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

Joaquin Miller's Poems

[in six volumes]

Miller, Joaquin (1837-1913)

Volume One

Volume Two

WALKER IN NICARAGUA

THE TALE OF THE TALL ALCALDE

THE ARIZONIAN

THE LAST TASCHASTAS

BITS FROM INA, A DRAMA

SIERRA GRANDE DEL NORTE

EXODUS FOR OREGON

THE HEROES OF OREGON

WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON

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2. Volume Two

Songs of the Sierras

WALKER IN NICARAGUA

CHANT I

I

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

I celebrate no man of strife,
I eat no bread with blood upon.
'Twere braver far to live unknown,
To live alone and die alone
Than owe sweet song, aye owe sweet life,
Or sweeter fame, to saber drawn.

II

Wreathe ye who may the victor's bay,
Fill book on book with battles, then
Fill every public park you may
With iron-fashioned fighting men
Begirt with blade and cannon ball,
With not one woman's plinth mid all.

But she who rocks the cradle, she
Who croons and rocks all day, all night,
And knows no public place or name
Makes far the better, braver fight,
Deserves a nobler, fairer fame
Than all bronze men of historie.

The foot that rocks the babe to rest
Keeps step, keeps song with singing dawn.
The hand that holds the babe to breast

Is sceptered as King Solomon.
And yet, for all she does, has done,
Has not one monument, not one!

III

And he who guides the good plowshare,
Binds golden sheaves, unnamed, unknown,
Who harvests what his hand hath sown,
Does more for God, for man, his own—
Dares more than all mad heroes dare.

IV

And like to him the man who keeps
Calm watch on Freedom's outer wall,
Who sees the great moon rise and fall
Yet sleeps and rests and rests and sleeps—
The man who knows, the man who sees
God in the grass, God in the trees,
Sees good in all, sees God in all—
Gets more, gives more, does more true weal
Than all your storied men of steel.

V

But nobler still the man who leads
Far out the deadly firing line
To hew the way, subdue, refine
By dauntless and unselfish deeds;
Who lays aside his student's book
And gathers up his knotted thews
And, facing westward, hews and hews
The way for plowshare, pruning hook
And scarce recks if he win or lose;

Who sees white duty over all,
Fair duty, halo-topt and tall,
Far pointing where his pathway lies,
And dares not falter, rest, repine,
But forward, forward, wins and—dies.

VI

I sing this man who sought man's good,
Who fought for peace, unselfish fought,
Who silent fell and murmured not,
This man whom no man understood,
This great man so well-nigh forgot,
This man who led, who faltered not,
This student, soldier, president,
Who chose the weaker side and sent
Such spirit through his fearless few
As only Khartoum Gordon knew.

VII

I sing those children of the sun
Because I love them and because
I would that you should love them, too,
As tenderly as he had done
Ere Fate laid her cold finger to
His bounding pulse and bade him pause.

VIII

A man to love, a land to love;
A land of gold, of sapphire seas,
Such blue below, such blue above,
Such fruits and ever-flowered trees—
The fairest Eden-land that is,

And I am joyed that it is his;
He won it, holds, with dust-full hands—
This soldier born, born and not made,
Who scorned to make rude war a trade.

IX

A soldier born, let this be said
Above my brave, dishonored 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 steel, or star,
And brave as Yuba's grizzlies are,
Yet gentle as a panther is
Mouthing her young in her first fierce kiss.

X

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 not, as many do,
Of things as sacred as this is;
I only know 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 careless 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;
Great 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 among the trees
That top the fierce Cordilleras,
With bent arm arched above his brow;—
Stood still, he stands, a picture, now—
Long gazing down his inland seas.

XI

What strange, strong, bearded men were these
He led above his tropic seas!
Men sometimes of uncommon birth,
Men rich in stories all untold,
Who boasted not, though more than bold,
Blown from the four parts of the earth.
Men mighty-thewed, as Sampson was,
That had been kings in any cause,
A remnant of the races past;
Dark-browed, 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 erred, yet bravely dared to err—
A remnant of that dauntless 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 thrilled the human breast.

XII

They rode, a troop of bearded men,
Rode two and two out from the town,
And some were blonde and some were brown,
And all as brave as Sioux; but when
From warlike Leon south, the line
That bound them in the laws of man
Was passed, and peace stood mute behind
And streamed a banner to the wind
The world knew not, there was a sign
Of awe, of silence, rear and van.

XIII

Men thought who scarce had thought before;
I heard the clang and clash of steel
From sword at hand and spur at heel
And iron feet, but nothing more.

XIV

Some thought of Texas, some of Maine,
But one of wood-set Tennessee.
And one of Avon thought, and one
Thought of an isle beneath the sun,
And one, a dusky son of Spain,
Soft hummed his señorita's air
Half laughed, shook back his heavy hair
And then—he would not think again,

And one of Wabash thought, and he
Thought tenderly, thought tearfully;
And one turned sadly to the Spree.

XV

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.

XVI

But when we topped the hills of pine,
These men dismounted, doffed 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.

XVII

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.

XVIII

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 word can tell.
I snapped my fingers at the law,
And dared to laugh, and laughed to dare.

XIX

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?

XX

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 the dust.

XXI

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 trailed between!
How waked the spotted beasts of prey,
Deep sleeping from the face of day,
And dashed them, like a dashing flood,
Down deep defile and densest wood!

XXII

What snakes! long, lithe and beautiful
As green and graceful boughed bamboo.
How they did twine them through and through
Green 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 swayed and swung,
And licked like lightning, his red tongue,
Then oped his wide mouth with surprise;
He writhed and curved and raised and lowered
His folds, like liftings of the tide,
Then sank so low I touched his side,
As I rode by, with my boy's sword.
The trees shook hands high overhead,
And bowed 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 sun-shaft shoot between.

XXIII

Birds hung and swung, green-robed and red,
Or drooped 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 crash and crackle where we stept.

XXIV

Wild lilies, tall as maidens are,
As sweet of breath, as purely fair,
As fair as faith, as true as truth,
Fell thick before our iron tread,
In fragrant sacrifice of ruth.
Rich ripened fruit a fragrance shed
And hung in hand-reach overhead,
In nest of blossoms on the shoot,
The very shoot that bore the fruit.

XXV

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 loosened 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—
Looked wisely too, as wise hens do
That watch you with the head askew.

XXVI

The long day through, from blossomed trees,
There came the sweet song of sweet bees,
With chorus tones of cockatoo
That slid his beak along the bough
And walked and talked 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.

XXVII

Oh! when we broke the somber wood
And pierced at last a sunny plain,
How wild and still with wonder stood
The proud mustangs with bannered 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!

XXVIII

Some one above the common kind,
Some one to look to, lean upon,
May be, is much a woman's mind;
But it was mine, and I had drawn
A rein beside the chief while we
Rode down the mesa leisurely.
Then he grew kind and questioned 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 where Willamette meets the sun
In many angles, patiently
My father tends some 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 maybe from the milking shed,
Oft lifts an humbled wearied head
To watch and wish her boy's return
Across the camas' blossomed plain.”

XXIX

He held his bent head very low,
A sudden sadness in his air;
Then reached and touched my yellow hair
And tossed the long locks in his hand,
Toyed with them, sudden let them go,
Then thrummed about his saddle bow
As thought ran swift across his face;
Then turning instant in his place,
He gave some short and quick command.
They brought the best steed of the band,
They swung a carbine 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.

XXX

Far in a 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 mentioned it,
No map has given it a place;
The last dim trace of tribe and race—
The world's forgetfulness is fit.

XXXI

It held one structure grand and moss'd,
Mighty as any castle sung,
And old when oldest Ind was young,
With threshold Christian never crossed;
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 Sphynx was born,
Or Babylon knew night, or morn.

XXXII

My chief swift up the marble stept—
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,

A Texan 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 all hold and fall
Full length with head hung down the stone;
I saw run down a ruddy flood
Of smoking, pulsing human blood.
Then from the dusk there crept a crone
And kissed the gory hands and face,
And smote herself. Then one by one
Some dusk priests crept and did the same,
Then bore the dead man from the place.
Down darkened aisles the brown priests came,
So picture-like, with sandaled 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.
Stern men laid ready hand to sword
And boldly spake 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 their temple stone,
As if the first that it had known!

XXXIII

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!

CHANT II

I

So old, so new and yet how old
This forest's green, that mesa's gold!

Rank, wild oats, waving in wild strength—
The lion's tawny mane and length!
Rank Artemesia, odorous
And gray with bald antiquity—
The rough arroyo swallowed us
As we rode down by two, by three,
The braying ass, the neighing stud—
And now the mesa, broad and free;
Tall cacti blooms, as tipt with blood:
And here a burning bush, and there
The red night-blooming cereus
Kneeled low, as if saluting us—
Kneeled as some red-robed monk at prayer,
High up the gleaming steeps of snow
Of Zacatecas, Mexico.

To left such green wood, and such green!
To right brown mesa, bald and bare:
But where we rode, the two between—
Such crimson, crimson everywhere!

Aye, earth was gaily garmented;
The great, green robe spread far away,
So far no man would dare to say,
And this great, green robe fringed with red,
Lay trackless, lifeless as the dead.
The yellow lion's skin behind,
The wild oats waving in the wind;
But that dense, silent wold of death
Drew not a breath, knew not a breath!

II

From Oro Yarè toward the sea
Slow rounding down the river's source,
Red men, brown men, foot, cavalry,
We marched, a mottled, maniac force—
We rode so close to this dense wood,
So somber, silent, deep and lorn,
That when at last we slow drew rein
The heat was as a choking pain.
The chief stood in his stirrups; stood
With set lips lifted up in scorn
To thus be baffled by a wood
And looked and looked that sultry morn:
The while our allies looked away
As if in dread to say or stay.

Far, far afield from out the night
Of silent blackness burst a cone
Of comely fashion, marble white,
And lone as God, as white and lone
As God upon the great white throne.

He beck'd some brown men, bade them say:
Then slow, a sandaled, nude old man,

As if not daring to say nay
Began, fast pointing far away—
Then two, then three, then all began.

III

Such stories as our allies said
Of such strange people meshed and hid
That drear, deep wilderness amid—
Their very name they spoke with dread!
They were not white men, brown men, red,
Not Spanish blood, not native blood,
Not Toltec, Aztec, but a race
Of cruel men who claimed to trace
Their fathers back beyond the flood—
Beyond the time when they alone
Took refuge on their rock-ribb'd cone.

Such stories as our allies told
Of gold, of river-beds of gold
Far in that lost land's wood-walled heart
That lay below the comely cone
As made our filibusters start
And think of this and this alone:
The while the silent chief looked down
Upon their zeal with sullen frown.

Such stories of red gold at morn
When savage rivers, sudden born
Of thunder, had swept on and on—
Such seams of gold that lay upon
White beds of quartz, bright as the sun
When night and sudden storm were done:
Free gold for all who deemed it fit
To stoop, take up and husband it.

Such stories as our allies told
Or armlets, wristlets, wrought in gold
So massive that the arms grew long
And sinewy and over strong
For battle from the very weight
Of gold; of gold-wrought arrowheads,
Of gold in shallow brooklet beds
As plentiful as yellow corn
Sown ere the blackbirds swoop at morn
To storm the thrifty farmer's gate:

IV

Such stories as our allies told
Of how, in armored days of old,
The Spaniard here had dared and died
In all his splendid strength and pride,
In maddened greed for this red gold:
How, many times in after years,
Troop after troop went forth again,
The Spanish Don, the dauntless son,
To dare the dread obsidian spears,
The gold-wrought arrowheads like rain—
But never one returned, not one!

Such stories as our allies said
Of tall, dusk women, garmented
Like unto fairest flowered trees;
Of busy women, like to bees,
Who chased the purple butterfly
Far up the gray steeps of the sky
And plucked his little silken nest
To spin and weave the gorgeous vest,
The yellow robe, raboso red:

Such stories as our allies told
Of temples builded to the sun,
Of human sacrifice and how,
Like stealthy panthers, even now,
These beauteous, sultry, moonlit nights,
Hard men steal down, just as of old,
And seize fair maidens for their rites:
That this was why the land lay bare
Of flock or field or maiden fair,
All up and down, for leagues away—
That even now, this very day,
Their yonder homeward trail was plain
With little footprints made in pain:
Torn feet that turn not back again.

V

You ask me what my chieftain said?
He rarely said, he simply did.
Dismounting where the lame feet led,
Shut in as shuts a coffin lid,
He chose his choicest at a sign
And silent led right on and on;
Right on all day, right on all night,
And not one foot set left or right,
And not one faltered yea or nay
Or turned his head to see or say
Until, at sudden burst of dawn,
A smell of water was and then
That ugly, growling, bulldog drum!
It turned the very leaves one side
The while it howled, “They come! They come!”

VI

And they, too, came, came as a blast
Of twisting March winds, gust on gust,
Whirl red leaves, dead leaves, ashes, dust—
A cyclone scarce could sweep so fast.
Scant time to choose a friendly tree,
Scarce time to drop a bended knee,
To catch quick carbine to its place
And fall hard fighting, face to face.

Was ever such hot place of death!
Scarce room was there to draw full breath:
Red vines climbed up, green boughs hung down,
Red-pepsin, green-leaved rubber-tree,
Black banyan in black density!
I dared a precious second's pause
To choose my tree: I chose because
Great ivy vines climbed high, climbed higher
All crimson to its very crown—
Elijah's chariot of fire!

VII

Such tangle, jungle, who could stand?
Such jungle, tangle, who could see?
What need, indeed, to see when we
Fell instant fighting, hand to hand?
Long bamboo lances searched us out,
Short javelins, with points of glass,
Great arrowheads of gold, like hail!
Ah! it had been a sorry rout
Had each not held his narrow pass—
With not one left to tell the tale.

They fought in herd, they fell in heap,
Rushed here, rushed there, like silly sheep,
And met behind each blazing tree
A double-barreled battery,
A dozen deadly, leaden shot,
Till suddenly the rush and din
Of arrow, spear, lance, javelin,
And all that frenzied host was not.

VIII

And yet, what scores could not retreat!
'Twas pitiful! Spare me the pain,
The hard, sad detail of the slain,
The brave dead clutching to the loam
As if to hold their ancient home
Forever back from stranger feet!

IX

He dashed right on, but bade me stay;
No time for parley or delay;
He called his every man to come—
As ever, he was still the first—
His men were dying, dead of thirst:
And then to drive the vantage home!

X

A little time, then such a shout!
I knew the men then drank their fill,
I felt their feasting, do not doubt,
I smelled ripe plantains, rind of red
And cored like unto yellow cream;
I saw bananas bank the stream,

Ripe mangoes hanging overhead—
So dead with hunger, thirst! I seem
To see them, breathe them, taste them still:
To see men feasting to their fill,
One hand the gun, red fruit in one,
The swift, sweet water at their feet:
And I shall see, shall feel them eat
And drink and drink till life is done.

