the mountain's rim Are clouds of smoke, so still and grim They look as they are fasten'd there.

A lonely stillness, so like death, So touches, terrifies all things, That even rooks that fly o'erhead Are hush'd, and seem to hold their

breath,

To fly with muffled wings, And heavy as if made of lead. Some skulls that crumble to the touch, Some joints of thin and chalk-like bone, A tall black chimney, all alone, That leans as if upon a crutch. Alone are left to mark or tell, Instead of cross or cryptic stone, Where Joaquin stood and brave men fell.

The sun is red and flush'd and dry, And fretted from his weary beat Across the hot and desert sky, And swollen as from overheat, And failing too; for see, he sinks Swift as a ball of burnish'd ore: It may be fancy, but methinks He never fell so fast before.

JOAQUIN MURIETTA,

39

I hear the neighing of hot steeds, I see the marshaling of men That silent move among the trees As busily as swarming bees With step and stealthiness profound, On carpetings of spindled weeds, Without a syllable or sound Save clashing of their burnish'd arms, Clinking dull, deathlike alarms — Grim bearded men and brawny men That grope among the ghostly trees. Were ever silent men as these? Was ever somber forest deep And dark as this ? Here one might sleep While all the weary years went round, Nor wake nor weep for sun or sound.

A stone's throw to the right, a rock Has rear'd his head among the stars — An island in the upper deep — And on his front a thousand scars Of thunder's crash and earthquake's shock Are seam'd as if by sabre's sweep Of gods, enraged that he should rear His front amid their realms of air.

What moves along his beetling brow, So small, so indistinct and far, This side yon blazing evening star, Seen through that redwood's shifting

bough?

A lookout on the world below ? A watcher for the friend — or foe ? This still troops sentry it must be, Yet seems no taller than my knee.

But for the grandeur of this gloom, And for the chafing steeds' alarms, And brown men's sullen clash of arms, This were but as a living tomb. These weeds are spindled, pale and white, As if nor sunshine, life, nor light Had ever reach'd this forest's heart. Above, the redwood boughs entwine As dense as copse of tangled vine — Above, so fearfully afar, It seems as 'twere a lesser sky,

A sky without a moon or star,

The moss'd boughs are so thick and high.

At every lisp of leaf I start!

Would I could hear a cricket trill,

Or hear yon sentry from his hill,

The place does seem so deathly still.

But see a sudden lifted hand

From one who still and sullen stands,

With black serape and bloody hands,

And coldly gives his brief command.

They mount — away! Quick on his heel He turns and grasps his gleaming steel — Then sadly smiles, and stoops to kiss An upturn'd face so sweetly fair, So sadly, saintly, purely rare, So rich of blessedness and bliss! I know she is not flesh and blood, But some sweet spirit of this wood; I know it by her wealth of hair, And step on the unyielding air; Her seamless robe of shining white, Her soul-deep eyes of darkest night; But over all and more than all That can be said or can befall, That tongue can tell or pen can trace, That wonderous witchery of face.

Between the trees I see him stride To where a red steed fretting stands Impatient for his lord's commands: And she glides noiseless at his side.

One hand toys with her waving hair, Soft lifting from her shoulders bare; The other holds the loosen'd rein, And rests upon the swelling mane That curls the curved neck o'er and o'er, Like waves that swirl along the shore He hears the last retreating sound Of iron on volcanic stone, That echoes far from peak to plain, And 'neath the dense wood's sable zone, He peers the dark Sierras down.

His hand forsakes her raven hair, His eyes have an unearthly glare;

4o

JOAQUIN MURIETTA,

She shrinks and shudders at his side

Then lifts to his her moisten'd eyes,

And only looks her sad replies.

A sullenness his soul enthralls,

A silence born of hate and pride;

His fierce volcanic heart so deep

Is stirr'd, his teeth, despite his will,

Do chatter as if in a chill;

His very dagger at his side

Does shake and rattle in its sheath,

As blades of brown grass in a gale

Do rustle on the frosted heath:

And yet he does not bend or weep,

But sudden mounts, then leans him o'er

To breathe her hot breath but once

more.

