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

Behold the tree, the lordly tree,
That fronts the four winds of the storm
A fearless and defiant form
That mocks wild winter merrily!
Behold the beauteous, budding tree
With censors swinging in the air,
With arms in attitude of prayer,
With myriad leaves, and every leaf
A miracle of color, mold,
More gorgeous than a house of gold!
Each leaf a poem of God's plan,
Each leaf as from His book of old
To build, to bastion man's belief:
Man's love of God, man's love of man.

Aye, love His trees, leaf, trunk, or root,
The comely, stately, upright grace
That greets God's rain with lifted face;

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The great, white, beauteous, highborn rain
That rides as white sails ride the main,
That wraps alike leaf, trunk or shoot,
When sudden thunder lights his torch
And strides high Heaven's ample porch.
Aye, love God's tree, leaf, branch and root.
For God set first the pleasant tree;
The “good for food” came tardily.
The poor, blind hog knows but the fruit,
And wallows in his fat and dies,
A hog, up to his every eyes.

A HARD ROW FOR STUMPS

You ask for manliest, martial deeds?
Go back to Ohio's natal morn—
Go back to Kentucky's fields of corn;
Just weeds and stumps and stumps and weeds!
Just red men blazing from stump and tree
Where buckskin'd prophets 'midst strife and stress
Came crying, came dying in the wilderness,
That hard, first, cruel half-century!

What psalms they sang! what prayers they said,
Cabin or camp, as the wheels rolled west;
Silently leaving their bravest, best—
Paving a Nation's path with their dead!
What unnamed battles! what thumps and bumps!
What saber slashes with the broad, bright hoe!
What weeds in phalanx! what stumps in row!
What rank vines fortressed in rows of stumps!

Just stumps and nettles and weed-choked corn
Tiptoeing to wave but one blade in air!

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Dank milkweed here, and rank burdock there
Besieging and storming that blade forlorn!
Such weed-bred fevers, slow sapping the brave—
The homesick heart and the aching head!
The hoe and the hoe, 'till the man lay dead
And the great west wheels rolled over his grave.

And the saying grew, as sayings will grow
From hard endeavor and bangs and bumps:
“He got in a mighty hard row for stumps;
But he tried, and died trying to hoe his row.”
O braver and brighter this ten-pound hoe,
Than brightest, broad saber of Waterloo!
Nor ever fell soldier more truly true
Than he who died trying to hoe his row.

The weeds are gone and the stumps are gone—
The huge hop-toad and the copperhead,
And a million bent sabers flash triumph instead
From stately, clean corn in the diamond-sown dawn.
But the heroes have vanished, save here and there,
Far out and afield like some storm-riven tree,
Leans a last survivor of Thermopylæ,
Leafless and desolate, lone and bare.

His hands are weary, put by the hoe;
His ear is dull and his eyes are dim.
Give honor to him and give place for him,
For he bled and he led us, how long ago!
And ye who inherit the fields he won,
Lorn graves where the Wabash slips away,
Go fashion green parks where your babes may play
Unhindered of stumps or of weeds in the sun.

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I have hewn some weeds, swung a heavy, broad hoe—
Such weeds! such a mighty hard row for stumps!
Such up-hill struggles, such down-hill slumps
As you, please God, may never once know!
But the sea lies yonder, just a league below,
All down-hill now, and I go my way—
Not far to go, and not much to say,
Save that I tried, tried to hoe my row.

AT MARY'S FOUNTAIN, NAZARETH

What sound was that? A pheasant's whir?
What stroke was that? Lean low thine ear.
Is that the stroke of the carpenter,
That far, faint echo that we hear?
Is that the sound that sometime Bedouins tell
Of hammer stroke as from His hand it fell?

It is the stroke of the carpenter,
Through eighteen hundred years and more
Still sounding down the hallowed stir
Of patient toil; as when He wore
The leathern dress,—the echo of a sound
That thrills for aye the toiling, sensate ground.

Hear Mary weaving! Listen! Hear
The thud of loom at weaving time
In Nazareth. I weave this dear
Tradition with my lowly rhyme.
Believing everywhere that she may hear
The sound of toil, sweet Mary bends an ear.

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Yea, this the toil that Jesus knew;
Yet we complain if we must bear.
Are we more dear? Are we more true?
Give us, O God, and do not spare!
Give us to bear as Christ and Mary bore
With toil by leaf-girt Nazareth of yore!

TO SAVE A SOUL

“How shall man surely save his soul?”
'Twas sunset by the Jordan. Gates
Of light were closing, and the whole
Vast heaven hung darkened as the fates.
“How shall man surely save his soul?” he said,
As fell the kingly day, discrowned and dead.