I heard a cautious low-bird call.
He came, and with him came just one:
Canteen, machete, ripe mangoes, gun,
And I must eat, drink, share with all.

XI

Just then a child, her sweet face red
With blood, crept from a heap of dead.
I leaned down, drew her to my knee,
Bathed her sweet face, then hurriedly
To where a dying comrade lay
Beside his war-torn battle tree;
And lo! the poor girl followed me
And tried to help, to soothe, to say.

The chief had chased the frenzied throng
On o'er the stream a short half mile;
Had watched it melt into the isle
And then, as if ten thousand strong
Stood at his back in bold guard line,
Had placed his every man, save one—
Then up and down, machete and gun,
They paced and passed the countersign,

And laughed their city, Chantalè,
Laughed gold-strewn, gory Chantalè
Dim seen through copse of banyan tree.

And light of step, as jaunty, gay
As on some happy holiday
They stepped with head high in the air,
And sang, sang loud and saucily.
And now and then a shot rang out
At interval of song and shout
Tow'rd gold-strewn, gory Chantalè
And tore through island vine and tree.

XII

Gods! what a dauntless, daring sight!
Why, these strange men had fought all day!
Why, these strong men had marched all night;
Why, they had scarcely ate or slept,
Yet still with saucy pride they stept
And still each step was spank and gay.

XIII

Dusk came, such solemn, stately dusk!
Black clouds blocked up a sky of red,
The hot wood had a smell of musk—
Of dying roses for the dead.

Then lightning was, and thunder low,
Low rumbling lion-like and slow,
Then that dread drum began to beat
A bow-shot front us mid the isle!
Why, they had made a mad retreat—
Were they not marshaling meanwhile?

XIV

That bull-dog drum was like a chill;
It made night monstrous; men stood still
And looked their brave chief in the face.
Why, had God filled the fiery skies
With thunder, lightning, had He filled
The earth with every fighting race
That knows the ugly trade of death
And asked their lives in sacrifice
These men had scarcely cared a breath,
Yet now they stood unnerved and chilled.

Would it but miss a single note,
Pause but to take a single breath,
As any bull-dog's breath is drawn,
'Twere not so worse to bear than death!
But no, that belching, bull-dog throat
Belched on, belched on, right on and on.

XV

He saw their dread then slowly said
“How many? and when will they come?”
“Pass me the guard line, chief,” I said,
“Pass me the guard and you shall know
What says, what means that chilling drum:
Night gathers, and the ghostly dead
Are not more noiseless where they go
Than I shall go, go, come again;
Or, silent, join the happier slain.”

XVI

He wrote, wrote calmly; they must feel
His confidence, his nerve of steel,
His sure possession to the last.
I thrust the thin script down my boot,
Stept back, stood firm, made slow salute,
Turned on my heel and hastened past.

XVII

The dappled sky now darkened till
The moon came out, and then was gone,
And all was black and wild and wide.
I should have lost my way and died
Had not that drum beat on and on.
The warm wave swept above my waist;
I pushed right on in eager haste.
I felt a light touch suddenly,
Looked down in dread and lo! 'twas she.

And how could she have passed the line?
And why? I thought her surely crazed;
Or, may be, sadly hurt and dazed,
And took her little hand in mine.
I led her up the shallow sand
Against the somber, wooded land
To where the mango, tamarind
And black, wide-rooted banyan tree
Reached out to ward and welcome me.

I was so worn, so weak and worn
My dripping hands hung down as lead.
I could not lift my sinking head;
I heard the widowed mothers mourn,

Still heard that hoarse dog bark and beat
And knew they would not now retreat.

XVIII

And yet I could not lift a hand,
But drooped and sank upon the sand.
I tried, I tried, I could not rise,
I could not open my dull eyes.
And all the time that dog kept on,
A dog that never would be gone!

It made me sleep, it made me dream—
That drum seemed some deep orchestra
Where I could see sweet players play,
Low-voiced; then sudden all did seem
A coarse and cruel tragedy.
Red lightning lit the ample stage;
Black thunder thrust italics through
The bloody text, then in his rage,
As if not knowing what to do,
Turned back and hewed with such mad stroke
My mighty trees that I awoke.

How I had slept! just clay and clod.
For all the living, all the dead,
The might, the majesty of God,
The hideous, haunting death, the dread—
I could but hear that monodin,
That monster alligator skin
Right on, right on, dog-like and deep,
And sleep right on, and sleep and sleep!

I thrust, thrust hard out either hand:
All still, all chill! I was alone!

And she had sold me, my command!
At sun the sacrificial stone;
And then no more that horrid drum—
Why had she gone? where had she gone?
I tried to hope she yet might come—
The while that drum beat on and on!

A finger to her lip, then sand
She plucked and let it sift and run
And pointed sunward, ere the sun!
So many? and they come so soon?
The sky was spotted, rain and moon,
But with the first cloud we were gone;
The while that bull-dog barked right on!

He, waiting, leaned and caught her hand,
She stooped, took up, let fall the sand
Then pointed sunward, ere the sun—
A sign, and that brave, worn, guard line,
Swift, single file, still as the dead,
They passed with mournful, martial tread,
Paced back that midnight track again,
A piteous line of blood and pain:
Yet not one man there to repine,
Not one impatient word, not one.

XIX

He paused, the last man to retreat,
When all had silent passed the dead,
He stood with bowed, uncovered head,
Devoutest hero of defeat.
And then he turned, hat still in hand,
And bowed before her, low, so low
He almost touched her sandaled feet,

And gently beckoned she should go:
She stirred not and he spake command.

I had not known she was so tall,
Knew not that she was nobly born
Until I saw her black eyes burn
And instant take command of all
In that long, sudden, sad return,
So silent, drooping and forlorn.

She beckoned him and he obeyed,
Kneeled only as brave men can kneel,
Up rose; and then the clank of steel,
The eager clutching of a blade—
And then the sullen tread and tread:
That baying dog behind—the dead!

XX

She stripped the gold hoops from each hand
From wrists, from arms and nothing said,
But laid them gently by the dead:
Then beckoned quiet, quick command.

“Pass on, on, on, at any cost,
Not one brief moment to be lost!”
Then on, on, on, fast and more fast,
And she, alone, the very last,
Until, just at the break of day—
Were ever bugle notes so clear?
Was ever dinner-horn so dear?
We heard, we heard our horses neigh!

CHANT III

I

More marches through brown mesa, wood,
More marches through too much blood,
And then at last sweet inland seas.
A city there, white-walled, 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 long, sweet, sultry days
Beneath the blossom'd orange trees,
Made drowsy with the hum of bees,
And drank in peace the south-sea breeze,
Made sweet with sweeping bough of bays.

II

Aye, she was shy, so 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 centered sun.

III

No lands where northern ices are
Approach, or even dare compare
With warm loves born beneath the sun—
The one so near, the one so far!
The one the cold, white, steady star,
The yellow, shifting sun the one.

IV

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,
And faith as fixed as any star;
But all the North-land hath not one
So warm of soul as sun-maids are.

V

I was but in my boyhood then—
Nor knew the coarse, hard ways of men.
I count my fingers over, so,
And find it years and years ago;
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 learned my part,
At least was apt, and willing quite
To learn, to listen, and incline
To teacher warm and wise as mine.

VI

O bright, bronzed maidens of the Sun!
So fairer far to look upon
Than curtains of King Solomon,
Or Kedar's tents, or any one,
Or any thing beneath the Sun!
What followed 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?

VII

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

VIII

Love well who will, love wise who can,
But love, be loved, for God is love;
Love pure, as cherubim above;
Love maid, 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-centered sun,

With sweet sea-songs upon the soul,
Rolled melody on melody,
As echoes of deep organ's roll,
And love, nor question any one.

IX

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

X

Let hearts be pure, let love be true,
Let lips be luscious, love be 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 filled 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.

XI

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.

XII

Let red lips lift, proud curl'd to kiss,
And round limbs lean and lift and reach
In love too passionate for speech,
Too full of blessedness and bliss
For anything but this and this;
Let pure lips lean warm, kind to kiss;
Swoon in sweet 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.

XIII

Let men unclean think things unclean;
I swear tip-toed, with lifted hand,
That we were pure as sea-wash'd sand,
That not one coarse thought came between;
Believe or disbelieve who will,
Unto the pure all things are pure,
As for the rest, love can endure
Alike your good will or your ill.

XIV

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.

XV

We loved in the sufficient sun,
We lived in elements of fire,
For love is fire, not fierce desire;
Yet lived as pure as priest and nun.

XVI

We lay slow rocking by the bay
In slim canoe beneath the crags
Thick-topp'd with palms, 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.

XVII

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.

XVIII

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 guessed at ill,
And in the future seemed to see
With woman's ken and prophecy,
Yet proffer'd her devotion still.

XIX

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 unkindly hand.
And I in turn gave her a blade,
A dagger, worn as well by maid
As man, in that hot-temper'd land.

XX

It had a massive silver hilt,
It had a keen and cunning blade,
A gift of chief and comrades made
For blood at Rivas reckless spilt.

XXI

“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.”

XXII

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,
Red 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, like man, or moon,
And wane like warm full day of June.

XXIII

Oh Love, so fair of promises,
Bend here thy bow, 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 reanimate thy form
Long three days dead and in the grave?
Yea, spread ye now thy silken net;
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.

XXIV

You lift your face to ask of her,
This wine-hued woman, warm sun-maid,
This wine-hued woman warm as wine,
So purely and so surely mine,
Who loved, who dared, was not afraid—

Or Princess? Priestess? Prisoner?
I never knew or sought to know;
I cared not what she might have been;
I only knew she was such queen
As only death could overthrow.

XXV

Aye, lover, would you love with zest,
Win, hold, and hold her fast and well?
Believe, believe the best the best
Though she have singed her skirts in hell!
Hold not one doubt, house just this thought—
That she is all in all you sought.

I loved, loved purely, loved profound,
I raised love's temple, round by round.
I built my temple heavens high,
Then shut the door, and she and I
Forgot all things, all things save one,
Beneath the hot path of the sun.

XXVI

I would I could forget, and yet
I would not to my death forget.
I reared my temple to the sky,
That glad full moon, and laughed that I
Could toy with lightning, till I found,
Like some poor fool who toys with fire,
And counts him stronger than desire,
My temple burning to the ground.

XXVII

Aye, I had knelt, as priest might kneel
Before his saint's shrine, all that day;
Had dared to count me strong as steel
To stand for aye, clean, tall and white.
Yet I broke in that very night,
And stole shewbread and wine away.

XXVIII

I would forget that scene, that place,
I would forget that pleading face,
Yet hide it deepest in my heart,
As coffin in the heart of earth—
Alas! a heart so little worth—
Locked iron doors and somber lid!
Yea, I would have my shrine so hid,
So sacred and so set apart,
That only I might enter in,
Each sleepless, penitential night,
And, kneeling, burn my lorn love light
To burn away my bitter sin.

XXIX

Love lifts on white wings to the gates
Of Paradise and enters in:
Lust has for wings two leaden weights
That sink into the lake of sin.
Lust squats, toad-like, his loathsome cell,
Love seeks the light, on, on, above;
Love is as God, as God is love,
But lust is Lucifer in hell.

XXX

Ills come not singly, birds of prey
Flock not more closely on than they;
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 brightest night has darkest day
And brightest days bring blackest storms.

XXXI

A land-lost sea with sable bredes,
Save where some bastions still are seen,
A river stealing through the reeds,
Dark, silent, sinuous, serpentine,
In sullen haste toward the sun—
Such lonesome land, such lonesome sea,
Such wine-hued women at the oar,
In silent pairs along the shore!
But not one man in sight, not one
To draw machete or bear a gun.

XXXII

A shaft of flame, a lifted torch,
Leaps sudden from this midland sea,
As if to light the very porch
Of God's high house eternally.
It drops its ashen embers slow

And slantwise, like belated snow,
On granite columns, gods of stone
Hewn ere the gods of Baal were known.

XXXIII

Some sweet brown hills, like Galilee,
Group here or there this dark, still sea,
Some costly woods, mahogany,
Red cedar, like to Lebanon,
Broad olives, like Gethsemane;
But silence sits all things upon,
As in some dark, hushed house of death.
You look behind, you would turn back,
You question if you yet take breath.
The blackness of this silent sea
Is oiled and burnished ebony—
The very silence turns to black.

XXXIV

The silence is as when your dead
Lies waiting, candles foot and head,
When mourners turn them slowly back
With all their sad, sweet prayers said.
The sea is black, the shore is black
Below Granada's storied steep,
Save where red trumpet blossoms blow
And trumpet, trumpet night and day,
For brave brown soldiers far away
In battle for this dreamful deep
Where silent women come and go.

XXXV

Such wine-hued women! such soft eyes!
What need one single word be said?
A fool might talk and talk all day,
Talk, talk and talk until he dies,
And yet, for all his hard, loud lies,
Will never make one inch advance,
Will never say, year and a day,
So much as she in one warm glance.

XXXVI

I see sad mothers here and there
Sit by and braid their heavy hair,
The while they watch their babes at play.
I note no fear, I hear no sigh,
Not even hear a baby cry;
But Oh! Madonna, mother, bride,
Dark mourning with your ebon tide,
My heart is with you here today,
As yours is with him far away.

XXXVII

Yet is this sea not always so:
I've seen him laughing in the sun,
Seen soft brown wavelets leap and flow,
Seen opal dimples come and go,
Seen argent billows rise and run,
Seen fleets of gay boats lifting, borne
Along his leaping, laughing tide
In all their semi-savage pride.
But list! the sea, the shore, is black

For those who passed and came not back—
He mourns because his daughters mourn.

XXXVIII

Yon solitary cone of flame
That lifts mid-sea to light the skies?
I nothing know, scarce know the name,
Of yon lost, buried town that lies
Beneath its ashes, yet I know
The story is, a pretty town,
With people passing up and down,
Lies just beyond, and deep, so deep
That never plummet breaks its sleep.

XXXIX

And, too, the tale is we are dead
And cast forth unto burning hell,
While they, down there, live, laugh instead;
That with them, down there, all is well,
The while they dance all night, all day—
While we are dead and cast in hell.

XL

Aye, idle talk, and yet the town
Is there, and perfect, to this day.
Row out, far out, and peer you down,
A half mile down, some sultry noon,
And see shapes passing up and down,
As dancers dancing to a tune
On some fair, happy day in May.

XLI

Aye, idle talk, and maybe these,
The dancers, be but kelp adrift
With undertow of under-seas—
Strange under-seas that fall or lift
And voiceless ever ebb and flow
Beneath the burning crater's plain
Through unknown channels to the main;
I only note the things I know
And loved and lived long years ago.

XLII

Then 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 to the open sea,
In such wild haste of flight that we
Had hardly time to arm and fly.