I do not mark the prison'd sighs, I do not meet the moisten'd eyes, The while he leans him from his place Down to her sweet uplifted face.

A low sweet melody is heard Like cooing of some Balize bird, So fine it does not touch the air, So faint it stirs not anywhere; Faint as the falling of the dew, Low as a pure unutter'd prayer, The meeting, mingling, as it were, In that one long, last, silent kiss Of souls in paradisal bliss.

" You must not, shall not, shall not

go!

To die and leave me here to die! Enough of vengeance, Love and I? I die for home and — Mexico."

He leans, he plucks her to his breast, As plucking Mariposa's flower, And now she crouches in her rest As resting in some rosy bower.

Erect, again he grasps the rein! I see his black steed plunge and poise And beat the air with iron feet, And curve his noble glossy neck, And toss on high his swelling mane, And leap — away! he spurns the rein! He flies so fearfully and fleet, But for the hot hoofs' ringing noise 'Twould seem as if he were on wings.

And they are gone! Gone like

breath,

Gone like a white sail seen at night A moment, and then lost to sight; Gone like a star you look upon, That glimmers to a bead, a speck, Then softly melts into the dawn, And all is still and dark as death, And who shall sing, for who may know That mad, glad ride to Mexico ?

The third poem in my first London book, if I remember— you see I never kept my books about me, nor in deed any books now, and have for present use only a copy that has been many times revised and cut down- was called " California, "but it was called "Joaquin' in the Oregon book. And it was from this that I was, in derision, called "Joaquin." I kept the name and the poem too, till both were at least respected. But my brother, who had better judgment and finer taste than I, thought it too wild and bloody; and so by degrees it has been allowed to almost entirely disappear, except this fragment, although a small book of itself, to begin with.

1NA.

41

INA.

Sad song of the wind in the mountains And the sea wave of grass on the plain, That breaks in bloom foam by the fountains, And forests, that breaketh again On the mountains, as breaketh a main.

Bold thoughts that were strong as the grizzlies, Now weak in their prison of words ; Bright fancies that Jlash'd like the glaciers, Now dimm'd like the luster of birds, And butterflies huddled as herds.

Sad symphony, wild, and unmeasured, Weed warp, and woof woven in strouds Strange truths that a stray soul had treasured, Truths seen as through folding of shrouds Or as stars through the rolling of clouds.

SCENE I.

A Hacienda near Tezcuco, Mexico. Young DON CARLOS alone, looking out on the moonlit mountain.

DON CARLOS.

Popocatapetl looms lone like an island, Above white-cloud waves that break up

against him; Around him white buttes in the moonlight

are flashing Like silver tents pitch'd in the fair fields

of heaven While standing in line, in their snows

everlasting, Flash peaks, as my eyes into heaven are

lifted, Like mile-stones that lead to the city

Eternal.

Ofttime when the sun and the sea lay

together,

Red-welded as one, in their red bed of lovers,

Embracing and blushing like loves newlj

wedded, I have trod on the trailing crape fringes of

twilight, And stood there and listen'd, and lean'd

with lips parted, Till lordly peaks wrapp'd them, as chill

night blew over, In great cloaks of sable, like proud somber

Spaniards, And stalk'd from my presence down night's

corridors.

When the red-curtained West has bent

red as with weeping Low over the couch where the prone day

lay dying, I have stood with brow lifted, confronting

the mountains That held their white faces of snow in the

heavens, And said, "It is theirs to array them so

purely,

42

INA.

Because of their nearness to the temple

eternal;" And childlike have said, "They are fair

resting places For the dear weary dead on their way up

to heaven."

But my soul is not with you to-night,

mighty mountains:

It is held to the levels of earth by an angel Far more than a star, earth fallen or un-

fall'n, Yet fierce in her follies and headstrong

and stronger Than streams of the sea running in with

the billows.

