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

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:

148

“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

149

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

150

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.