XLIII

Far tossed upon the broadest 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 kissed 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, rocked by the deep,
Sad questioning the fate of her
Before the cruel conqueror.

XLIV

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

XLV

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

XLVI

He jerked the wheel, as slow he said,
Low laughing with averted head,
And so half sad: “You bet, they'll fight;
They followed 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 hard 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 pecked 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.

XLVII

“And where's she now?” one careless said,
With eyes slow lifting to the brine,
Swift swept the instant far by mine,
The bronze mate listed, shook his head,
Spirted a stream of ambier wide
Across and over the ship side,
Jerked 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, pretty 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 or dare,
And sinking seemed to call your name.”

XLVIII

I let the wine glass crashing fall,
I rushed 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-billed sea bird 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 all to me.

XLIX

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.

L

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, asked no 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.

LI

I never saw my chief again,
I never sought again the shore,
Or saw the wood-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.

LII

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.

LIII

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 touched them with my hand.

LIV

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.

LV

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!

LVI

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 your heart
Let hide the pictures of your face,
With other pictures in their place,
Slid over, like a coffin's lid.

LVII

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.

LVIII

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 disdained to fly,
But like one wrecked, clung to the shore,
And struggled on, and struggling fell

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

LIX

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 unwedded wife.
The one was as the lordly sun,
To joy in, bask in and admire;
The twilight star was as the one
To love, to look to and desire,
And both a part of my young life.

LX

Years after, sheltered 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,
Brave 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,
Serene, prince-like, as for parade,
And made no note of man or maid,

But gazed out calmly over all—
How looked he far, half paused, and then
Above the mottled sea of men
Slow kissed his thin hand to the sun;
Then smiled so proudly none had known
But he was stepping to a throne.

LXI

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

LXII

Two deep, a musket's length they stood
Afront, in sandals, grim, 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, bowing with a patient grace,
Forgave them all and took his place.

LXIII

He bared his broad brow pleasantly,
Gave one long, last look to the sky,
The white-winged 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 cried as though

He never was to call again,
Hung all red-crowned 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 leaden dice of war
Do make or mar of character.

LXIV

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
To him, and so shall to the end.

LXV

I lay this crude wreath on his dust,
Inwove with sad, sweet memories

Recall'd 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.

LXVI

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

LXVII

His warm Hondurian seas are warm,
Warm to the heart, warm all the time;
Huge sea-beasts wallow in their slime
And slide, claw foot and serpent form,
Slow down the bank, and bellow deep
And pitiful, as if it were
A very pain to even stir,
So close akin to death they keep.

LXVIII

The low sea bank is worn and torn,
All things seem old, so very old;
All things are gray with moss and mould,
The very seas seem old and worn.
Life scarce bides here in any form,
The very winds wake not nor say,

But sleep all night and sleep all day
Nor even dream of stress or storm.

LXIX

The Carib sea comes in so slow!
It stays and stays, as loth to go,
A sense of death is in the air,
A sense of listless, dull despair,
As if Truxillo, land and tide,
And all things, died when Walker died.

LXX

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;
Perched 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.

LXXI

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-palmed and fierce with lifted spears;
One bloom of crimson crowned its head,
A drop of blood, so bright, so red,
Yet redolent as roses' tears.

LXXII

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

LXXIII

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;
I turned me down the olive shore,
And set a sad face to the sea.

General William Walker, citizen, soldier, president and historian of Nicaragua, was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1824, of Scotch ancestry, and educated at a university in Paris, after which he studied international law in London. He voyaged to California in 1850 and, after some experience in the gold mines and gathering many bold men about him he became editor of the San Francisco Herald and began to publish his plans to his followers. He made two bold attempts to establish a settlement in Baja California, but was twice driven out by the Mexicans. Returning to California he raised a company and sailed for Nicaragua. War had been raging there for a long time between the aristocrats, or church party, of Granada, and the Democrats of Leon, to the north. Americans as well as British were fighting on both sides.

Colonel Doubleday, whose book on the subject is worth reading, was in the field long before Walker, who went into the country by special invitation from the president of the Democrats, whose capital was at Leon. Here, Doubleday, an English man by birth, joined Walker and, so far as he could, kept at his side to the end.

Doubleday says Walker was ambitious, and that in many quiet walks along the silvery beach of Lake Nicaragua he told him of vast plans of conquest, to include Honduras, Mexico and all Central America. And yet, Doubleday, in this same book, tells us that Walker was morose, reserved and had no confidants.

True, these accusations were made and published broadcast over the world right along and were not denied; but from Colonel Doubleday's own account of Walker's character he would certainly be the last man to tell the Colonel, or any one else, of any such fatal purpose. I know that I never heard a hint of it from him or any one near him. Still, we must ascribe his downfall to these stories; for he had hardly been seated in the Presidential chair when he found not only the Church party of his own adopted country against him but every little neighboring republic in arms to expel him.

After fearful fighting at Granada, Walker, shut up in Rivas, surrendered to the United States and was taken to New Orleans for trial, his men going whither they would or could.

He now published an elaborate book, giving the wealth and wonderful resources of the country and, at the same time, giving every detail of the war, under the title of The War in Nicaragua. It is written in the third person, like the books of the first Cæsar, and is as conservative and exact as an equation.

He was tried in New Orleans and, on his vindication, raised in that city and Mobile a force far exceeding that with which he had left California and with which he had fought his way to the presidency; but his Californians were dead or scattered, and these untried men of enervating cities knew little of arms and were, comparatively, worthless.

Walker's last expedition was closely watched by British gunboats. He took refuge up a river on the coast of Honduras and soon found himself cut off on all sides. He led his men up the coast and down, facing fifty to one, as at Rivas and Granada, but they soon became disheartened and he surrendered to the captain of a British man-of-war, who at once turned him over to Honduras, when he was promptly tried at the drum's head, condemned and shot.

General Walker was the cleanest man in word and deed I ever knew. He never used tobacco in any form, never drank anything at all, except water, and always ate most sparingly. He never jested and I cannot recall that I ever saw him smile. He was very thin of flesh and of most impressive presence, especially when on the firing line. At such times he was simply terrible; his gray eyes expanding and glittering like broken steel with the rage of battle. He was, in the eyes of his devoted Californians, truly “The bravest of the brave.” The manner of his death showed not only the true courage but the serene Christian peace and dignity of this “gray-eyed man of destiny.”

The priest who attended him in his last moments told me that Walker had no sooner been put in prison than he sent for his spiritual adviser. He knew his fate beforehand.

“Father, my political career is ended and I wish to prepare to die.”

And even as he spoke to the priest an officer with a platoon of executioners entered the prison to inform him that he was sentenced to be shot. Walker had disdained to make any show of defense for himself, but begged to the last moment that his followers should not be made to suffer. “My men knew nothing of my sudden resolve to reach Nicaragua by way of Truxillo when I found I could not escape the British gunboat. I alone am to blame. I was wrong in making war upon Honduras.”

His dress, language and bearing were those of a clergyman, when not on the firing line, and his whole time was spent in reading. He never wasted a moment in idle talk, never took advice but always gave commands, and they must be obeyed. On entering a town he, as a rule, issued a proclamation making death the penalty alike for insulting a woman, for theft or for entering a church save as a Christian should. He lived and died a devout Catholic.

[OMITTED]

“If you will open my heart when I am dead you will see Calais burned there; burned in the very heart of my heart.”

I have no warrant for saying that plans for the Nicaraguan canal crowded in upon the last moments of General Walker, for I was not with him in this last expedition, but I know that this one colossal idea towered over, and high above, all his other plans from the first, and even after his surrender to Lieutenant

Davis, of the United States Navy, at Rivas. His work as general of the Nicaraguan forces, his plans as President of Nicaragua, all honors, all things that came to him he reckoned as nothing in comparison with this one purpose. The transcontinental canal would make not only Mexico and all the lesser republics tributary to Nicaragua, but all the civilized world as well. He was well known personally in Paris and London, where his position and credit were of the best. He was looked upon in better Europe, not as an adventurer, but as a wise, well-meaning and far-seeing soldier and statesman. America was comparatively poor at that time, and, especially the northern part, hostile to his plans for the betterment of Nicaragua. So it was that he planned and arranged wholly with foreign capital for moneys to do the work. I am not certain that I know exactly, at this remote date, but I feel almost certain that the Rothschilds were to finance the canal and at the same time control the great quicksilver mines in California.

I am quite certain, however, that General Walker proposed to bring out many ship loads of the strong Celt, Saxon, and North Sea people to do the work, serve as soldiers and then help populate and civilize the richest and most favored spot of all this earth. I remember how carefully he noted that the health of his men, who were made to take care of themselves, was so much better than that of the native soldiers, who ate and drank, when they ate at all, whatever came to hand. Indeed, it would seem as if we were once miraculously saved from annihilation by breaking out of cholera in the enemy's camp, not ten miles distant.

The first real work towards the trans-continental canal was done by George Squier, our Minister to Peru; seconded by Stevens, another learned, able, and enterprising engineer. Five different routes were surveyed, or at least shown to be possible.

The first chapters in the story of the great canal, after these two able men had done their work and gone their ways, are far from complimentary to either the wisdom or the worth of most of those concerned.

At last the French took hold of the idea, but a treacherous Nicaraguan, high in authority, was bribed and to the consternation and disgust of all who knew anything about the resources and glory of Nicaragua, Panama was preferred. Of course America will now soon complete it. But we must do more than complete the Panama Canal.

As a dying queen proffered millions of money for a moment

of time, so Commerce, as she comes to possess her full estate, will pay billions of money for a single day, if need be. The Nicaragua route is more than a day shorter in the circuit of the world, as well as between the most important parts. The changeless and all-conquering laws of trade will compel the use of the shorter route; whoever may be its owners.

But there is something more than time and trade in the proposition. The world is learning at last to say with Socrates, “Know thyself”: the world wants to see the world and to see it at its best and to see it in its sublimest aspect and place. And the one sublimest place on the face of the earth is the mountains, the forests and the inland seas of Nicaragua. The five mountains of eternal fires beyond Leon, the gleaming, bottomless and flower-hung lakes, the sinuous and forest-swept rivers, the rainbow birds, monstrous reptiles of land and sea, blossoming trees heavy with perfume where mountains of snow and of flame look down on you as you sail by—these the world will see and know at whatever cost, as it comes to its own and comes to know itself. There is grandeur of scene in Canada as you glide by over the iron spans; but it is monotonously grand and cold and lifeless. The gleaming snow peaks of the Oregon Sierra, with their verdant fields, lowing herds and responsive human life, make a good second, but these two most favored parts of scenery under the northern path of the sun are so entirely surpassed by the endless summers in Nicaragua as to make any sort of comparison quite impossible. And so it results that the civilized and seeing world must and will pass that way, as surely as the crowding and ever-conquering battleships of commerce must and will lead that way.

If the Panama route proves to be a success, the Nicaragua route will be at once begun. If it proves a failure, this Nicaraguan route must and will be at once pushed to conclusion.

And who will build it? England? France? Germany? Russia? Japan? It matters not which of the three or four or five. But Russia, with her millions of money and men and her burning jealousy of the Island Empire, might try to build it; or even Japan with her brave ambition and steel-built walls. And we could and would plead the Monroe Doctrine and fight any one or all of them? We could and would do nothing of the sort. There is a precedent to the contrary. We allowed France to embark in the costly venture and we could not now refuse a like courtesy to any other nation, even if we would. Besides, this Monroe Doctrine is a chain of “glittering generalities” which

we have been shaking in the ears of the world without ever having tested its strength in the least. The strongest chain is only as strong as its weakest link. The boldest man in the century just behind us said, “I consider the Monroe Doctrine only a bit of idle bluster.”

Then since by earthquakes, sudden floods, tidal waves and uncertain sea levels we may fail at Panama and so tempt some foreign power to invade Nicaragua, and since our success would be a tenfold temptation, what should we do but at once secure the right of way to ourselves, from Nicaragua, and so insure peace and prosperity to all before other nations step in. Cast bread on the waters here and it will surely return an hundred-fold. When we were building the first Pacific railroad no one ever dreamed we would need a second one. But we are building others right along. We must control the second Darien Canal.

A great canal must and will be built across Nicaragua. And we this great republic, with its millions and billions, must build it. We have more than a right. We have a Duty!

Nicaragua is a healthy country. The water is good, the wood abundant and the people industrious, able and willing to do all the work, so there need be no loss of time or great loss of life in its construction.

THE TALE OF THE TALL ALCALDE

Shadows that shroud the tomorrow,
Glists from the life that's within,
Traces of pain and of sorrow,
And maybe a trace of sin,
Reachings 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 wailing,
Never the sign of a tear.

Where mountains repose in their blueness,
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 commandante,
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 commandanté, 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
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 care-worn 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 men 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 fire,
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 cañon's mouth
The long-tom 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!’

“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-feather'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 unseen 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 broawn,
And thrust his muzzle in the air,
Snuff'd 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,
‘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
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
‘I 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;
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 on 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 tomorrow'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 my 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,

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 black cricket's trill,
A 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 adobé prison stood
Beside a sulty, 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
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 stripéd 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.

“I was so weak I could not speak
Or press my pale lips to her cheek;
I 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 seized 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 companiers of old.

“Short time for shouting or delay,—
The cock is shrill, the east is gray,
Pursuit is made, we 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, far from keep pursuit, or power

Of sheriff or bailiff, high or low,
Into the bristling hills we go.

“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.

“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, weirdly 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.

“‘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.

“‘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 sweet 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 deem'd her God unkind,
Less careful of her dust than I.

“But why the dreary tale prolong?
And deem you I confess'd me wrong,
That I did bend a patient knee
To all the deep wrongs done to me?
That I, because the prison mould
Was on my brow, and all its chill
Was in my 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,
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 marshaling 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, imprisoned 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.

“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 fevel 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 encounter'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 lighten'd heart and whiten'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,

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 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 adobé door
Into the night, and he passed alone,
And never was known or heard of more.

Byron's Corsair had but four hundred lines when first out, but he finally built it up to about fifteen hundred.

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 at the fact that “our friends the enemy” fixed the date at about the same 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 majestic 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 cañon there so deep, so bottomless, 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 me, 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 Sierra Madre range of mountains comes up to us from way down in Mexico. It passes on up toward the north in all its savage majesty and splendor until it melts into and blends in with the Sierra Nevada Mountains of the north, Sierra Nevada Mountains—mountains of snow; Sierra, series—saw teeth of snow, to be literal and exact.

Mount Shasta (Chasti), so named by the French, marked the limit of Spain (Mexico) to the north and the end of the Sierra de Nevada. But the Spanish and Portuguese explorers sailing up the Oregon River gave this same great range of mountains coming up from their Mexico the same name—Sierra—with the deserved additional name, Grande del Nord—Sierra Grande del Nord. This mighty mountain range is finally lost in Canada and Alaska. If you want to speak of any one of these particular divisions you say Sierra this or Sierra that. But the custom, which has become a law, is to say the Sierras when you want to speak of these mountains as a body.