Very well. Let him woo, let him thrust

his white whiskers And lips pale and purple with death, in

between us; Let her wed, as she wills, for the gold of

the gray beard. I will set my face for you, O mountains,

my brothers, For I yet have my honor, my conscience

and freedom, My fleet-footed mustang, and pistols rich

silverd; I will turn as the earth turns her back on

the sun, But return to the light of her eyes never

more, While noons have a night and white seas

have a shore.

INA, approaching.

INA. " I have come, dear Don Carlos, to say you

farewell, I shall wed with Don Castro at dawn of

to-morrow, And be all his own— firm, honest and

faithful. I have promised this thing; that I will

keep my promise

You who do know me care never to ques tion. I have mastered myself to say this thing

to you; Hear me: be strong, then, and say adieu

bravely; The world is his own who will brave its

bleak hours. Dare, then, to confront the cold days in

their column; As they march down upon you, stand,

hew them to pieces, One after another, as you would a fierce

foeman, Till not one abideth between two true

bosoms." [DON CARLOS, with a laugh of scorn, flies

from the veranda, mounts horse, and

disappears.]

INA (looking out into the night, after a long silence).

How doleful the night hawk screams in the heavens,

How dismally gibbers the gray coyote!

Afar to the south now the turbulent thun der,

Mine equal, my brother, my soul's one companion,

Talks low in his sleep, like a giant deep troubled;

Talks fierce in accord with my own stormy spirit.

SCENE II.

Sunset on a spur q/ Mount Hood. LAMONTE contemplates the scene.

LAMONTE.

A flushed and weary messenger a-west Is standing at the half-closed door of day, As he would say, Good night; and now his

bright

Red cap he tips to me and turns his face. Were it an unholy thing to say, an angel

now Beside the door stood with uplifted seal?

INA.

43

Behold the door seal'd with that blood red

seal Now burning, spreading o'er the mighty

West.

Never again shall that dead day arise Therefrom, but must be born and come

anew.

The tawny, solemn Night, child of the

East, Her mournful robe trails o'er the distant

woods, And comes this way with firm and stately

step. Afront, and very high, she wears a

shield,

A plate of silver, and upon her brow The radiant Venus burns, a pretty lamp. Behold! how in her gorgeous flow of hair Do gleam a million mellow yellow gems, That spill their molten gold upon the

dewy grass. Now throned on boundless plains, and

gazing down So calmly on the red-seal'd tomb of

day, She rests her form against the Rocky

Mountains, And rules with silent power a peaceful

world.

'Tis midnight now. The bent and broken

moon, All batter'd, black, as from a thousand

battles,

Hangs silent on the purple walls of heaven. The angel warrior, guard of the gates

eternal,

In battle-harness girt, sleeps on the field: But when to-morrow comes, when wicked

men

That fret the patient earth are all astir, He will resume his shield, and, facing

earthward, The gates of heaven guard from sins of

earth.

'Tis morn. Behold the kingly day now

leaps The eastern wall of earth, bright sword

in hand,

And clad in flowing robe of mellow light, Like to a king that has regain 'd his throne, He warms his drooping subjects into joy, That rise renewed to do him fealty, And rules with pomp the universal world.

CARLOS ascends the mountain, gesticu lating and talking to himself,

DON CARLOS. Oh, for a name that black-eyed maids

would sigh

And lean with parted lips at mention of; That I should seem so tall in minds of men That I might walk beneath the arch of

heaven,

And pluck the ripe red stars as I pass'd on, As favor'd guests do pluck the purple

grapes

That hang above the humble entrance way Of palm-thatch'd mountain inn of Mexico.

Oh, I would give the green leaves of my

life For something grand, for real and un

dream 'd deeds! To wear a mantle, broad and richly

gemm'd As purple heaven fringed with gold at

sunset;

To wear a crown as dazzling as the sun, And, holding up a scepter lightning-

charged,

Stride out among the stars as I once strode A barefoot boy among the buttercups.

