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

What is there in a dear dove's eyes,
Or voice of mated melodies,
That tells us ever of blue skies
And cease of deluge on Love's seas?
The dove looked down on Jordan's tide
Well pleased with Christ the Crucified;
The dove was hewed in Karnak stone
Before fair Jordan's banks were known.
The dove has such a patient look,
I read rest in her pretty eyes
As in the Holy Book.

I think if I should love some day—
And may I die when dear Love dies—
I'd sail brave San Francisco's Bay
And seek to see some sea-dove's eyes:
To see her in her air-built nest,
Her wide, warm, restful wings at rest;
To see her rounded neck reach out,
Her eyes lean lovingly about;
And seeing this as love can see,
I then should know, and surely know,
That love sailed on with me.

II

See once this boundless bay and live,
See once this beauteous bay and love,
See once this warm, bright bay and give
God thanks for olive branch and dove.
Then plunge headlong yon sapphire sea

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And sail and sail the world with me. . . .
Some isles, drowned in the drowning sun,
Ten thousand sea-doves voiced as one;
Lo! love's wings furled and wings unfurled;
Who sees not this warm, half-world sea,
Sees not, knows not the world.

How knocks he at the Golden Gate,
This lord of waters, strong and bold,
And fearful-voiced and fierce as fate,
And hoar and old, as Time is old;
Yet young as when God's finger lay
Against Night's forehead that first day,
And drove vast Darkness forth, and rent
The waters from the firmament.
Hear how he knocks and raves and loves!
He woos us through the Golden Gate
With all his soft sea-doves.

Now on and on, up, down, and on,
The sea is oily grooves; the air
Is as your bride's sweet breath at dawn
When all your ardent youth is there.
And oh, the rest! and oh, the room!
And oh, the sensuous sea perfume!
Yon new moon peering as we passed
Has scarce escaped our topmost mast.
A porpoise, wheeling restlessly,
Quick draws a bright, black, dripping blade,
Then sheathes it in the sea.

Vast, half-world, wondrous sea of ours!
Dread, unknown deep of all sea deeps!
What fragrance from thy strange sea-flowers

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Deep-gardened where God's silence keeps!
Thy song is silence, and thy face
Is God's face in His holy place.
Thy billows swing sweet censer foam,
Where stars hang His cathedral's dome.
Such blue above, below such blue!
These burly winds so tall, they can
Scarce walk between the two.

Such room of sea! Such room of sky!
Such room to draw a soul-full breath!
Such room to live! Such room to die!
Such room to roam in after death!
White room, with sapphire room set 'round,
And still beyond His room profound;
Such room-bound boundlessness o'erhead
As never has been writ or said
Or seen, save by the favored few,
Where kings of thought play chess with stars
Across their board of blue.

III

The proud ship wrapped her in the red
That hung from heaven, then the gray,
The soft dove-gray that shrouds the dead
And prostrate form of perfumed day:
Some noisy, pigmy creatures kept
The deck a spell, then, leaning, crept
Apart in silence and distrust,
Then down below in deep disgust.
An albatross,—a shadow cross
Hung at the head of buried day,—
At foot the albatross.

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Then came a warm soft, sultry breath—
A weary wind that wanted rest;
A breath as from some house of death
With flowers heaped; as from the breast
Of such sweet princess as had slept
Some thousand years embalmed, and kept,
In fearful Karnak's tomb-hewn hill,
Her perfume and spiced sweetness still,—
Such breath as bees droop down to meet,
And creep along lest it may melt
Their honey-laden feet.

The captain's trumpet smote the air!
Swift men, like spiders up a thread,
Swept suddenly. Then masts were bare
As when tall poplars' leaves are shed,
And ropes were clamped and stays were clewed.
'T was as when wrestlers, iron-thewed,
Gird tight their loins, take full breath,
And set firm face, as fronting death.
Three small brown birds, or gray, so small,
So ghostly still and swift they passed,
They scarce seemed birds at all.

Then quick, keen saber-cuts, like ice;
Then sudden hail, like battle-shot,
Then two last men crept down like mice,
And man, poor, pigmy man, was not.
The great ship shivered, as with cold—
An instant staggered back, then bold
As Theodosia, to her waist
In waters, stood erect and faced
Black thunder; and she kept her way

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And laughed red lightning from her face
As on some gala day.