The one sublimest mountain view of all the Sierras is the summit and center of the park in the city of Portland, Ore. Here they have seven great snow peaks right at your feet.

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
Are fill'd 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.
“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, 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 blossoms,
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.
I 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 clover's reach and the meadows fine,
And so made the Squire his friend forever.
His brow was brown'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 Santan stone,
Brighter even 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 cañon so deep, the wonder
Was what it could know in its clime but calm;
Down in a cañon 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 comes 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
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 desire,

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 bubbled
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, 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.
“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!
“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 scream'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 cañon'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 unrest,
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 I, and better;
For once in the desert of New Mexico

100

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 famish'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,
(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 brotherhood,
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 cañon as you would fill

101

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.

102

“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! passing fair.
‘I am riper now,’ I said, ‘but am richer,’
And I lifted my hand to my beard and hair;
‘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 marvelous fair!’
She look'd to the West, with her arm arch'd over;
‘Looking for me, her sun-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!

103

“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 mavelous eyes?
I had call'd to her twice, ‘Come in! come in!
Come out of the storm to the calm within!’
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,
Its 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 wonderful 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,

104

The marvelous flowing, gold-flower of hair,
And the peaceful eyes in their sweet surprise
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 within
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 fingers
And fell to counting the round years down
That I had dwelt where the sun tans brown.
“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 turn'd in terror down the dusk wayside,
And cried as she fled, ‘The man he is crazed,
And he calls the maiden name of my mother!’
“Let the world turn over, and over, and over,
And toss and tumble like beasts in pain,
Crack, quake, and 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,

105

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 went over—
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 and 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,

106

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 piéd and hornéd 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?”

[_]

This book, in the following lines, was dedicated to Maud, my little daughter in Oregon.

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.

107

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 summer-shine.
I throw a kiss across the sea,
I drink the winds as drinking wine,
And dream they are all 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.

108

THE LAST TASCHASTAS

The hills were brown, 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 chaparral,
And a grey grouse drumm'd, “All's well, all's well.”

I

Wrinkled and brown as a bag of leather,
A squaw sits moaning long and low.
Yesterday she was a wife and mother,
Today 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-red.

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.

109

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

110

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.

“'Tis the spirits of my Fathers
Mutt'ring vengeance in the skies;
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 molted 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.

111

“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 yestermorn?
Lo! a wigwam door is darken'd,
And a mother mourns 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.

112

“Through the land where we for ages
Laid the bravest, dearest dead,
Grinds the savage white man's plowshare
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 strown;
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 stripéd 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;

113

With her stripéd 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?
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 the 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!

114

“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 cañon
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,

115

Or its fall shall shake the earth,
Desolating heart and hearth!”

III

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 eyes 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,

116

And he was sentenced to exile;
In open boat upon the sea
To go the instant on the main,
And never under penalty
Of death to touch the shore again.
A troop of bearded buckskinn'd men
Bore him hard-hurried to the wave,
Placed him swift in the boat; and then
Swift pushing to the gristling 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,

117

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 I 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

118

And brought the old chief to his knee.
He turn'd his face, and turning rose
With hand raised fiercely to his foes:
“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,
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,

119

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 topmost 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' out its tongue and tasted blood;
The white lips to the red earth clung

120

An instant, and then loosening
All hold just like a living thing,
Drew back sad-voiced and shuddering,
All stained with blood, a stripéd 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 the king 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 and prophecies. This was the leading piece in my very first book, “Specimens,” published in Oregon in 1867–8, if I remember rightly.

134

BITS FROM INA, A DRAMA

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 flash'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

135

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 newly 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,
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 tonight, mighty mountains:

136

It is held to the levels of earth by an angel
Far more than a star, earth fallen or unfall'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 graybeard.
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 silver'd;
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 tomorrow,
And be all his own—firm, honest and faithful.

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I have promised this thing; that I will keep my promise
You who do know me care never to question.
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 thunder,
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 of Mount Hood. Lamonte contemplates the scene.
Lamonte.

A flushed and weary messenger a-west
Is standing at the half-closed door of day,

138

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?
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 tomorrow 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.

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'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.

Don Carlos ascends the mountain, gesticulating 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 undream'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

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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
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.

Lamonte.
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.

Lamonte.
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,

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For man by nature bears within himself
Nobility that makes him half a god;
But as in somewise he hath made himself,
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 ambition,
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.

142

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 scorpion brood;
For, mark me well, they'll get the mastery,
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
Down time's dark tide of utter nothingness,
I'd write a name in blood and orphans' tears.
The temple-burner wiser was than kings.

Lamonte.
And would you dare the curse of man and—

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

143

Unhinder'd on the shining shore of heaven,
And, sword in hand, unbared and unabash'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 behind
These stormy thoughts and daring aspirations.
All earthly power is but a thing comparative.
Is not a petty chief of some lone isle,
With half a dozen nude and starving subjects,
As much a king as he the Czar of Rusk?
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,

144

That know no law but only nature's law,
And no religion know but that of love.
There truth and beauty are, for there is Nature,
Serene and simple. She will be our priestess,
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,
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 unfriended.
And I pitied, with proud and disdainfulest pity,
The weak who would weep, and I laugh'd at the folly
Of those who could laugh and make merry with playthings.

145

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 fearless—
Am frank as the sun, nor the toss of a copper
Care I if the world call it good or evil.
I am glad tonight, and in new-born freedom
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 I 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 the 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, breathing,
The father of melody, mother of measure.

146

Scene IV.

A wood by a rivulet on a spur of Mount Hood, overlooking the Columbia. Lamonte and Don Carlos, on their way to the camp, are reposing under the shadow of the forest. Some deer are observed descending to the brook, and Don Carlos seizes his rifle.
Lamonte.
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,
A man has craft and sinewy arms:
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.

147

Lamonte.
Thou Timon, what can 'scape your bitterness?
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, uncomplaining?
I've seen her fretted like a lion caged,
Chafe like a peevish woman cross'd and churl'd,
Tramping and champing 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 cracked 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.

148

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 another—
Another, and another, still another,
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?

149

Lamonte.
A bear, as in old time, came from the woods
And tare him there upon that storm-swept cliff—
A grim and grizzed 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

150

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.
Reach 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 you not now know me?
'Tis I, your Ina, whom you loved by the ocean,
In the warm-spiced winds from the far Cathay.

151

Don Carlos
(bitterly.)

With the smell of the dead man still upon you!
Your dark hair wet from his death-damp forehead!
You are not my Ina, for she is a memory.
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 welcome;
And on the morrow—now mark me, madam—
When tomorrow 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 devotion.
The waters of bliss are a waste of bitterness;
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 unfetter'd,
Is a deadly asp in the fruit and flowers
That you in your bitterness now bear to me;

152

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 devotion;
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 approach 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.

153

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,
O 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 where
White storms carouse 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 battlements,
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 beautiful—
With heart all impulse, and intensest passion,
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 mountains.

He had heard of 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;

154

He gave her name to the wind in measures,
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,
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 nuptials;
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 forward.
When Mars was trailing his lance on the mountains
He rein'd his steed and look'd down in the cañon
To where she dwelt, with a heart of fire.
He kiss'd his hand to the smoke slow curling,

155

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 banner'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.
She 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 indifference,
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 presence;
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,

156

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,
Letter'd 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.

When the sun went down on the bronzed Morea,
He read to himself from the lines of sorrow
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 remembrance.
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,

157

Gray with the ghosts of the great departed.”
And then he said in the solemn twilight...

“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 mountains,
Strangely mellow is the moon on old ruins,
Strangely pleasant are the stolen waters,
Strangely lighted is the North night region,
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 in tides, and these
Are flood tides filling to the eyes.

158

“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.

“I saw you where sad cedars wave;
I sought you in the dewy eve
When shining crickets thrill and grieve;
You smiled, and I became a slave.
A slave! I worship'd you at night,
When all the blue field blossom'd red
With dewy roses overhead
In sweet and delicate delight.
I was devout. I knelt that night
To Him who doeth all things well.
I tried in vain to break the spell;
My prison'd soul refused to rise
And image saints in Paradise,
While one was here before my eyes.

159

“Some things are sooner marr'd than made.
A frost fell on a soul that night,
And one was black that erst was white.
And you forget the place—the night!
Forget that aught was done or said—
Say this has pass'd a long decade—
Say not a single tear was shed—
Say you forget these little things!
Is not your recollection loth?
Well, little bees have bitter stings,
And I remember for us both.

“No, not a tear. Do men complain?
The outer wound will show a stain,
And we may shriek at idle pain;
But pierce the heart, and not a word,
Or wail, or sign, is seen or heard.

“I did not blame—I do not blame,
My wild heart turns to you the same,
Such as it is; but oh, its meed
Of faithfulness and trust and truth,
And earnest confidence of youth,
I caution, you, is small indeed.

“I follow'd you, I worshipp'd you
And I would follow, worship still;
But if I felt the blight and chill
Of frosts in my uncheerful spring,
And show it now in riper years
In answer to this love you bring—
In answer to this second love,
This wail of an unmated dove,
In cautious answer to your tears—
You, you know who taught me disdain.

160

But deem you I would deal you pain?
I joy to know your heart is light,
I journey glad to know it thus,
And could I dare to make it less?
Yours—you are day, but I am night.

“God knows I would descend to-day
Devoutly on my knees, and pray
Your way might be one path of peace
Through bending boughs and blossom'd trees,
And perfect bliss through roses fair;
But know you, back—one long decade—
How fervently, how fond I pray'd?—
What was the answer to that prayer?

“The tale is old, and often told
And lived by more than you suppose—
The fragrance of a summer rose
Press'd down beneath the stubborn lid,
When sun and song are hush'd and hid,
And summer days are gray and old.

“We parted so. Amid the bays
And peaceful palms and song and shade
Your cheerful feet in pleasure stray'd
Through all the swift and shining days.

“You made my way another way,
You bade it should not be with thine—
A fierce and cheerless route was mine:
But we have met, tonight—today.

“You talk of tears—of bitter tears—
And tell of tyranny and wrong,
And I re-live some stinging jeers,

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Back, far back, in the leaden years.
A lane without a turn is long,
I muse, and whistle a reply—
Then bite my lips and crush a sigh.

“You sympathize that I am sad,
I sigh for you that you complain,
I shake my yellow hair in vain,
I laugh with lips, but am not glad.

... “His was a hot love of the hours,
And love and lover both are flown;
Now you walk, like a ghost, alone.
He sipp'd your sunny lips, and he
Took all their honey; now the bee
Bends down the heads of other flowers
And other lips lift up to kiss. ...
... I am not cruel, yet I find
A savage solace for the mind
And sweet delight in saying this. ...
Now you are silent, white, and you
Lift up your hands as making sign,
And your rich lips lie thin and blue
And ashen ... and you writhe, and you
Breathe quick and tremble ... is it true
The soul takes wounds, sheds blood like wine?

... “You seem so most uncommon tall
Against the lonely ghostly moon,
That hurries homeward oversoon,
And hides behind you and the pines;
And your two hands hang cold and small,
And your two thin arms lie like vines,

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Or winter moonbeams on a wall.
... What if you be a weary ghost,
And I but dream, and dream I wake?
Then wake me not, and my mistake
Is not so bad; let's make the most
Of all we get, asleep, awake—
And waste not one sweet thing at all.

God knows that, at the best, life brings
The soul's share so exceeding small
We weary for some better things,
And hunger even unto death.
Laugh loud, be glad with ready breath,
For after all are joy and grief
Not merely matters of belief?
And what is certain after all,
But death, delightful, patient death?
The cool and perfect, peaceful sleep,
Without one tossing hand, or deep
Sad sigh and catching in of breath!

“Be satisfied. The price of breath
Is paid in toll. But knowledge is
Bought only with a weary care,
And wisdom means a world of pain...
Well, we have suffered, will again,
And we can work and wait and bear,
Strong in the certainty of bliss.
Death is delightful: after death
Breaks in the dawn of perfect day.
Let question he who will: the May
Throws fragrance far beyond the wall.

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“Death is delightful. Death is dawn.
Fame is not much, love is not much,
Yet what else is there worth the touch
Of lifted hand with dagger drawn?
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.

“Yea, we must labor, plant to reap—
Life knows no folding up of hands—
Must plow the soul, as plowing lands;
In furrows fashion'd strong and deep.
Life has its lesson. Let us learn
The hard, long lesson from the birth,
And be content; stand breast to breast,
And bear and battle till the rest.
Yet I look to yon stars, and say:
Thank Christ, ye are so far away
That when I win you I can turn
And look, and see no sign of earth.

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MYRRH

Life knows no dead so beautiful
As is the white cold coffin'd past;
This I may love nor be betray'd:
The dead are faithful to the last.
I am not spouseless—I have wed
A memory—a life that's dead.

Farewell! for here the ways at last
Divide—diverge, like delta'd Nile,
Which after desert dangers pass'd
Of many and many a thousand mile,
As constant as a column stone,
Seeks out the sea, divorced—alone.

And you and I have buried Love,
A red seal on the coffin's lid;
The clerk below, the court above,
Pronounce it dead: the corpse is hid
And I who never cross'd your will
Consent ... that you may have it still.

Farewell! a sad word easy said
And easy sung, I think, by some...
... I clutch'd my hands, I turn'd my head
In my endeavor and was dumb;
And when I should have said, Farewell,
I only murmur'd, “This is hell.”

What recks it now, whose was the blame?
But call it mine; for better used
Am I to wrong and cold disdain,
Can better bear to be accused

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Of all that wears the shape of shame,
Than have you bear one touch of blame.

I set my face for power and place,
My soul is toned to sullenness,
My heart holds not one sign nor trace
Of love, or trust, or tenderness.
But you—your years of happiness
God knows I would not make them less.

And you will come some summer eve,
When wheels the white moon on her track,
And hear the plaintive night-bird grieve,
And heed the crickets clad in black;
Alone—not far—a little spell,
And say, “Well, yes, he loved me well”;

And sigh, “Well, yes, I mind me now,
None were so bravely true as he;
And yet his love was tame somehow,
It was so truly true to me;
I wish'd his patient love had less
Of worship and of tenderness:

“I wish it still, for thus alone
There comes a keen reproach or pain,
A feeling I dislike to own;
Half yearnings for his voice again,
Half longings for his earnest gaze,
To know him mine always—always.”

[OMITTED]

I make no murmur; steady, calm,
Sphinxlike I gaze on days ahead.
No wooing word, no pressing palm,

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No sealing love with lips seal-red,
No waiting for some dusk or dawn,
No sacred hour ... all are gone.

I go alone; no little hands
To lead me from forbidden ways,
No little voice in other lands
To cheer through all the weary days,
Yet these are yours, and that to me
Is much indeed. ... So let it be. ...