Alas! I am so restless. There is that Within me doth rebel and rise against The all I am and half I see in others; And were't not for contempt of coward act Of flying all defeated from the world, As if I feared and dared not face its ills, I should ere this have known, known more or less

44

INA.

Than any flesh that frets this sullen earth. I know not where such thoughts will lead

me to: I have had fear that they would drive me

mad, And then have flattered my weak self, and

said The soul's outgrown the body— yea, the

soul Aspires to the stars, and in its struggles

upward Make the dull flesh quiver as an aspen.

LA MONTE. What waif is this cast here upon my

shore, From seas of subtle and most selfish men?

DON CARLOS.

Of subtle and most selfish men!— ah,

that's the term!

And if you be but earnest in your spleen, And other sex across man's shoulders lash, I'll stand beside you on this crag and

howl And hurl my clenched fists down upon

their heads, Till I am hoarse as yonder cataract.

LA MONTE. Why, no, my friend, I'll not consent to

that.

No true man yet has ever woman cursed. And I — I do not hate my fellow man, For man by nature bears within himself Nobility that makes him half a god; But as in somewise he hath made him self,

His universal thirst for gold and pomp, And purchased fleeting fame and bubble

honors, Forgetting good, so mocking helpless

age,

And rushing roughshod o'er lowly merit, I hold him but a sorry worm indeed; And so have turn'd me quietly aside To know the majesty of peaceful woods.

DON CARLOS (as if alone). The fabled font of youth led many fools,

Zealous in its pursuit, to hapless death;

And yet this thirst for fame, this hot am bition,

This soft-toned syren-tongue, enchanting Fame,

Doth lead me headlong on to equal folly,

Like to a wild bird charm'd by shining coils

And swift mesmeric glance of deadly snake:

I would not break the charm, but win a world

Or die with curses blistering my lips.

LAMONTE.

Give up ambition, petty pride — By pride the angels fell.

DON CARLOS.

By pride they reached a place from whence to fall.

LAMONTE. You startle me! I am unused to hear

Men talk these fierce and bitter thoughts; and yet

In closed recesses of my soul was once

A dark and gloomy chamber where they dwelt.

Give up ambition — yea, crush such thoughts

As you would crush from hearth a scor pion brood;

For, mark me well, they'll get the mas tery,

And drive you on to death— or worse, across

A thousand ruin'd homes and broken hearts.

DON CARLOS.

Give up ambition! Oh, rather than to die

And glide a lonely, nameless, shivering ghost

IN A.

45

Down time's dark tide of utter nothing ness,

I'd write a name in blood and orphans' tears.

The temple-burner wiser was than kings.

LA MONTE. And would you dare the curse of man

a-nd—

DON CARLOS.

Dare the curse of man! I'd dare the fearful curse of God! I'd build a pyramid of whitest skulls, And step therefrom unto the spotted

moon, And thence to stars, and thence to central

suns. Then with one grand and mighty leap

would land

Unhinder'd on the shining shore of heaven, And, sword in hand, unbared and un-

abash'd, Would stand bold forth in presence of the

God

Of gods, and on the jewel'd inner side The walls of heaven, carve with keen

Damascus steel,

And, highest up, a grand and titled name That time nor tide could touch or tarnish

ever.

LAMONTE.

Seek not to crop above the heads of men To be a better mark for envy's shafts. Come to my peaceful home, and leave be hind

These stormy thoughts and daring aspira tions.

All earthly power is but a thing compara tive.

Is not a petty chief of some lone isle, With half a dozen nude and starving sub jects,

As much a king as he the Czar of Husk? In yonder sweet retreat and balmy place I'll abdicate, and you be chief indeed.

There you will reign and tell me of the

world, Its life and lights, its sins and sickly

shadows.