Then Christ said: “Hear this parable:
Two men set forth and journeyed fast
To reach a place ere darkness fell
And closed the gates ere they had passed;
Two worthy men, each free alike of sin,
But one did seek most sure to enter in.

“And so when in their path there lay
A cripple with a broken staff,
The one did pass straight on his way,
While one did stoop and give the half
His strength, and all his time did nobly share
Till they at sunset saw their city fair.

“And he who would make sure ran fast
To reach the golden sunset gate,
Where captains and proud chariots passed,
But, lo, he came one moment late!

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The gate was closed, and all night long he cried
He cried and cried, but never watch replied.

“Meanwhile the man who cared to save
Another as he would be saved,
Came slowly on, gave bread and gave
Cool waters, as he stooped and laved
The wounds. At last, bent double with his weight,
He passed, unchid, the porter's private gate.

“Hear then this lesson, hear and learn:
He who would save his soul, I say,
Must lose his soul; must dare to turn
And lift the fallen by the way;
Must make his soul worth saving by some deed
That grows, and grows some small last seed.”

THE VOICE OF THE DOVE

Come, listen O Love to the voice of the dove,
Come, hearken and hear him say
“There are many Tomorrows, my Love, my Love,
There is only one Today.”

And all day long you can hear him say
This day in purple is rolled
And the baby stars of the milky way
They are cradled in cradles of gold.

Now what is thy secret serene gray dove
Of singing so sweetly alway?
“There are many Tomorrows, my Love, my Love,
There is only one Today.”

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WASHINGTON BY THE DELAWARE

The snow was red with patriot blood,
The proud foe tracked the blood-red snow.
The flying patriots crossed the flood
A tattered, shattered band of woe.
Forlorn each barefoot hero stood,
With bare head bended low.

“Let us cross back! Death waits us here:
Recross or die!” the chieftan said.
A famished soldier dropped a tear—
A tear that froze as it was shed:
For oh, his starving babes were dear—
They had but this for bread!

A captain spake: “It cannot be!
These bleeding men, why, what could they?
'Twould be as snowflakes in a sea!”
The worn chief did not heed or say.
He set his firm lips silently,
Then turned aside to pray.

And as he kneeled and prayed to God,
God's finger spun the stars in space;
He spread his banner blue and broad,
He dashed the dead sun's stripes in place,
Till war walked heaven fire shod
And lit the chieftain's face:

Till every soldier's heart was stirred,
Till every sword shook in its sheath—
“Up! up! Face back. But not one word!”
God's flag above; the ice beneath—

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They crossed so still, they only heard
The icebergs grind their teeth!

Ho! Hessians, hirelings at meat
While praying patriots hunger so!
Then, bang! Boom! Bang! Death and defeat!
And blood? Ay, blood upon the snow!
Yet not the blood of patriot feet,
But heart's blood of the foe!

O ye who hunger and despair!
O ye who perish for the sun,
Look up and dare, for God is there;
And man can do what man has done!
Think, think of darkling Delaware!
Think, think of Washington!

FOR THOSE WHO FAIL

“All honor to him who shall win the prize,”
The world has cried for a thousand years;
But to him who tries, and who fails and dies,
I give great honor and glory and tears:

Give glory and honor and pitiful tears
To all who fail in their deeds sublime;
Their ghosts are many in the van of years,
They were born with Time, in advance of their Time.

Oh, great is the hero who wins a name,
But greater many and many a time

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Some pale-faced fellow who dies in shame,
And lets God finish the thought sublime.

And great is the man with a sword undrawn,
And good is the man who refrains from wine;
But the man who fails and yet still fights on,
Lo, he is the twin-born brother of mine.

From “Memorie and Rime,” by permission of Funk & Wagnalls, publishers of the Standard Dictionary and the Standard Library, of which this above book is one.

THE LIGHT OF CHRIST'S FACE

Behold how glorious! Behold
The light of Christ's face; and such light!
The Moslem, Buddhist, as of old,
Gropes helpless on in hopeless night.
But lo, where Christ comes, crowned with flame,
Ten thousand triumphs in Christ's name.

Elijah's chariot of fire
Chained lightnings harnessed to his car!
Jove's thunders bridled by a wire—
Call unto nations “here we are!”
Lo! all the world one sea of light,
Save where the Paynim walks in night.

CALIFORNIA'S RESURRECTION

The rain! The rain! The generous rain!
All things are his who knows to wait.
Behold the rainbow bends again
Above the storied, gloried Gate—
God's written covenant to men
In Tyrian tints on cloth of gold,
Such as no tongue or pen hath told!