... A last look from my mountain wall. ...
I watch the red sun wed the sea
Beside your home ... the tides will fall
And rise, but nevermore shall we
Stand hand in hand and watch them flow,
As we once stood. ... Christ! this is so!

But, when the stately sea comes in
With measured tread and mouth afoam,
My darling cries above the din,
And asks, “Has father yet come home?”
Then look into the peaceful sky,
And answers, gently, “By and by.”

[OMITTED]

One deep spring in a desert sand,
One moss'd and mystic pyramid,
A lonely palm on either hand,
A fountain in a forest hid,
Are all my life has realized
Of all I cherish'd, all I prized:

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Of all I dream'd in early youth
Of love by streams and love-lit ways,
While my heart held its type of truth
Through all the tropic golden days,
And I the oak, and you the vine,
Clung palm in palm through cloud or shine.

Some time when clouds hang overhead,
(What weary skies without one cloud!)
You may muse on this love that's dead,
Muse calm when not so cold or proud,
And say, “At last it comes to me,
That none was ever true as he.”

My sin was that I loved too much—
But I enlisted for the war,
Till we the deep-sea shore should touch,
Beyond Atlanta—near or far—
And truer soldier never yet
Bore shining sword or bayonet.

I did not blame you—do not blame.
The stormy elements of soul
That I did scorn to tone or tame,
Or bind down unto dull control
In full fierce youth, they are all yours,
With all their folly and their force.

God keep you pure, oh, very pure,
God give you grace to dare and do;
God give you courage to endure
The all He may demand of you,—
Keep time frosts from your raven hair,
And your young heart without a care.

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I make no murmur nor complain;
Above me are the stars and blue
Alluring far to grand refrain;
Before, the beautiful and true,
To love or hate, to win or lose;
Lo! I will now arise, and choose.

But should you sometime read a sign,
In isles of song beyond the brine,
Then you will think a time, and you
Will turn and say, “He once was mine,
Was all my own; his smiles, his tears
Were mine—were mine for years and years.”

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BURNS

Eld Druid oaks of Ayr,
Precepts! Poems! Pages!
Lessons! Leaves, and Volumes!
Arches! Pillars! Columns
In corridors of ages!
Grand patriarchal sages
Lifting palms in prayer!

The Druid beards are drifting
And shifting to and fro,
In gentle breezes lifting,
That bat-like come and go.
The while the moon is sifting
A sheen of shining snow
On all these blossoms lifting
Their blue eyes from below.

No, 'tis not phantoms walking
That you hear rustling there,
But bearded Druids talking,
And turning leaves in prayer.
No, not a night-bird singing
Nor breeze the broad bough swinging,
But that bough holds a censer,
And swings it to and fro.
'Tis Sunday eve, remember,
That's why they chant so low.

I linger in the autumn noon,
I listen to the partridge call,
I watch the yellow leaflets fall
And drift adown the dimpled Doon.
I lean me o'er the ivy-grown

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Auld brig, where Vandal tourists' tools
Have ribb'd out names that would be known,
Are known—known as a herd of fools.
Down Ailsa Craig the sun declines,
With lances level'd here and there—
The tinted thorns! the trailing vines!
O braes of Doon! so fond, so fair!
So passing fair, so more than fond!
The Poet's place of birth beyond,
Beyond the mellow bells of Ayr!
I hear the milk-maid's twilight song
Come bravely through the storm-bent oaks;
Beyond, the white surf's sullen strokes
Beat in a chorus deep and strong;
I hear the sounding forge afar,
And rush and rumble of the car,
The steady tinkle of the bell
Of lazy, laden, home-bound cows
That stop to bellow and to browse;
I breathe the soft sea-wind as well.
O Burns! where bid? where bide ye now?
Where rest you in this night's full noon,
Great master of the pen and plow?
Might you not on yon slanting beam
Of moonlight kneeling to the Doon,
Descend once to this hallow'd stream?
Sure yon stars yield enough of light
For heaven to spare your face one night.
O Burns! another name for song,
Another name for passion—pride;

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For love and poesy allied;
For strangely blended right and wrong.
I picture you as one who kneel'd
A stranger at his own hearthstone;
One knowing all, yet all unknown,
One seeing all, yet all conceal'd;
The fitful years you linger'd here
A lease of peril and of pain;
And I am thankful yet again
The gods did love you, plowman! peer!
In all your own and other lands,
I hear your touching songs of cheer;
The lowly peasant, lordly peer,
Above your honor'd dust strike hands.
A touch of tenderness is shown
In this unselfish love of Ayr,
And it is well, you earn'd it fair;
For all unhelmeted, alone,
You proved a plowman's honest claim
To battle in the lists of fame;
You earn'd it as a warrior earns
His laurels fighting for his land,
And died—it was your right to go.
O eloquence of silent woe!
The Master leaning, reach'd a hand,
And whisper'd, “It is finish'd, Burns!”
O sad, sweet singer of a Spring!
Yours was a chill, uncheerful May,
And you knew no full days of June;
You ran too swiftly up the way,
And wearied soon, so over-soon!

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You sang in weariness and woe;
You falter'd, and God heard you sing,
Then touch'd your hand and led you so,
You found life's hill-top low, so low,
You cross'd its summit long ere noon.
Thus sooner than one would suppose
Some weary feet will find repose.

173

BYRON

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 do not dare to draw a line
Between the two, where God has not

O cold and cruel Nottingham!
In disappointment and in tears,
Sad, lost, and lonely, here I am
To question, “Is this Nottingham
Of which I dream'd for years and years?”
I seek in vain for name or sign
Of him who made this mold a shrine,
A Mecca to the fair and fond
Beyond the seas, and still beyond.

Where white clouds crush their drooping wings
Against my snow-crown'd battlements,
And peaks that flash like silver tents;
Where Sacramento's fountain springs,
And proud Columbia frets his shore
Of somber, boundless wood and wold,
And lifts his yellow sands of gold
In plaintive murmurs evermore;

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Where snowy dimpled Tahoe smiles,
And where white breakers from the sea,
In solid phalanx knee to knee,
Surround the calm Pacific Isles,
Then run and reach unto the land
And spread their thin palms on the sand,—
Is he supreme—there understood:
The free can understand the free;
The brave and good the brave and good.

Yea, he did sin; who hath reveal'd
That he was more than man, or less?
Yet sinn'd no more; but less conceal'd
Than they who cloak'd their follies o'er,
And then cast stones in his distress.
He scorn'd to make the good seem more,
Or make the bitter sin seem less.
And so his very manliness
The seeds of persecution bore.

When all his songs and fervid love
Brought back no olive branch or dove,
Or love or trust from any one,
Proud, all unpitied and alone
He lived to make himself unknown,
Disdaining love and yielding none.
Like some high-lifted sea-girt stone
That could not stoop, but all the days,
With proud brow fronted to the breeze,
Felt seas blown from the south, and seas
Blown from the north, and many ways,
He stood—a solitary light
In stormy seas and settled night—
Then fell, but stirr'd the seas as far
As winds and waves and waters are.

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The meek-eyed stars are cold and white
And steady, fix'd for all the years;
The comet burns the wings of night,
And dazzles elements and spheres,
Then dies in beauty and a blaze
Of light, blown far through other days.

The poet's passion, sense of pride,
His boundless love, the wooing throng
Of sweet temptations that betide
The warm and wayward child of song,
The world knows not: I lift a hand
To ye who know, who understand.

The ancient Abbey's breast is broad,
And stout her massive walls of stone;
But let him lie, repose alone
Ungather'd with the great of God,
In dust, by his fierce fellow man.
Some one, some day, loud voiced will speak
And say the broad breast was not broad,
The walls of stone were all too weak
To hold his proud dust, in their plan;
The hollow of God's great right hand
Receives it; let it rest with God.

In sad but beautiful decay
Gray Hucknall kneels into the dust,
And, cherishing her sacred trust,
Does blend her clay with lordly clay.

No sign or cryptic stone or cross
Unto the passing world has said,
“He died, and we deplore his loss.”

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No sound of sandall'd pilgrims' tread
Disturbs the pilgrim's peaceful rest,
Or frets the proud, impatient breast.
The bat flits through the broken pane,
The black swift swallow gathers moss,
And builds in peace above his head,
Then goes, then comes, and builds again.

And it is well; not otherwise
Would he, the grand sad singer, will.
The serene peace of paradise
He sought—'tis his—the storm is still.
Secure in his eternal fame,
And blended pity and respect,
He does not feel the cold neglect,—
And England does not fear the shame.

The little old church where Byron, with all his kindred, are buried, at Hucknall Tokard, Nottes, has been twice torn down and rebuilt since the above was written, although it had stood for centuries little better than a ruin. A wreath of bay was laid above his dust, from Ina D. Coolbrith. The vicar there protested. The matter was appealed to the Bishop. The Bishop answered by sending another wreath. Then the King of Greece sent a wreath. Then the rebuilding began.

177

KIT CARSON'S RIDE

Room! room to turn round in, to breathe and be free,
To grow to be giant, to sail as at sea
With the speed of the wind on a steed with his mane
To the wind, without pathway or route or a rein.
Room! room to be free where the white border'd sea
Blows a kiss to a brother as boundless as he;
Where the buffalo come like a cloud on the plain,
Pouring on like the tide of a storm-driven main,
And the lodge of the hunter to friend or to foe
Offers rest; and unquestion'd you come or you go.
My plains of America! Seas of wild lands!
From a land in the seas in a raiment of foam,
That has reached to a stranger the welcome of home,
I turn to you, lean to you, lift you my hands.

Run? Run? See this flank, sir, and I do love him so!
But he's blind, badger blind. Whoa, Pache, boy, whoa.
No, you wouldn't believe it to look at his eyes,
But he's blind, badger blind, and it happen'd this wise:

“We lay in the grass and the sunburnt clover
That spread on the ground like a great brown cover
Northward and southward, and west and away
To the Brazos, where our lodges lay,

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One broad and unbroken level of brown.
We were waiting the curtains of night to come down
To cover us trio and conceal our flight
With my brown bride, won from an Indian town
That lay in the rear the full ride of a night.

“We lounged in the grass—her eyes were in mine,
And her hands on my knee, and her hair was as wine
In its wealth and its flood, pouring on and all over
Her bosom wine red, and press'd never by one
Her touch was as warm as the tinge of the clover
Burnt brown as it reach'd to the kiss of the sun.
Her words they were low as the lute-throated dove,
And as laden with love as the heart when it beats
In its hot, eager answer to earliest love,
Or the bee hurried home by its burthen of sweets.

“We lay low in the grass on the broad plain levels,
Old Revels and I, and my stolen brown bride;
“Forty full miles if a foot to ride!
Forty full miles if a foot, and the devils
Of red Comanches are hot on the track
When once they strike it. Let the sun go down
Soon, very soon,” muttered bearded old Revels
As he peer'd at the sun, lying low on his back,
Holding fast to his lasso. Then he jerk'd at his steed

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And he sprang to his feet, and glanced swiftly around,
And then dropp'd, as if shot, with an ear to the ground;
Then again to his feet, and to me, to my bride,
While his eyes were like flame, his face like a shroud,
His form like a king, and his beard like a cloud,
And his voice loud and shrill, as both trumpet and reed,—
“Pull, pull in your lassoes, and bridle to steed,
And speed you if ever for life you would speed.
Aye, ride for your lives, for your lives you must ride!
For the plain is aflame, the prairie on fire,
And the feet of wild horses hard flying before
I heard like a sea breaking high on the shore,
While the buffalo come like a surge of the sea,
Driven far by the flame, driving fast on us three
As a hurricane comes, crushing palms in his ire.”

“We drew in the lassoes, seized saddle and rein,
Threw them on, cinched them on, cinched them over again,
And again drew the girth; and spring we to horse,
With head to the Brazos, with a sound in the air
Like the surge of a sea, with a flash in the eye,
From that red wall of flame reaching up to the sky;
A red wall of flame and a black rolling sea
Rushing fast upon us, as the wind sweeping free

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And afar from the desert blown hollow and hoarse.

“Not a word, not a wail from a lip was left fall,
We broke not a whisper, we breathed not a prayer,
There was work to be done, there was death in the air,
And the chance was as one to a thousand for all.

Twenty miles! ... thirty miles! ... a dim distant speck ...
Then a long reaching line, and the Brazos in sight!
And I rose in my seat with a shout of delight.
I stood in my stirrup, and look'd to my right—
But Revels was gone; I glanced by my shoulder
And saw his horse stagger; I saw his head drooping
Hard down on his breast, and his naked breast stooping
Low down to the mane, as so swifter and bolder
Ran reaching out for us the red-footed fire.
He rode neck to neck with a buffalo bull,
That made the earth shake where he came in his course,
The monarch of millions, with shaggy mane full
Of smoke and of dust, and it shook with desire
Of battle, with rage and with bellowings hoarse.
His keen, crooked horns, through the storm of his mane,
Like black lances lifted and lifted again;
And I looked but this once, for the fire licked through,
And Revels was gone, as we rode two and two.

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“I look'd to my left then—and nose, neck, and shoulder
Sank slowly, sank surely, till back to my thighs,
And up through the black blowing veil of her hair
Did beam full in mine her two marvelous eyes,
With a longing and love yet a look of despair
And of pity for me, as she felt the smoke fold her,
And flames leaping far for her glorious hair.
Her sinking horse falter'd, plunged, fell and was gone
As I reach'd through the flame and I bore her still on.
On! into the Brazos, she, Pache and I—
Poor, burnt, blinded Pache. I love him ... That's why.”

And here a few confidential lines for close friends: With better fortunes when my first London book was out, I had taken rooms at Museum Street, a few doors from the greatest store-house of art and history on the globe, and I literally lived in the British Museum every day. But I had already overtaxed my strength, and my eyes were paining terribly. Never robust, I had always abhorred meat; and milk, from a child, had been my strongest drink. In the chill damp of London you must eat and drink. I was, without knowing it, starving and working myself to death. Always and wherever you are, when a hard bit of work is done, rest and refresh. Go to the fields, woods, to God and get strong. This is your duty as well as your right.

Letters—sweet, brave, good letters from the learned and great—were so many I could not read them with my poor eyes and had to leave them to friends. They found two from the Archbishop of Dublin. I was to breakfast with him to meet Browning, Dean Stanley, Houghton, and so on. I went to an old Jew close by to hire a dress suit, as Franklin had done for the Court of St. James. While fitting on the clothes I told him I was in haste to go to a great breakfast. He stopped, looked at me, looked me all over, and then told me I must not wear that,

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but he would hire me a suit of velvet. By degrees, as he fixed me up, he got at, or guessed at some facts, and when I asked to pay him he shook his head. I put some money down and he pushed it back. He said he had a son, his only family now, at Oxford, and he kept on fixing me up; cane, great, tall silk hat, gloves and all. Who would have guessed the heart to be found there?