The black sea-horses rode in row;
Their white manes tossing to the night
But made the blackness blacker grow
From flashing, phosphorescent light.
And how like hurdle steeds they leapt!
The low moon burst; the black troop swept
Right through her hollow, on and on.
A wave-wet simitar was drawn,
Flashed twice, flashed thrice triumphantly,
But still the steeds dashed on, dashed on,
And drowned her in the sea.

What headlong winds that lost their way
At sea, and wailed out for the shore!
How shook the orient doors of day
With all this mad, tumultuous roar!
Black clouds, shot through with stars of red;
Strange stars, storm-born and fire-fed;
Lost stars that came, and went, and came;
Such stars as never yet had name.
The far sea-lions on their isles
Upheaved their huge heads terrified,
And moaned a thousand miles.

What fearful battle-field! What space
For light and darkness, flame and flood!
Lo! Light and Darkness, face to face,
In battle harness battling stood!
And how the surged sea burst upon

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The granite gates of Oregon!
It tore, it tossed the seething spume,
And wailed for room! and room! and room!
It shook the crag-built eaglets' nest
Until they screamed from out their clouds,
Then rocked them back to rest.

How fiercely reckless raged the war!
Then suddenly no ghost of light,
Or even glint of storm-born star.
Just night, and black, torn bits of night;
Just night, and midnight's middle noon,
With all mad elements in tune;
Just night, and that continuous roar
Of wind, wind, night, and nothing more.
Then all the hollows of the main
Sank down so deep, it almost seemed
The seas were hewn in twain.

How deep the hollows of this deep!
How high, how trembling high the crest!
Ten thousand miles of surge and sweep
And length and breadth of billow's breast!
Up! up, as if against the skies!
Down! down, as if no more to rise!
The creaking wallow in the trough,
As if the world was breaking off.
The pigmies in their trough down there!
Deep in their trough they tried to pray—
To hide from God in prayer.

145

Then boomed Alaska's great, first gun
In battling ice and rattling hail;
Then Indus came, four winds in one!
Then came Japan in counter mail
Of mad cross winds; and Waterloo
Was but as some babe's tale unto.
The typhoon spun his toy in play
And whistled as a glad boy may
To see his top spin at his feet:
The captain on his bridge in ice,
His sailors mailed in sleet.

What unchained, unnamed, noises, space!
What shoreless, boundless, rounded reach
Of room was here! Fit field, fit place
For three fierce emperors, where each
Came armed with elements that make
Or unmake seas and lands, that shake
The heavens' roof, that freeze or burn
The seas as they may please to turn.
And such black silence! Not a sound
Save whistling of that mad, glad boy
To see his top spin round.

Then swift, like some sulked Ajax, burst
Thewed Thunder from his battle-tent;
As if in pent-up, vengeful thirst
For blood, the elements of Earth were rent,
And sheeted crimson lay a wedge
Of blood below black Thunder's edge.
A pause. The typhoon turned, upwheeled,
And wrestled Death till heaven reeled.
Then Lightning reached a fiery rod,
And on Death's fearful forehead wrote
The autograph of God.

There is a small granite island, or great rock standing on pillars, eight miles off Cape Blanco. Fishermen may row their boats between these columns and they call the rock The Gates.

146

IV

God's name and face—what need of more?
Morn came: calm came; and holy light,
And warm, sweet weather, leaning o'er,
Laid perfumes on the tomb of night.
The three wee birds came dimly back
And housed about the mast in black,
And all the tranquil sense of morn
Seemed as Dakota's fields of corn,
Save that some great soul-breaking sigh
Now sank the proud ship out of sight
Now sent her to the sky.

V

One strong, strange man had kept the deck—
One silent, seeing man, who knew
The pulse of Nature, and could reck
Her deepest heart-beats through and through.
He knew the night, he loved the night.
When elements went forth to fight
His soul went with them without fear
To hear God's voice, so few will hear.
The swine had plunged them in the sea,
The swine down there, but up on deck
The captain, God and he.

VI

And oh, such sea-shell tints of light
High o'er those wide sea-doors of dawn!
Sail, sail the world for that one sight,
Then satisfied, let time begone.

