Joaquin Miller's Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

“She stood like a bronze bent over the river,
The proud eyes fix'd, the passion 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.