Browning was just back from Italy, sunburnt and ruddy. “Robert, you are browning,” smiled Lady Augusta. “And you are August—a,” bowed the great poet grandly; and, by what coincidence—he, too, was in brown velvet, and so like my own that I was a bit uneasy.

Two of the Archbishop's beautiful daughters had been riding in the park with the Earl of Aberdeen. “And did you gallop?” asked Browning of the younger beauty. “I galloped, Joyce galloped, we galloped all three.” Then we all laughed at the happy and hearty retort, and Browning, beating the time and clang of galloping horses' feet on the table with his fingers, repeated the exact measure in Latin from Virgil; and the Archbishop laughingly took it up, in Latin, where he left off. I then told Browning I had an order—it was my first—for a poem from the Oxford Magazine, and would like to borrow the measure and spirit of his “Good News” for a prairie fire on the plains, driving buffalo and all other life before it into a river. “Why not borrow from Virgil, as I did? He is as rich as one of your gold mines, while I am but a poor scribe.” And this was my first of inner London.

Fast on top of this came breakfasts with Lord Houghton, lunch with Browning, a dinner with Rossetti to meet the great painters; the good old Jew garmenting me always, and always pushing back the pay.

Let me here note some things my new poets that you should not do; then some that you must. The random notes of this book will serve you better than all the letters I could ever write you. Spend no time or strength finding fault with a fellow scribe. I know but little of prize fighters or pirates of the high seas, but from what I am told they are far more courteous to one another than are American authors, except in sets and little circles.

If you feel a bitterness my young poet toward some one more favored at this time than yourself, pray God to send some good angel to lay you on your back, as is told in the story of Islam's prophet, and take the black drop from your heart, for it will make you not only weak and worthless if it remain, but it will

183

make you certainly miserable. If you cannot learn to see beauty and love beauty in the life and work of Nature, then, believe me, you were not born to the sweetness of song. If you must find faults find them in your own work. I have done this, and it has kept me busy. Nor shall you to the extent of its newness, scorn a new character, mistake character for eccentricity. Our work, the calling of the poet, is the highest under the stars, so are his triumphs the rarest; and he who would despoil him would despoil the dead.

Nor shall you bewail the afflictions of your flesh. That is old, old; and has been done perfectly. The man who intrudes the weakness of his body is a bore. Let him, if he must, sing the weakness of his mind. But when “he putteth off his armor,” then, and not till then, may he tell the pain and peril of his fight.

This poem, “Kit Carson,” was not in any of my four first books, and so has not been rightly revised till now. It was too long for the tumultuous and swift action; and then the end was coarse and unworthy the brave spirit of Kit Carson. I have here cut and changed it much; as I cut and changed all the matter of my three preceding books in London when I cut and compressed all I had done worth preserving into the Songs of the Sierras.

184

OYE-AGUA: OREGON

My brave world-builders of the West!
Why, who doth know ye? Who shall know
But I, that on thy peaks of snow
Brake bread the first? Who loves ye best?
Who holds ye still, of more stern worth
Than all proud peoples of the earth?

Yea, I, the rhymer of wild rhymes,
Indifferent of blame or praise,
Still sing of ye, as one who plays
The same sweet air in all strange climes—
The same wild, piercing highland air,
Because—because, his heart is there.

“Here are the continuous woods; here rolls the Oregon and hears no sound save its own dashing.”

If there is a statelier name in all our constellation of stars, I have not heard it. Alabama—Here we rest—is sweet, attractive, restful, but the name has not the rush of waters, the misty tang of mold and sombre wood, of cloud-tossing trees, the strength, the stir, the color of Oregon: Oye-agua.

It is high time that some one should make clear the root of this great name; the written story of its origin. For it appealed to the poet Bryant most effectively, as well as many others, John Hay especially.

For more than thirty years I have made eager inquiry for evidence as to when and by whom in the earliest expeditions the stately names Sierra Grande del Nord and Oye-agua were bequeathed us on the North Pacific sea bank, but I am today empty handed. The letters I had received from the poet Bryant and John Hay and others were destroyed in the San Francisco fire. I had placed them for greater safety in the library of the Bohemian Club, along with autograph copies of books from eminent authors all over the world. I have not had heart to seriously take up the subject since. But I think the noble name speaks very plainly for itself and needs no written evidence of its etymology.

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Oye-el-agua: Hear the Water! Oye-agua: OREGON: Or-e-gon!

In 1858, while teaching a sort of primer school, below Fort Vancouver, during vacation at Columbia College, the forerunner of the Oregon University, I met Father Broulette, the head of the Catholic School at Vancouver. This learned and kindly priest helped me in my Latin, when I went to him on Saturdays, and twice took me rowing in an Indian's canoe far up the great Oregon River to hear the waters; to hear the waters dashing down out of the clouds from the melting snows of Mount Hood. And he quoted Bryant's poem and laid great stress on the words: “Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound save its own dashing.”

We could hear—you can today—hear something more than the dashing waters of the Oregon, that forget the precipitous steeps and sweep away out like a younger Yosemite, a broad, blowing Bridal Veil, till it trails in a lustrous white mist over the mighty river's tranquil breast! You hear something more than the dashing waters. You hear an aeolian harp in the heavens. Now low, now high, as the winds sweep the snow-white bridal veil of broken mist to and fro, till you are ready to say, with the good old priest, “You hear away up yonder in the clouds, an orchestra of angels. Oye-agua, Or-e-gon!” And when called to address the students of the State University about Oregon, a land I have known and loved longer than most of you have lived, gave the root and definition of this beautiful word, for so many foolish and unfair things have been said about its etymology.

But, alas! What evidence have I now at hand, further than that written on the face of the waters and heard in the clouds from the stupendous steeps? I appealed to Lummis, Librarian at Los Angeles, Editor of “Out West” and our most learned man in Spanish here, but he has given me no light, save to deride the accepted idea that the name came from the Spanish word “Orejones,” big ears, and to prefer the name “Oregono,” or sage; artemesia. But these early Spanish explorers knew nothing at all of our sage, or artemisia, beyond the mountains, and these great navigators who discovered us gave their beautiful names only from what they saw and heard. Here is what the learned Mr. Lummis says:

Los Angeles, Cal., May 6, 1907.

Dear Old Joaquin:—* * * The Spanish derivation won't work for a minute on “aure el agua.” It is not aure, but oye; Gannett's definition for Oregones is also fly-blown, since that is

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not the Spanish word for big ears, which is Orejones (sounded h). There is a possibility, of course, that the region may have been named for the Oregon tribe. * * * So far as I know, its etymology has never been satisfactorily settled; but I am making inquiries at once to see if there is any more recent knowledge, and, if so, will let you know at the first possible date. The general conception is that the name comes from the Oregono, or sage; but that is also doubtful.

With all good wishes, Always, Your friend, Chas. F. Lummis.

As for the offensive name, “Big Ears,” that is simply out of nature and therefore impossible. We have the Nez Perce: Pierce nose, the Pend d'aureille, ears with pendants, or earrings, but all our Indians have ever had notably small ears, small hands, small feet.

The learned Spanish professor at the University of California is also in doubt as to the definition of our name, but will not dispute Oye-agua: hear the waters.

When John Hay was Secretary of our Spanish Legation at Madrid, and writing his “Castilian Days,” I laid the case before him once, when on a friendly visit, and proposed that we reach some result, but he protested that it would be wasted time to glean where Washington Irving had harvested, and at once quoted Bryant when I spoke of the waters dashing down out of the clouds. And John Hay, the great poet by nature, but the enforced great diplomat, said: “Let the waters dashing down out of heaven speak for themselves. I think it no stretch of imagination to submit that they are forever crying out to the clouds, like the prophets in the wilderness, ‘Oye-agua, Oye-agua! Oregon!’”

To understand the importance of Mr. Hay's words, we must know that he not only knew Spanish, but the Spanish Christian in these explorations of conquest. These men were mightily in earnest, and when they could not follow their calendar of saints, which they did as a rule, they named things from sound or color, or conspicuous features, as they found them. They rarely named anything after their revered men and women, as did the French and notably the English; they never jested with the names of places and things. They gave thousands and thousands of names, from the Straits of Magellan to the Straits of Vitus Behring, but you search in vain for one single such name as California's “Calamity Jane,” “Yuba Dam River” or “Give a Damn Gulch.”

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As Bryant, the poet, wrote; as Hay, the poet, said: “They heard, they saw the dashing of the waters down out of heaven, and they said, ‘Hear the waters! Oye-agua! Oregon.’ And Oregon it is, and Oregon it must and will remain!”

It would seem that Washington Irving, so long our minister at Madrid, should have found some record there, while mousing among the archives for material, but you search in vain for light in all his happy pages. But where did the boy poet, Bryant, come upon the pretty, poetic word, “Oregon”? And where did he find warrant to say, nearly a century ago, “Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound save its own dashing”? The poetry here is so perfect, the description, both sound and sense, so exact—and true poetry is the purest form of truth—that I know Oye-agua means Oregon, as I know Cape Blanco is Cape Blanco, because it looks it, lives it.

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SIERRA GRANDE DEL NORTE

Like fragments of an uncompleted world,
From bleak Alaska, bound in ice and spray,
To where the peaks of Darien lie curl'd
In clouds, the broken lands loom bold and gray.
The seamen nearing San Francisco Bay
Forget the compass here; with sturdy hand
They seize the wheel, look up, then bravely lay
The ship to shore by rugged peaks that stand
The stern and proud patrician fathers of the land.

They stand white stairs of heaven,—stand a line
Of lifting, endless, and eternal white.
They look upon the far and flashing brine,
Upon the boundless plains, the broken height
Of Kamiakin's battlements. The flight
Of time is underneath their untopp'd towers.
They seem to push aside the moon at night,
To jostle and to loose the stars. The flowers
Of heaven fall about their brows in shining showers.

They stand in line of lifted snowy isles
High held above the toss'd and tumbled sea,—
A sea of wood in wild unmeasured miles:
White pyramids of Faith where man is free;
White monuments of Hope that yet shall be
The mounts of matchless and immortal song ...
I look far down the hollow days; I see
The bearded prophets simple-soul'd and strong,
That strike the sounding harp and thrill the heeding throng.

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Serene and satisfied! supreme! as lone
As God, they loom like God's archangels churl'd;
They look as cold as kings upon a throne;
The mantling wings of night are crush'd and curl'd
As feathers curl. The elements are hurl'd
From off their bosoms, and are bidden go,
Like evil spirits, to an under-world.
They stretch from Cariboo to Mexico,
A line of battle-tents in everlasting snow.

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EXODUS FOR OREGON

A tale half told and hardly understood;
The talk of bearded men that chanced to meet,
That lean'd on long quaint rifles in the wood,
That look'd in fellow faces, spoke discreet
And low, as half in doubt and in defeat
Of hope; a tale it was of lands of gold
That lay below the sun. Wind-wing'd and fleet
It spread among the swift Missouri's bold
Unbridled men, and reach'd to where Ohio roll'd.

Then long chain'd lines of yoked and patient steers;
Then long white trains that pointed to the west,
Beyond the savage west; the hopes and fears
Of blunt, untutor'd men, who hardly guess'd
Their course; the brave and silent women, dress'd
In homely spun attire, the boys in bands,
The cheery babes that laugh'd at all, and bless'd
The doubting hearts, with laughing lifted hands! ...
What exodus for far untraversed lands!

The Plains! The shouting drivers at the wheel;
The crash of leather whips; the crush and roll
Of wheels; the groan of yokes and grinding steel
And iron chain, and lo! at last the whole
Vast line, that reach'd as if to touch the goal,
Began to stretch and stream away and wind
Toward the west, as if with one control;
Then hope loom'd fair, and home lay far behind;
Before, the boundless plain, and fiercest of their kind.

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At first the way lay green and fresh as seas,
And far away as any reach of wave;
The sunny streams went by in belt of trees;
And here and there the tassell'd tawny brave
Swept by on horse, look'd back, stretch'd forth and gave
A yell of warn, and then did wheel and rein
Awhile, and point away, dark-brow'd and grave,
Into the far and dim and distant plain
With signs and prophecies, and then plunged on again.

Some hills at last began to lift and break;
Some streams began to fail of wood and tide,
The somber plain began betime to take
A hue of weary brown, and wild and wide
It stretch'd its naked breast on every side.
A babe was heard at last to cry for bread
Amid the deserts; cattle low'd and died,
And dying men went by with broken tread,
And left a long black serpent line of wreck and dead.

Strange hunger'd birds, black-wing'd and still as death,
And crown'd of red with hooked beaks, blew low
And close about, till we could touch their breath—
Strange unnamed birds, that seem'd to come and go
In circles now, and now direct and slow,
Continual, yet never touch the earth;
Slim foxes slid and shuttled to and fro

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At times across the dusty weary dearth
Of life, look'd back, then sank like crickets in a hearth.

Then dust arose, a long dim line like smoke
From out of riven earth. The wheels went groaning by,
Ten thousand feet in harness and in yoke,
They tore the ways of ashen alkali,
And desert winds blew sudden, swift and dry.
The dust! it sat upon and fill'd the train!
It seem'd to fret and fill the very sky.
Lo! dust upon the beasts, the tent, the plain,
And dust, alas! on breasts that rose not up again.

They sat in desolation and in dust
By dried-up desert streams; the mother's hands
Hid all her bended face; the cattle thrust
Their tongues and faintly call'd across the lands.
The babes, that knew not what this way through sands
Could mean, did ask if it would end today ...
The panting wolves slid by, red-eyed, in bands
To pools beyond. The men look'd far away,
And, silent, saw that all a boundless desert lay.

They rose by night; they struggled on and on
As thin and still as ghosts; then here and there
Beside the dusty way before the dawn,
Men silent laid them down in their despair,
And died. But woman! Woman, frail as fair!
May man have strength to give to you your due;
You falter'd not, nor murmur'd anywhere,
You held your babes, held to your course, and you

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Bore on through burning hell your double burdens through.

Men stood at last, the decimated few,
Above a land of running streams, and they?
They push'd aside the boughs, and peering through
Beheld afar the cool, refreshing bay;
Then some did curse, and some bend hands to pray;
But some look'd back upon the desert, wide
And desolate with death, then all the day
They mourned. But one, with nothing left beside
His dog to love, crept down among the ferns and died.

194

THE HEROES OF OREGON

I stand upon the green Sierra's wall;
Against the east, beyond the yellow grass,
I see the broken hill-tops lift and fall,
Then sands that shimmer like a sea of glass ...
There lies the nation's great high road of dead.
Forgotten aye, unnumbered, and, alas!
Unchronicled in deed or death; instead,
The new aristocrat lifts high a lordly head.

My brave and unremember'd heroes, rest;
You fell in silence, silent lie and sleep.
Sleep on unsung, for this, I say, were best:
The world today has hardly time to weep;
The world today will hardly care to keep
In heart her plain and unpretending brave.
The desert winds, they whistle by and sweep
About you; brown'd and russet grasses wave
Along a thousand leagues that lie one common grave.

