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

A fig for her story of shame and of pride!
She strayed in the night and her feet fell astray;
The great Mississippi was glad that day,
And that is the reason the poor girl died;
The great Mississippi was glad, I say,
And splendid with strength in his fierce, full pride—
And that is the reason the poor girl died.

And that was the reason, from first to last;
Down under the dark, still cypresses there.
The Father of Waters he held her fast.
He kissed her face, he fondled her hair,
No more, no more an unloved outcast,
He clasped her close to his great, strong breast,
Brave lover that loved her last and best:

Around and around in her watery world,
Down under the boughs where the bank was steep,
And cypress trees kneeled all gnarly and curled,
Where woods were dark as the waters were deep,
Where strong, swift waters were swept and swirled,
Where the whirlpool sobbed and sucked in its breath,
As some great monster that is choking to death:

Where sweeping and swirling around and around
That whirlpool eddied so dark and so deep
That even a populous world might have drowned,

160

So surging, so vast and so swift its sweep—
She rode on the wave. And the trees that weep,
The solemn gray cypresses leaning o'er;
The roots that ran blood as they leaned from the shore!

She surely was drowned! But she should have lain still;
She should have lain dead as the dead under ground;
She should have kept still as the dead on the hill!
But ever and ever she eddied around,
And so nearer and nearer she drew me there
Till her eyes met mine in their cold dead stare.

Then she looked, and she looked as to look me through;
And she came so close to my feet on the shore;
And her large eyes, larger than ever before,
They never grew weary as dead men's do.
And her hair! as long as the moss that swept
From the cypress trees as they leaned and wept.

Then the moon rose up, and she came to see,
Her long white fingers slow pointing there;
Why, shoulder to shoulder the moon with me
On the bank that night, with her shoulders bare,
Slow pointing and pointing that white face out,
As it swirled and it swirled, and it swirled about.

There ever and ever, around and around,
Those great sad eyes that refused to sleep!
Reproachful sad eyes that had ceased to weep!

161

And the great whirlpool with its gurgling sound!
The reproachful dead that was not yet dead!
The long strong hair from that shapely head!

Her hair was so long! so marvelous long,
As she rode and she rode on that whirlpool's breast;
And she rode so swift, and she rode so strong,
Never to rest as the dead should rest.
Oh, tell me true, could her hair in the wave
Have grown, as grow dead men's in the grave?

For, hist! I have heard that a virgin's hair
Will grow in the grave of a virgin true,
Will grow and grow in the coffin there,
Till head and foot it is filled with hair
All silken and soft—but what say you?
Yea, tell me truly can this be true?

For oh, her hair was so strangely long
That it bound her about like a veil of night,
With only her pitiful face in sight!
As she rode so swift, and she rode so strong,
That it wrapped her about, as a shroud had done,
A shroud, a coffin, and a veil in one.

And oh, that ride on the whirling tide!
That whirling and whirling it is in my head,
For the eyes of my dead they are not yet dead,
Though surely the lady had long since died:
Then the mourning wood by the watery grave;
The moon's white face to the face in the wave.

162

That moon I shall hate! For she left her place
Unasked up in heaven to show me that face.
I shall hate forever the sounding tide;
For oh, that swirling it is in my head
As it swept and it swirled with my dead not dead,
As it gasped and it sobbed as a God that had died.