The pheasant will reveille beat at morn, And rouse us to the battle of the day. My swarthy subjects will in circle sit, And, gazing on your noble presence, deem You great indeed, and call you chief of

chiefs;

And, knowing no one greater than yourself In all the leafy borders of your realm, 'Gainst what can pride or poor ambition

chafe ?

'Twill be a kingdom without king, save

you,

More broad than that the cruel Cortes won, With subjects truer than he ever knew, That know no law but only nature's law, And no religion know but that of love. "Inhere truth and beauty are, for there is

Nature,

Serene and simple. She will be our priest ess,

And in her calm and uncomplaining face We two will read her rubric and be wise.

DON CARLOS.

Why, truly now, this fierce and broken

land, Seen through your eyes, assumes a fairer

shape. Lead up, for you are nearer God than I.

SCENE III.

INA, in black, alone. Midnight. INA.

I weep? I weep? I laugh to think of it! I lift my dark brow to the breath of the

ocean, Soft kissing me now like the lips of my

mother, And laugh low and long as I crush the

brown grasses,

46

INA.

To think I should weep! Why, I never wept — never,

Not even in punishments dealt me in childhood!

Yea, all of my wrongs and my bitterness buried

In my brave baby heart, all alone and un friended.

And I pitied, with proud and disdain full est pity,

The weak who would weep, and I laugh'd at the folly

Of those who could laugh and make merry with playthings.

Nay, I will not weep now over that I desired.

Desired? Yes: I to myself dare confess it,

Ah, too, to the world should it question too closely,

And bathe me and sport in a deep sea of

candor.

Let the world be deceived; it insists upon it:

Let it bundle me round in its black woe- garments;

But I, self with self— my free soul fear less—

Am frank as the sun, nor the toss of a copper

Care I if the world call it good or evil.

I am glad to-night, and in new-born free dom

Forget all earth with my old companions,—

The moon and the stars and the moon-clad ocean.

I am face to face with the stars that know me,

And gaze as 1 gazed in the eyes of my mother,

Forgetting the city and the coarse things in it;

For there's naught but God in the shape of mortal,

Save one — my wandering, wild boy-lover —

That I esteem worth a stale banana.

The hair hangs heavy and is warm on

my shoulder, And is thick with odors of balm and of

blossom, The great bay sleeps with the ships on her

bosom; Through the Golden Gate, to the left hand

yonder, The white sea lies in a deep sleep, bfeath-

ing, The father of melody, mother of measure.

SCENE IV

A wood by a rivulet on a spur of Mount Hood, overlooking the Columbia, LA- MONTE and DON CARLOS, on their way to the camp, are reposing under the shadoiv of the forest. Some deer are observed descending to the brook, and DON CARLOS seizes his rifle.

LA MONTE.

Nay, nay, my friend, strike not from your

covert, Strike like a serpent in the grass well

hidden? What, steal into their homes, and, when

they, thirsting, And all unsuspecting, come down in

couples And dip brown muzzles in the mossy

brink, Then shoot them down without chance to

fly-

The only means that God has given them, Poor, unarm'd mutes, to baffle man's

cunning?

Ah, now I see you had not thought of this! The hare is fleet, and is most quick at

sound, His coat is changed with the changing

fields; Yon deer turn brown when the leaves turn

brown;

The dog has teeth, the cat has talons, And man has craft and sinewy arms;

IN A.

47

All things that live have some means of

defense All, all — save only fair lovely woman.

DON CARLOS.

Nay, she has her tongue; is armed to the teeth.

LA MONTE.

Thou Timon, what can 'scape your bit terness ? But for this sweet content of Nature

here, Upon whose breast we now recline and

rest,

Why, you might lift your voice and rail at her!

DON CARLOS.

Oh, I am out of patience with your

faith! What! She content and peaceful, uncom-

plaj ning ?