The proud and careless pass in palace car
Along the line you blazon'd white with bones;
Pass swift to people, and possess and mar
Your lands with monuments and letter'd stones
Unto themselves. Thank God! this waste disowns
Their touch. His everlasting hand has drawn
A shining line around you. Wealth bemoans
The waste your splendid grave employs. Sleep on,
No hand shall touch your dust this side of God and dawn.

195

I let them stride across with grasping hands
And strive for brief possession; mark and line
With lifted walls the new divided lands,
And gather growing herds of lowing kine.
I could not covet these, could not confine
My heart to one; all seem'd to me the same,
And all below my mountain home, divine
And beautiful, held in another's name,
As if the herds and lands were mine,
All mine, or his, all beautiful the same.

I have not been, shall not be, understood;
I have not wit, nor will, to well explain,
But that which men call good I find not good.
The lands the savage held, shall hold again,
The gold the savage spurn'd in proud disdain
For centuries; go, take them all; build high
Your gilded temples; strive and strike and strain
And crowd and controvert and curse and lie
In church and State, in town and citadel, and ... die.
And who shall grow the nobler from it all?
The mute and unsung savage loved as true,—
He felt, as grateful felt, God's blessings fall
About his lodge and tawny babes as you
In temples,—Moslem, Christian, infidel, or Jew.
... The sea, the great white, braided, bounding sea,
Is laughing in your face; the arching blue
Remains to God; the mountains still are free,
A refuge for the few remaining tribes and me.

Your cities! from the first the hand of God
Has been against them; sword and flood and flame,

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The earthquake's march, and pestilence, have trod
To undiscerning dust the very name
Of antique capitals; and still the same
Sad destiny besets the battle-fields
Of Mammon and the harlot's house of shame.
Lo! man with monuments and lifted shields
Against his city's fate. A flame! his city yields.

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WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON

See once these stately scenes, then roam no more;
No more remains on earth to eager eyes;
The cataract comes down, a broken roar,
The palisades defy approach, and rise
Green moss'd and dripping to the clouded skies.
The cañon thunders with its full of foam,
And calls loud-mouth'd, and all the land defies;
The mounts make fellowship and dwell at home
In snowy brotherhood beneath their purpled dome.

The rainbows swim in circles round, and rise
Against the hanging granite walls till lost
In drifting dreamy clouds and dappled skies,
A grand mosaic intertwined and toss'd
Along the mighty cañon, bound and cross'd
By storms of screaming birds of sea and land;
The salmon rush below, bright red and boss'd
In silver. Tawny, tall, on either hand
You see the savage spearman nude and silent stand.
Here sweep the wide wild waters cold and white
And blue in their far depths; divided now
By sudden swift canoe as still and light
As feathers nodding from the painted brow
That lifts and looks from out the imaged prow.
Ashore you hear the papoose shout at play;
The curl'd smoke comes from underneath the bough
Of leaning fir: the wife looks far away
And sees a swift slim bark divide the dashing spray.

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Slow drift adown the river's level'd deep,
And look above; lo, columns! woods! the snow!
The rivers rush upon the brink and leap
From out the clouds three thousand feet below,
And land afoam in tops of firs that grow
Against your river's rim: they plash, they play
In clouds, now loud and now subdued and slow,
A thousand thunder tones; they swing and sway
In idle winds, long leaning shafts of shining spray.

An Indian summer-time it was, long past,
We lay on this Columbia, far below
The stormy water falls, and God had cast
Us heaven's stillness. Dreamily and slow
We drifted as the light bark chose to go.
An Indian girl with ornaments of shell
Began to sing. ... The stars may hold such flow
Of hair, such eyes, but rarely earth. There fell
A sweet enchantment that possess'd me as a spell.

We saw an elk forsake the sable wood,
Step quick across the rim of shining sand,
Breast out unscared against the flashing flood,
Then brisket deep with lifted antlers stand,
And ears alert, look sharp on either hand,
Then whistle shrill to dam and doubting fawn
To cross, then lead with black nose from the land.
They cross'd, they climb'd the heaving hills, were gone,
A sturdy charging line with crooked sabers drawn.

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Then black swans cross'd us slowly low and still;
Then other swans, wide-wing'd and white as snow,
Flew overhead and topp'd the timber'd hill,
And call'd and sang afar, coarse-voiced and slow,
Till sounds roam'd lost in somber firs below ...
Then clouds blew in, and all the sky was cast
With tumbled and tumultuous clouds that grow
Red thunderbolts ... A flash! A thunderblast!
The clouds were rent, and lo! Mount Hood hung white and vast.

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PICTURE OF A BULL

Once, morn by morn, when snowy mountains flamed
With sudden shafts of light that shot a flood
Into the vale like fiery arrows aim'd
At night from mighty battlements, there stood
Upon a cliff high-limn'd against Mount Hood,
A matchless bull, fresh forth from sable wold,
And standing so seem'd grander 'gainst the wood
Than winged bull that stood with tips of gold
Beside the brazen gates of Nineveh of old.

A time he toss'd the dewy turf, and then
Stretch'd forth his wrinkled neck, and loud
He call'd above the far abodes of men
Until his breath became a curling cloud
And wreathed about his neck a misty shroud.
He then as sudden as he came pass'd on
With lifted head, majestic and most proud,
And lone as night in deepest wood withdrawn
He roamed in silent rage until another dawn.

What drove the hermit from the valley herd,
What cross of love, what cold neglect of kind,
Or scorn of unpretending worth had stirr'd
The stubborn blood and drove him forth to find
A fellowship in mountain cloud and wind,
I ofttime wonder'd much; and ofttime thought
The beast betray'd a royal monarch's mind,
To lift above the low herd's common lot,
And make them hear him still when they had fain forgot.
[OMITTED]
[OMITTED]

201

VAQUERO

His broad-brimm'd hat push'd back with careless air,
The proud vaquero sits his steed as free
As winds that toss his black abundant hair.
No rover ever swept a lawless sea
With such a haught and heedless air as he
Who scorns the path, and bounds with swift disdain
Away, a peon born, yet born to be
A splendid king; behold him ride, and reign.

How brave he takes his herds in branding days,
On timber'd hills that belt about the plain;
He climbs, he wheels, he shouts through winding ways
Of hiding ferns and hanging fir; the rein
Is loose, the rattling spur drives swift; the mane
Blows free; the bullocks rush in storms before;
They turn with lifted heads, they rush again,
Then sudden plunge from out the wood, and pour
A cloud upon the plain with one terrific roar.

Now sweeps the tawny man on stormy steed,
His gaudy trappings toss'd about and blown
About the limbs as lithe as any reed;
The swift long lasso twirl'd above is thrown
From flying hand; the fall, the fearful groan
Of bullock toil'd and tumbled in the dust—
The black herds onward sweep, and all disown
The fallen, struggling monarch that has thrust
His tongue in rage and roll'd his red eyes in disgust.
[OMITTED]
[OMITTED]

202

A morn in Oregon! The kindled camp
Upon the mountain brow that broke below
In steep and grassy stairway to the damp
And dewy valley, snapp'd and flamed aglow
With knots of pine. Above, the peaks of snow,
With under-belts of sable forests, rose
And flash'd in sudden sunlight. To and fro
And far below, in lines and winding rows,
The herders drove their bands, and broke the deep repose.

I heard their shouts like sounding hunter's horn,
The lowing herds made echoes far away;
When lo! the clouds came driving in with morn
And broke like breakers of a stormy bay
Against the grassy shingle fold on fold,
So like some splendid ocean, snowy white and
Toward the sea, as fleeing from the day.
The valleys fill'd with curly clouds. They lay
Below, a levell'd sea that reach'd and roll'd cold.

The peopled valley lay a hidden world,
The shouts were shouts of drowning men that died,
The broken clouds along the border curl'd,
And bent the grass with weighty freight of tide.
A savage stood in silence at my side,
Then sudden threw aback his beaded strouds
And stretch'd his hand above the scene, and cried,
As all the land lay dead in snowy shrouds:

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“Behold! the sun bathes in a silver sea of clouds.”

Here lifts the land of clouds! Fierce mountain forms,
Made white with everlasting snows, look down
Through mists of many cañons, mighty storms
That stretch from Autumn's purple, drench and drown
The yellow hem of Spring. Tall cedars frown
Dark-brow'd, through banner'd clouds that stretch and stream
Above the sea from snowy mountain crown.
The heavens roll, and all things drift or seem
To drift about and drive like some majestic dream.

In waning Autumn time, when purpled skies
Begin to haze in indolence below
The snowy peaks, you see black forms arise,
In rolling thunder banks above, and throw
Quick barricades about the gleaming snow.
The strife begins! The battling seasons stand
Broad breast to breast. A flash! Contentions grow
Terrific. Thunders crash, and lightnings brand
The battlements. The clouds possess the conquered land.

Then clouds blow by, the swans take loftier flight,
The yellow blooms burst out upon the hill,
The purple camas comes as in a night,
Tall spiked and dripping of the dews that fill

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The misty valley. Sunbeams break and spill
Their glory till the vale is full of noon.
Then roses belt the streams, no bird is still.
The stars, as large as lilies, meet the moon
And sing of summer, born thus sudden full and soon.
[OMITTED]

205

TO REST AT LAST

What wonder that I swore a prophet's oath
Of after days. ... I push'd the boughs apart,
I stood, look'd forth, and then look'd back, all loath
To leave my shadow'd wood. I gather'd heart
From very fearfulness; with sudden start
I plunged in the arena; stood a wild
Uncertain thing, all artless, in all art. ...
The brave approved, the fair lean'd fair and smiled,—
True lions touch with velvet-touch a timid child.

But now enough of men. Enough, brief day
Of tinsel'd life. The court, the castle gate
That open'd wide along the pleasant way,
The gracious converse of the kingly great
Had made another glad and well elate
With all. A world of thanks; but I am grown
Aweary. ... I am not of this estate;
The poor, the plain brave border-men alone
Were my first love, and these I will not now disown.

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I know a grassy slope above the sea,
The utmost limit of the westmost land.
In savage, gnarl'd, and antique majesty
The great trees belt about the place, and stand
In guard, with mailéd limb and lifted hand,
Against the cold approaching civic pride.
The foamy brooklets seaward leap; the bland
Still air is fresh with touch of wood and tide,
And peace, eternal peace, possesses, wild and wide.

Here I return, here I abide and rest;
Some flocks and herds shall feed along the stream;
Some corn and climbing vines shall make us blest
With bread and luscious fruit. ... The sunny dream
Of wampum men in moccasins that seem
To come and go in silence, girt in shell,
Before a sun-clad cabin-door, I deem
The harbinger of peace. Hope weaves her spell
Again about the wearied heart, and all is well.

Here I shall sit in sunlit life's decline
Beneath my vine and somber verdant tree.
Some tawny maids in other tongues than mine
Shall minister. Some memories shall be
Before me. I shall sit and I shall see,
That last vast day that dawn shall reinspire,
The sun fall down upon the farther sea,
Fall wearied down to rest, and so retire,
A splendid sinking isle of far-off fading fire.
[OMITTED]

These final verses are peculiarly descriptive of the home I have built here on the Hights for my declining years; although written and published in London—Songs of the Sunlands—in 1873. True, my strong love of a home of my own, woods, and “a careless ordered garden” led me to settle down in other lands more than once and in places widely different from this which I had fancied and pictured long, long ago, but I was never well or at all content in any place till now. Even the people about me, unworldly, dreamful, silent and of other lands and tongues are, like my home, the same I had pictured more than a quarter of a century ago, and I joy in this, that I have been thus true to myself. The only departure from my dear first plan is in finding my ideal home by the glorious gate of San Francisco instead of the somber fir-set sea bank far to the north, “Where Rolls the Oregon.”

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DAWN AT SAN DIEGO

My city sits amid her palms;
The perfume of her twilight breath
Is something as the sacred balms
That bound sweet Jesus after death,
Such soft, warm twilight sense as lies
Against the gates of Paradise.

Such prayerful palms, wide palms upreached!
This sea mist is as incense smoke,
Yon mission walls a sermon preached—
White lily with a heart of oak.
And O, this twilight! O the grace
Of twilight on yon lifted face!

I love you, twilight,—love with love
So loyal, loving, fond that I
When folding these worn hands to die,
Shall pray God lead me not above,
But leave me, twilight, sad and true,
To walk this lonesome world with you.

Yea, God knows I have walked with night;
I have not seen, I have not known
Such light as beats upon His throne.
I know I could not bear such light;
Therefore, I beg, sad sister true,
To share your shadow-world with you.

I love you, love you, maid of night,
Your perfumed breath, your dreamful eyes,
Your holy silences, your sighs
Of mateless longing; your delight

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When might says, Hang on yon moon's horn
Your russet gown, and rest till morn.

The sun is dying; space and room,
Serenity, vast sense of rest,
Lie bosomed in the orange west
Of orient waters. Hear the boom
Of long, strong billows; wave on wave,
Like funeral guns above a grave.
Now night folds all; no sign or word;
But still that rocking of the deep—
Sweet mother, rock the world to sleep:
Still rock and rock; as I have heard
Sweet mother gently rock and rock
The while she folds the little frock.
[OMITTED]

Broad, mesa, brown, bare mountains, brown,
Bowed sky of brown, that erst was blue;
Dark, earth-brown curtains coming down—
Earth-brown, that all hues melt into;
Brown twilight, born of light and shade;
Of night that came, of light that passed. ...
How like some lorn, majestic maid
That wares not whither way at last!

Now perfumed Night, sad-faced and far,
Walks up the world in somber brown.
Now suddenly a loosened star
Lets all her golden hair fall down—
And Night is dead Day's coffin-lid,
With stars of gold shot through his pall. ...
I hear the chorus, katydid;
A katydid, and that is all.

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Some star-tipt candles foot and head;
Some perfumes of the perfumed sea;
And now above the coffined dead
Dusk draws great curtains lovingly;
While far o'er all, so dreamful far,
God's Southern Cross by faith is seen
Tipt by one single blazing star,
With spaces infinite between.
[OMITTED]

Come, love His twilight, the perfume
Of God's great trailing garment's hem;
The sense of rest, the sense of room,
The garnered goodness of the day,
The twelve plucked hours of His tree,
When all the world has gone its way
And left perfection quite to me
And Him who, loving, fashioned them.