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Behold brown grasses where you pass—
A sleeping lion's tawny mane,
Brown-breasted Mother Earth in pain
Of travail—God's forgiving grass
Long three days dead to rise again
To lead us upward, on and on—
Each blade a shining sabre drawn.

Behold His Covenant is true!
Lo! California soon shall wear
About her ample breast each hue
That yonder hangs high-arched mid air!
Behold the very grasses knew!
Behold the Resurrection is!
Behold what witness like to this?

IN MEN WHOM MEN CONDEMN

In men whom men condemn as ill
I find so much of goodness still,
In men whom men pronounce divine
I find so much of sin and blot,
I hesitate to draw a line
Between the two, where God has not.

DEATH IS DELIGHTFUL

Death is delightful. Death is dawn,
The waking from a weary night
Of fevers unto truth and light.
Fame is not much, love is not much,
Yet what else is there worth the touch
Of lifted hands with dagger drawn?

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So surely life is little worth:
Therefore I say, look up; therefore
I say, one little star has more
Bright gold than all the earth of earth.

THE SONG OF THE SILENCE

O, heavens, the eloquent song of the silence!
Asleep lay the sun in the vines, on the sod,
And asleep in the sun lay the green-girdled islands,
As rock'd to their rest in the cradle of God.
God's poet is silence! His song is unspoken,
And yet so profound, so loud, and so far,
It fills you, it thrills you with measures unbroken,
And as soft, and as fair, and as far as a star.

The shallow seas moan. From the first they have mutter'd
And mourn'd, as a child, and have wept at their will . . .
The poems of God are too grand to be utter'd:
The dreadful deep seas they are loudest when still.

THE TREES

The trees they lean'd in their love unto trees,
That lock'd in their loves, and were so made strong,
Stronger than armies; ay, stronger than seas
That rush from their caves in a storm of song.

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THE LAST SUPPER

“And when they had sung an hymn they went out unto the Mount of Olives.”—

Bible.

What song sang the twelve with the Saviour
When finish'd the sacrament wine?
Where they bow'd and subdued in behavior,
Or bold as made bold with a sign?

What sang they? What sweet song of Zion
With Christ in their midst like a crown?
While here sat Saint Peter, the lion;
And there like a lamb, with head down,

Sat Saint John, with his silken and raven
Rich hair on his shoulders, and eyes
Lifting up to the faces unshaven
Like a sensitive child's in surprise.

Was the song as strong fishermen swinging
Their nets full of hope to the sea?
Or low, like the ripple-wave, singing
Sea-songs on their loved Galilee?

Were they sad with foreshadow of sorrows,
Like the birds that sing low when the breeze
Is tip-toe with a tale of tomorrows,—
Of earthquakes and sinking of seas?

Ah! soft was their song as the waves are
That fall in low musical moans;
And sad I should say as the winds are
That blow by the white gravestones.

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MOTHER EGYPT

Dark-browed, she broods with weary lids
Beside her Sphynx and Pyramids,
With low and never-lifted head.
If she be dead, respect the dead;
If she be weeping, let her weep;
If she be sleeping, let her sleep;
For lo, this woman named the stars!
She suckled at her tawny dugs
Your Moses while you reeked in wars
And prowled your woods, nude, painted thugs.

Then back, brave England; back in peace
To Christian isles of fat increase!
Go back! Else bid your high priests mold
Their meek bronze Christs to cannon bold;
Take down their cross from proud St. Paul's
And coin it into cannon-balls!
You tent not far from Nazareth;
Your camps trench where his child-feet strayed.
If Christ had seen this work of death!
If Christ had seen these ships invade!

I think the patient Christ had said,
“Go back, brave men! Take up your dead;
Draw down your great ships to the seas;
Repass the Gates of Hercules.
Go back to wife with babe at breast,
And leave lorn Egypt to her rest.”
Or is Christ dead, as Egypt is?
Ah, England, hear me yet again;
There's something grimly wrong in this—
So like some gray, sad woman slain.

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What would you have your mother do?
Hath she not done enough for you?
Go back! And when you learn to read,
Come read this obelisk. Her deed
Like yonder awful forehead is
Disdainful silence. Like to this
What lessons have you writ in stone
To passing nations that shall stand?
Why, years as hers will leave you lone
And level as yon yellow sand.

Saint George? Your lions? Whence are they
From awful, silent Africa.
This Egypt is the lion's lair;
Beware, brave Albion, beware!
I feel the very Nile should rise
To drive you from this sacrifice.
And if the seven plagues should come?
The red seas swallow sword and steed?
Lo! Christian lands stand mute and dumb
To see thy more than Moslem deed.