RALSTON
To thee, that all this wretchedness be ended
And I become in my disaster free,
I bring my broken life to be amended.
Take me, O sea,
O sea of California, thou Pacific,
For which the multitude of mortals bound
Go trembling headlong down and with terrific
Outcry are drowned.
Take me out of the earth that I remain not
To tell to gossips in a hovel tales
Of what I was. I who have squandered cannot
Play with the scales.
I who with power and riches stood surrounded
And gave as princes, and without a throne
Was King the greater that for name I sounded
Only my own:
I must have gone away, not die nor wither
But vanish like a rolling sound of brass,
A comet burst which—without whence or whither
Or wherefore—was.
For men born out of yesterday are yestern,
For men to-day are of to-day. And we,
We need only ourselves, we men of Western
Democracy.
By my own sinews and own brain, unweakened
By lineage and generations, I
Did what I did, and with the wide world reckoned
To live and die.
I gave and had no memory of measure.
Others can tell who rollicked at my feast;
And in my palace there was greater pleasure
Than in the East.
I did enjoy and drank the beaker frothing;
I have kindled the splendours every one.
Tho' my magnificence to-day be nothing,
I say, I won,—
I won. And fortune cast me her dismissal!
Of traps and treasures whereof I could say
'T is mine! there 's not so much as rubbish. This all
Was yesterday.
Squalid and sad where I before did conquer,
Doubtless again I could have victory,
Again lie in the golden gates at anchor—
Receive me, sea!
There sinks the sun in dusts of sulphur glowing
Gibbous and red; and flaking toward the shore
Like hosts of scarlet willow-leaves bestrewing
The sapphire floor.
And from the country evening scarce arisen
Out of the flowering oranges the breeze,—
The breeze will carry me to the horizon,
To silences
Of sky and wave, the dark, the swirling eddy,
The sinking down out of the vital air,
And down out of myself, down from the giddy
Glories that were.