I know not why that wealth and pride
Win not my heart or woo my tale.
I only know I know them not;
I only know to cast my lot
Where love walks noiselessly with night
And patient nature; my delight
The wild rose of the mountain side,
The lowly lily of the vale;

To live not asking, just to live;
To live not begging, just to be;
To breathe God's presence in the dusk
That drives out loud, assertive light—
To never ask, but ever give;
To love my noiseless mother, Night;

220

Her vast hair moist with smell of musk,
Her breath sweet with eternity.
[OMITTED]

I

A hermit's path, a mountain's perch,
A sandaled monk, a dying man—
A far-off, low, adobe church,
Below the hermit's orange-trees
That cap the clouds above the seas,
So far, its spire seems but a span.
[OMITTED]

A low-voiced dove! The dying Don
Put back the cross and sat dark-browed
And sullen, as a dove flew out
The bough, and circling round about,
Was bathed and gathered in a cloud,
That, like some ship, sailed on and on.

But let the gray monk tell the tale;
And tell it just as told to me.
This Don was chiefest of the vale
That banks by San Diego's sea,
And who so just, so generous,
As he who now lay dying thus?

But wrong, such shameless Saxon wrong,
Had crushed his heart, had made him hate
The sight, the very sound of man.
He loved the lonely wood-dove's song;
He loved it as his living mate.
And lo! the good monk laid a ban

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And penance of continual prayer—
But list, the living, dying there!

For now the end was, and he lay
As day lies banked against the night—
As lies some bark at close of day
To wait the dew-born breath of night;
To wait the ebb of tide, to wait
The swift plunge through the Golden Gate:

The plunge from bay to boundless sea—
From life through narrow straits of night,
From time to bright eternity—
To everlasting walks of light.
Some like as when you sudden blow
Your candle out and turn you so
To sleep unto the open day:
And thus the priest did pleading say:

“You fled my flock, and sought this steep
And stony, star-lit, lonely height,
Where weird and unnamed creatures keep
To hold strange thought with things of night
Long, long ago. But now at last
Your life sinks surely to the past.
Lay hold, lay hold, the cross I bring,
Where all God's goodly creatures cling.

“Yea! You are good. Dark-browed and low
Beneath your shaggy brows you look
On me, as you would read a book:
And darker still your dark brows grow
As I lift up the cross to pray,
And plead with you to walk its way.

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“Yea, you are good! There is not one,
From Tia Juana to the reach
And bound of gray Pacific Beach,
From Coronado's palm-set isle
And palm-hung pathways, mile on mile,
But speaks you, Señor, good and true.
But oh, my silent, dying son!
The cross alone can speak for you
When all is said and all is done.

“Come! Turn your dim, dark eyes to me,
Have faith and help me plant this cross
Beyond where blackest billows toss,
As you would plant some pleasant tree:
Some fruitful orange-tree, and know
That it shall surely grow and grow,
As your own orange-trees have grown,
And be, as they, your very own.

“You smile at last, and pleasantly:
You love your laden orange-trees
Set high above your silver seas
With your own honest hand; each tree
A date, a day, a part, indeed,
Of your own life, and walk, and creed.

”You love your steeps, your star-set blue:
You watch yon billows flash, and toss,
And leap, and curve, in merry rout,
You love to hear them laugh and shout—
Men say you hear them talk to you;
Men say you sit and look and look,
As one who reads some holy book—
My son, come, look upon the cross?

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“Come, see me plant amid your trees
My cross, that you may see and know
'T will surely grow, and grow, and grow,
As grows some trusted little seed;
As grows some secret, small good deed;
The while you gaze upon your seas. ...
Sweet Christ, now let it grow, and bear
Fair fruit, as your own fruit is fair.

“Aye! ever from the first I knew,
And marked its flavor, freshness, hue,
The gold of sunset and the gold
Of morn, in each rich orange rolled.

“I mind me now, 't was long since, friend,
When first I climbed your path alone,
A savage path of brush and stone,
And rattling serpents without end.

“Yea, years ago, when blood and life
Ran swift, and your sweet, faithful wife—
What! tears at last; hot, piteous tears
That through your bony fingers creep
The while you bend your face, and weep
As if your heart of hearts would break—
As if these tears were your heart's blood,
A pent-up, sudden, bursting flood—
Look on the cross, for Jesus' sake.”

II

'T was night, and still it seemed not night.
Yet, far down in the cañon deep,
Where night had housed all day, to keep

224

Companion with the wolf, you might
Have hewn a statue out of night.

The shrill coyote loosed his tongue
Deep in the dark arroyo's bed;
And bat and owl above his head
From out their gloomy caverns swung:
A swoop of wings, a cat-like call,
A crackle sharp of chaparral!

Then sudden, fitful winds sprang out,
And swept the mesa like a broom;
Wild, saucy winds, that sang of room!
That leapt the cañon with a shout
From dusty throats, audaciously
And headlong tore into the sea,
As tore the swine with lifted snout.

Some birds came, went, then came again
From out the hermit's wood-hung hill;
Came swift, and arrow-like, and still,
As you have seen birds, when the rain—
The great, big, high-born rain, leapt white
And sudden from a cloud like night.

And then a dove, dear, nun-like dove,
With eyes all tenderness, with eyes
So loving, longing; full of love,
That when she reached her slender throat
And sang one low, soft, sweetest note,
Just one, so faint, so far, so near,
You could have wept with joy to hear.

The old man, as if he had slept,
Raised quick his head, then bowed and wept

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For joy, to hear once more her voice.
With childish joy he did rejoice;
As one will joy to surely learn
His dear, dead love is living still;
As one will joy to know, in turn,
He, too, is loved with love to kill.

He put a hand forth, let it fall
And feebly close; and that was all.
And then he turned his tearful eyes
To meet the priest's, and spake this wise:—

Now mind, I say, not one more word
That livelong night of nights was heard
By monk or man, from dusk till dawn;
And yet that man spake on and on.

Why, know you not, soul speaks to soul?
I say the use of words shall pass.
Words are but fragments of the glass;
But silence is the perfect whole.

And thus the old man, bowed and wan,
And broken in his body, spake—
Spake youthful, ardent, on and on,
As dear love speaks for dear love's sake.

“You spake of her, my wife; behold!
Behold my faithful, constant love!
Nay, nay, you shall not doubt my dove,
Perched there above your cross of gold!—

“Yea, you have books, I know, to tell
Of far, fair heaven; but no hell
To her had been so terrible

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As all sweet heaven, with its gold
And jasper gates, and great white throne,
Had she been banished hence alone.

“I say, not God himself could keep,
Beyond the stars, beneath the deep,
Or 'mid the stars, or 'mid the sea,
Her soul from my soul one brief day,
But she would find some pretty way
To come and still companion me.

“And say, where bide your souls, good priest
Lies heaven west, lies heaven east?
Let us be frank, let us be fair;
Where is your heaven, good priest, where?

“Is there not room, is there not place
In all those boundless realms of space?
Is there not room in this sweet air,
Room 'mid my trees, room anywhere,
For souls that love us thus so well,
And love so well this beauteous world,
But that they must be headlong hurled
Down, down, to undiscovered hell?

“Good priest, we questioned not one word
Of all the holy things we heard
Down in your pleasant town of palms
Long, long ago—sweet chants, sweet psalms,
Sweet incense, and the solemn rite
Above the dear, believing dead.
Nor do I question here tonight
One gentle word you may have said.
I would not doubt, for one brief hour,
Your word, your creed, your priestly power,

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Your purity, unselfish zeal,
But there be fears I scorn to feel!

Let those who will, seek realms above,
Remote from all that heart can love,
In their ignoble dread of hell.
Give all, good priest, in charity;
Give heaven to all, if this may be,
And count it well, and very well.

“But I—I could not leave this spot
Where she is waiting by my side.
Forgive me, priest; it is not pride;
There is no God where she is not!

“You did not know her well. Her creed
Was yours; my faith it was the same.
My faith was fair, my lands were broad.
Far down where yonder palm-trees rise
We two together worshiped God
From childhood. And we grew in deed,
Devout in heart as well as name,
And loved our palm-set paradise.

“We loved, we loved all things on earth,
However mean or miserable.
We knew no thing had not worth,
And learned to know no need of hell.

“Indeed, good priest, so much, indeed,
We found to do, we saw to love,
We did not always look above
As is commanded in your creed,
But kept in heart one chiefest care,
To make this fair world still more fair.

228

“'T was then that meek, pale Saxon came
With soulless gray and greedy eyes,
A snake's eyes, cunning, cold and wise,
And I—I could not fight, or fly
His crafty wiles at all; and I—
Enough, enough! I signed my name.

“It was not loss of pleasure, place,
Broad lands, or the serene delight
Of doing good, that made long night
O'er all the sunlight of her face.
But there be little things that feed
A woman's sweetness, day by day,
That strong men miss not, do not need,
But, shorn of all can go their way
To battle, and but stronger grow,
As grow great waves that gather so.

“She missed the music, missed the song,
The pleasant speech of courteous men,
Who came and went, a comely throng,
Before her open window, when
The sea sang with us, and we two
Had heartfelt homage, warm and true.

“She missed the restfulness, the rest
Of dulcet silence, the delight
Of singing silence, when the town
Put on its twilight robes of brown;
When twilight wrapped herself in night
And couched against the curtained west.

“But not one murmur, not one word
From her sweet baby lips was heard.
She only knew I could not bear

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To see sweet San Diego town,
Her palm-set lanes, her pleasant square,
Her people passing up and down,
Without black hate, and deadly hate
For him who housed within our gate,
And so, she gently led my feet
Aside to this high, wild retreat.

“How pale she grew, how piteous pale
The while I wrought, and ceaseless wrought
To keep my soul from bitter thought,
And build me here above the vale.
Ah me! my selfish, Spanish pride!
Enough of pride, enough of hate,
Enough of her sad, piteous fate:
She died: right here she sank and died.

“She died, and with her latest breath
Did promise to return to me,
As turns a dove unto her tree
To find her mate at night and rest;
Died, clinging close against my breast;
Died, saying she would surely rise
So soon as God had loosed her eyes
From the strange wonderment of death.

“How beautiful is death! and how
Surpassing good, and true, and fair!
How just is death, how gently just,
To lay his sword against the thread
Of life when life is surely dead
And loose the sweet soul from the dust!
I laid her in my lorn despair
Beneath that dove, that orange-bough—
How strange your cross should stand just there!

230

“And then I waited hours, days:
Those bitter days, they were as years.
My soul groped through the darkest ways;
I scarce could see God's face for tears.
[OMITTED]

“I clutched my knife, and I crept down,
A wolf, to San Diego town.
On, on, amid my palms once more,
Keen knife in hand, I crept that night.
I passed the gate, then fled in fright;
Black crape hung fluttered from the door!

“I climbed back here, with heart of stone:
I heard next morn one sweetest tone;
Looked up, and lo! there on that bough
She perched, as she sits perching now.
[OMITTED]

“I heard the bells peal from my height,
Peal pompously, peal piously;
Saw sable hearse, in plumes of night
With not one thought of hate in me.

“I watched the long train winding by,
A mournful, melancholy lie—
A sable, solemn, mourning mile—
And only pitied him the while.
For she, she sang that whole day through:
Sad-voiced, as if she pitied, too.

“They said, ‘His work is done, and well.’
They laid his body in a tomb
Of massive splendor. It lies there
In all its stolen pomp and gloom—

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But list! his soul—his soul is where?
In hell! In hell! But where is hell?

“Hear me but this. Year after year
She trained my eye, she trained my ear;
No book to blind my eyes, or ought
To prate of hell, when hell is not.
I came to know at last, and well,
Such things as never book can tell.

“And where was that poor, dismal soul
Ye priests had sent to paradise?
I heard the long years roll and roll,
As rolls the sea. My once dimmed eyes
Grew keen as long, sharp shafts of light.
With eager eyes and reaching face
I searched the stars night after night:
That dismal soul was not in space!

“Meanwhile my green trees grew and grew;
And sad or glad, this much I knew,
It were no sin to make more fair
One spot on earth, to toil and share
With man, or beast, or bird; while she
Still sang her soft, sweet melody.

“One day, a perfumed day in white—
Such restful, fresh, and friendlike day,—
Fair Mexico a mirage lay
Far-lifted in a sea of light—
Soft, purple light, so far away.
I turned yon pleasant pathway down,
And sauntered leisurely tow'rd town.

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“I heard my dear love call and coo,
And knew that she was happy, too,
In her sad, sweet, and patient pain
Of waiting till I came again.

“Aye, I was glad, quite glad at last;
Not glad as I had been when she
Walked with me by yon palm-set sea,
But sadly and serenely glad:
As though 't were twilight like, as though
You knew, and yet you did not know,
That sadness, most supremely sad
Should lay upon you like a pall,
And would not, could not pass away
Till you should pass; till perfect day
Dawns sudden on you, and the call
Of birds awakens you to morn—
A babe new-born; a soul new-born.

“Good priest, what are the birds for? Priest
Build ye your heaven west or east?
Above, below, or anywhere?
I only ask, I only say
She sits there, waiting for the day,
The fair, full day to guide me there.
[OMITTED]

“What, he? That creature? Ah, quite true
I wander much, I weary you:
I beg your pardon, gentle priest.
Returning up the stone-strewn steep,
Down in yon jungle, dank and deep,
Where toads and venomed reptiles creep,
There, there, I saw that hideous beast!

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“Aye, there! coiled there beside my road,
Close coiled behind a monstrous toad,
A huge flat-bellied reptile hid!
His tongue leapt red as flame; his eyes,
His eyes were burning hells of lies—
His head was like a coffin's lid:

“Saint George! Saint George! I gasped for breath.
The beast, tight coiled, swift, sudden sprang
High in the air, and, rattling, sang
His hateful, hissing song of death!

“My eyes met his. He shrank, he fell,
Fell sullenly and slow. The swell
Of braided, brassy neck forgot
Its poise, and every venomed spot
Lost luster, and the coffin head
Cowed level with the toad, and lay
Low, quivering with hate and dread:
The while I kept my upward way.

“What! Should have killed him? Nay, good priest.
I know not what or where 's your hell.
But be it west or be it east,
His hell is there! and that is well!

“Nay, do not, do not question me;
I could not tell you why I know;
I only know that this is so,
As sure as God is equity.

“Good priest, forgive me, and good-by,
The stars slow gather to their fold;

234

I see God's garment hem of gold
Against the far, faint morning sky.

“Good, holy priest, your God is where?
You come to me with book and creed;
I cannot read your book; I read
Yon boundless, open book of air.
What time, or way, or place I look,
I see God in His garden walk;
I hear Him through the thunders talk,
As once He talked, with burning tongue,
To Moses, when the world was young;
And, priest, what more is in your book?

“Behold! the Holy Grail is found,
Found in each poppy's cup of gold;
And God walks with us as of old.
Behold! the burning bush still burns
For man, whichever way he turns;
And all God's earth is holy ground.

“And—and—good priest, bend low your head
The sands are crumbling where I tread,
Beside the shoreless, soundless sea.
Good priest, you came to pray, you said;
And now, what would you have of me?”

The good priest gently raised his head,
Then bowed it low and softly said:
“Your blessing, son, despite the ban.”
He fell before the dying man;
And when he raised his face from prayer,
Sweet Dawn, and two sweet doves were there.