I've seen her fretted like a lion caged, Chafe .like a peevish woman cross'd and

churl'd, Tramping and foaming like a whelpless

bear; Have seen her weep till earth was wet with

tears, Then turn all smiles — a jade that won her

point ? Have seen her tear the hoary hair of

ocean, While he, himself full half a world, would

moan And roll and toss his clumsy hands all

day

To earth like some great helpless babe, Rude-rock'd and cradled by an unkind

nurse, Then stain her snowy hem with salt-sea

tears; And when the peaceful, mellow moon

came forth, To walk and meditate among the blooms

That make so blest the upper purple fields, This wroth dyspeptic sea ran after her With all his soul, as if to pour himself, All sick and helpless, in her snowy lap. Content! Oh, she has crack'd the ribs of

earth And made her shake poor trembling man

from off Her back, e'en as a grizzly shakes the

hounds;

She has upheaved her rocky spine against The flowing robes of the eternal God.

LAMONTE. There once was one of nature like to

this:

He stood a barehead boy upon a cliff Pine-crown'd, that hung high o'er a bleak

north sea His long hair stream 'd and flashed like

yellow silk, His sea-blue eyes lay deep and still as

lakes O'erhung by mountains arch'd in virgin

snow;

And far astray, and friendless and alone, A tropic bird blown through the north

frost wind, He stood above the sea in the cold white

moon,

His thin face lifted to the flashing stars. He talk'd familiarly and face to face With the eternal God, in solemn night, Confronting Him with free and flippant

air As one confronts a merchant o'er his

counter,

And in vehement blasphemy did say: "God, put aside this world — show me

another! God, this world's but a cheat — hand down

another!

I will not buy — not have it as a gift. Put this aside and hand me down an other— Another, and another, still another,

INA.

Till I have tried the fairest world that

hangs Upon the walls and broad dome of your

shop.

For I am proud of soul and regal born, And will not have a cheap and cheating

world."

DON CARLOS. The noble youth! So God gave him

another?

LAMONTE. A bear, as in old time, came from the

woods And tare him there upon that storm-swept

cliff— A grim and grizzled bear, like unto

hunger. A tall ship sail'd adown the sea next

morn, And, standing with his glass upon the

prow.

The captain saw a vulture on a cliff, Gorging, and pecking, stretching his long

neck Bracing his raven plumes against the

wind, Fretting the tempest with his sable

feathers.

A Young POET ascends the mountain and approaches.

DON CARLOS. Ho! ho! whom have we here? Talk of

the devil,

And he's at hand. Say, who are you, and whence?

POET. I am a poet, and dwell down by the sea.

DON CARLOS. A poet! a poet, forsooth! A hungry

fool!

Would you know what it means to be a poet now?

It is to want a friend, to want a home, A country, money, — ay, to want a meal. It is not wise to be a poet now, For, oh, the world it has so modest

grown

It will not praise a poet to his face, But waits till he is dead some hundred

years, Then uprears marbles cold and stupid as

itself. [POET rises to go.]

DON CARLOS. Why, what's the haste? You'll reach

there soon enough.

POET. Eeach where?

DON CARLOS. The inn to which all earthly roads do

tend: The "neat apartments furnish'd — see

within;" The " furnish'd rooms for quiet, single

gentlemen;" The narrow six-by-two where you will

lie With cold blue nose up-pointing to the

grass,

Labell'd and box'd, and ready all for shipment.

POET (loosening hair and letting fall a

mantle.) Ah me! my Don Carlos, look kindly

upon me! With my hand on your arm and my dark

brow lifted Full level to yours, do yon not now know

me? 'Tis I, your INA, whom you loved by the

ocean,

In the warm-spiced winds from the far Cathay.

DON CARLOS (bitterly). With the smell of the dead man still upon you!

IN A.

49

Your dark hair wet from his death-damp forehead!

You are not my Ina, for she is a mem ory.

A marble chisell'd, in my heart's dark chamber

Set up for ever, and naught can change her;

And you are a stranger, and the gulf between us

Is wide as the plains, and as deep as Pacific.