147

The ship rose up to meet that light,
Bright candles, tipped like tasseled corn,
The holy virgin, maiden morn,
Arrayed in woven gold and white.
Put by the harp—hush minstrelsy;
Nor bard or bird has yet been heard
To sing this scene, this sea.

VII

Such light! such liquid, molten light!
Such mantling, healthful, heartful morn!
Such morning born of such mad night!
Such night as never had been born!
The man caught in his breath, his face
Was lifted up to light and space;
His hand dashed o'er his brow, as when
Deep thoughts submerge the souls of men;
And then he bowed, bowed mute, appalled
At memory of scenes, such scenes
As this swift morn recalled.

He sought the ship's prow, as men seek
The utmost limit for their feet,
To lean, look forth, to list nor speak,
Nor turn aside, nor yet retreat
One inch from this far vantage-ground,
Till he had pierced the dread profound
And proved it false. And yet he knew
Deep in his earth that all was true;
So like it was to that first dawn
When God had said, “Let there be light,”
And thus he spake right on:

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“My soul was born ere light was born,
When blackness was, as this black night.
And then that morn, as this sweet morn!
That sudden light, as this swift light!
I had forgotten. Now, I know
The travail of the world, the low,
Dull creatures in the sea of slime
That time committed unto time,
As great men plant oaks patiently,
Then turn in silence unto dust
And wait the coming tree.

“That long, lorn blackness, seams of flame,
Volcanoes bursting from the slime,
Huge, shapeless monsters without name
Slow shaping in the loom of time;
Slow weaving as a weaver weaves;
So like as when some good man leaves
His acorns to the centuries
And waits the stout ancestral trees.
But ah, so piteous, memory
Reels back, as sickened, from that scene—
It breaks the heart of me!

“Volcanoes crying out for light!
The very slime found tongues of fire!
Huge monsters climbing in their might
O'er submerged monsters in the mire
That heaved their slimy mouths, and cried

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And cried for light, and crying, died.
How all that wailing through the air
But seems as some unbroken prayer.
One ceaseless prayer that long lorn night
The world lay in the loom of time
And waited so for light!

“And I, amid those monsters there,
A grade above, or still below?
Nay, Time has never time to care;
And I can scarcely dare to know.
I but remember that one prayer;
Ten thousand wide mouths in the air,
Ten thousand monsters in their might,
All eyeless, looking up for light.
We prayed, we prayed as never man,
By sea or land, by deed or word,
Has prayed since light began.

“Great sea-cows laid their fins upon
Low-floating isles, as good priests lay
Two holy hands, at early dawn,
Upon the altar cloth to pray.
Aye, ever so, with lifted head,
Poor, slime-born creatures and slime-bred,
We prayed. Our sealed-up eyes of night
All lifting, lifting up for light.
And I have paused to wonder, when
This world will pray as we then prayed,
What God may not give men!

“Hist! Once, I saw,—What was I then?
Ah, dim and devious the light
Comes back, but I was not of men.
And it is only such black night

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As this, that was of war and strife
Of elements, can wake that life,
That life in death, that black and cold
And blind and loveless life of old.
But hear! I saw—heed this and learn
How old, how holy old is Love,
However Time may turn:

“I saw, I saw, or somehow felt,
A sea-cow mother nurse her young.
I saw, and with thanksgiving knelt,
To see her head, low, loving, hung
Above her nursling. Then the light,
The lovelight from those eyes of night!
I say to you 't was lovelight then
That first lit up the eyes of men.
I say to you lovelight was born
Ere God laid hand to clay of man,
Or ever that first morn.

“What though a monster slew her so,
The while she bowed and nursed her young?
She leaned her head to take the blow,
And dying, still the closer clung—
And dying gave her life to save
The helpless life she erstwhile gave,
And so sank back below the slime,
A torn shred in the loom of time.
The one thing more I needs must say,
That monster slew her and her young;
But Love he could not slay.”

I saw this when with Capt. Eads at the mouth of our great river. The débris of more than a dozen States pouring into the warm waters of the Mexican seas creates fermentation which finds expression in volcanoes that spring flaming up out of the sea almost nightly. I know nothing so terrible as certain, or rather, uncertain nights in the Mississippi delta.