And now, good night. In your serape folded

Hard by in the light of the pine-knot fire,

Sleep you as sound as you will be wel come;

And on the morrow — now mark me, madam —

When to-morrow comes, why, you will turn you

To the right or left as did Father Abram.

Good night, for ever and for aye, good by;

My bitter is sweet and your truth is a lie.

INA (letting go his arm and stepping back). Well, then! 'tis over, and 'tis well thus ended;

I am well escaped from my life's devo tion.

The waters of bliss are a waste of bitter-

The day of joy I did join hands over, As a bow of promise when my years were

weary,

And set high up as a brazen serpent To look upon when I else had fainted In burning deserts, while you sipp'd ices And snowy sherbets, and roam'd unfet-

ter'd,

Is a deadly asp in the fruit and flowers That you in your bitterness now bear to

me; But its fangs unfasten and it glides down

from me, From a Cleopatra of cold white marble.

I have but done what I would do over, Did I find one worthy of so much devo tion; And, standing here with my clean hands

folded

Above a bosom whose crime is courage, The only regret that my heart discovers Is that I should do and have dared so

greatly For the love of one who deserved so little.

Nay! say no more, nor attempt to ap proach me! .

This ten feet line lying now between us

Shall never be less while the land has measure.

See! night is forgetting the east in the heavens;

The birds pipe shrill and the beasts howl answer.

EVEN SO.

EVEN SO.

Sierras, and eternal tents Of snow that flash o'er battlements Of mountains ! My land of the sun, Am I not true ? have I not done All things for thine, for thee alone, 0 sun-land, sea-land, thou mine own? Be my reward some little place To pitch my tent, some tree and vine Where I may sit with lifted face, And drink the sun as drinking wine: Where sweeps the Oregon, and ivhere White storms caroused on perfumed air.

In the shadows a-west of the sunset mountains,

Where old-time giants had dwelt and peopled,

And built up cities and castled battle ments,

And rear'd up pillars that pierced the heavens,

A poet dwelt, of the book of Nature—

An ardent lover of the pure and beautiful,

Devoutest lover of the true and beautiful.

Profoundest lover of the grand and beau tiful—

With heart all impulse, and intensest pas sion,

Who believed in love as in God eternal—

A dream while the waken'd world went over,

An Indian summer of the singing seasons;

And he sang wild songs like the wind in cedars,

Was tempest-toss'd as the pines, yet ever

As fix'd in faith as they in the moun tains.

He had heard a name as one hears of a

princess, Her glory had come unto him in stories;

From afar he had look'd as entranced upon

her;

He gave her name to the wind in meas ures, And he heard her name in the deep-voiced

cedars, And afar in the winds rolling on like the

billows, Her name in the name of another for

ever Gave all his numbers their grandest

strophes; Enshrined her image in his heart's high

temple, And saint-like held her, too sacred for

mortal.

He came to fall like a king of the forest Caught in the strong storm arms of the

wrestler; Forgetting his songs, his crags and his

mountains, And nearly his God, in his wild deep

passion; And when he had won her and turn'd

him homeward,

EVEN SO.

With the holiest pledges love gives its

lover, The mountain route was as strewn with

roses.

Can high love then be a thing unholy,

To make us better and bless'd supremely?

The day was fix'd for the feast and nup tials;

He crazed with impatience at the tardy hours ;

He flew in the face of old Time as a tyrant;

He had fought the days that stood still between them,

Fought one by one, as you fight with a foeman,

Had they been animate and sensate beings.

At last then the hour came coldly for ward.

"When Mars was trailing his lance on the mountains

He rein'd his steed and look'd down in the canon

To where she dwelt, with a heart of fire.

He kiss'd his hand to the smoke slow curling,

Then bow'd his head in devoutest blessing.

His spotted courser did plunge and fret him

Beneath his gay silken-fringed carona

And toss his neck in a black-mane ban- ner'd;

Then all afoam, plunging iron-footed,

Dash'd him down with a wild impatience.

A coldness met him, like the breath of

a cavern, As he joyously hasten'd across the

threshold. Bhe came, and coldly she spoke and

scornful,

In answer to warm and impulsive passion. All things did array them in shapes most

hateful, And life did seem but a jest intolerable.

He dared to question her why this estrangement:

She spoke with a strange and stiff indif ference,

And bade him go on all alone life's journey.

Then stern and tall he did stand up before her,

And gaze dark-brow'd through the low narrow casement.

For a time, as if warring in thought with a passion;

Then, crushing hard down the hot welling bitterness,

He folded his form in a sullen silentness

And turned for ever away from her pres ence;

Bearing his sorrow like some great burden,

Like a black nightmare in his hot heart muffled;

With his faith in the truth of woman

broken.

* * « * *

'Mid Theban pillars, where sang the

Pindar, Breathing the breath of the Grecian

islands,

Breathing in spices and olive and myrtle, Counting the caravans, curl'd and snowy, Slow journeying over his head to Mecca Or the high Christ land of most holy

memory, Counting the clouds through the boughs

above him, That brush'd white marbles that time had

chisel'd

And rear'd as tombs on the great dead city, Letterd with solemn but unread moral — A poet rested in the red-hot summer. He took no note of the things about him, But dream'd and counted the clouds above

him; His soul was troubled, and his sad heart's

Mecca

Was a miner's home far over the ocean, Banner'd by pines that did brush blue

heaven.

EVEN SO.

When the sun went down on the bronzed Morea,

He read to himself from the lines of sor row

That came as a wail from the one he worshipp'd,

Sent over the seas by an old companion:

They spoke no word of him, or remem brance.

And he was most sad, for he felt forgotten,

And said: " In the leaves of her fair heart's album

She has cover'd my face with the face of another.

Let the great sea lift like a wall between us,

High-back'd, with his mane of white storms for ever —

I shall learn to love, I shall wed my sorrow,

I shall take as a spouse the days that are perish'd;

I shall dwell in a land where the march of genius

Made tracks in marble in the days of giants;

I shall sit in the ruins where sat the Marius,

Gray with the ghosts of the great de parted."

And then he said in the solemn twi light . . .

"Strangely wooing are yon worlds

above us,

Strangely beautiful is the Faith of Islam, Strangely sweet are the songs of Solomon, Strangely tender are the teachings of

Jesus,

Strangely cold is the sun on the moun tains, Strangely mellow is the moon on old

ruins,

Strangely pleasant are the stolen waters, Strangely lighted is the North night re gion,

Strangely strong are the streams in the

ocean,

Strangely true are the tales of the Orient, But stranger than all are the ways of

women."

His head on his hands and his hands on

the marble, Alone in the midnight he slept in the

ruins; And a form was before him white mantled

in moonlight, And bitter he said to the one he had

worshipp'd —

" Your hands in mine, your face, your

eyes

Look level into mine, and mine Are not abashed in anywise As eyes were in an elden syne. Perhaps the pulse is colder now, And blood comes tamer to the brow Because of hot blood long ago ....

Withdraw your hand ? Well, be it so,

And turn your bent head slow sidewise, For recollections are as seas That come and go m tides, and these Are flood tides filling to the eyes.

" How strange that you above the vale And I below the mountain wall Should walk and meet!.. Why, you are

pale!.. Strange meeting on the mountain fringe!. .

. . . .More strange we ever met at all!

Tides come and go, we know their time; The moon, we know her wane or prime; But who knows how the heart may hinge?

" You stand before me here to-night, But not beside me, not beside — Are beautiful, but not a bride. Some things I recollect aright, Though full a dozen years are done Since we two met one winter night — Since I was crush'd as by a fall; For I have watch 'd and pray'd through all The shining circles of the sun.

EVEN SO.

53

" I saw you where sad cedars wave; I sought you in the dewy eve When shining crickets trill and grieve; You smiled, and I became a slave. A slave! I worshipp'd you at night, When all the blue field blossom'd red With dewy roses overhead In sweet and