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

And they sailed on; the sea-doves sailed,
And Love sailed with them. And there lay
Such peace as never had prevailed
On earth since dear Love's natal day.
Great black-backed whales blew bows in clouds,
Wee see-birds flitted through the shrouds.
A wide-winged, amber albatross
Blew by, and bore his shadow cross,
And seemed to hang it on the mast,
The while he followed far behind,
The great ship flew so fast.

She questioned her if Phaon knew,
If he could dream, or halfway guess
How she had tracked the ages through
And trained her soul to gentleness
Through many lives, through every part
To make her worthy his great heart.
Would Phaon turn and fly her still,
With that fierce, proud, imperious will,
And scorn her still, and still despise?
She shuddered, turned aside her face,
And lo, her sea-dove's eyes!

II

Then days of rest and restful nights;
And love kept tryst as true love will,
The prow their trysting-place. Delights
Of silence, simply sitting still,—

165

Of asking nothing, saying naught;
For all that they had ever sought
Sailed with them; words or deeds had been
Impertinence, a selfish sin.
And oh, to know how sweet a thing
Is silence on those restful seas
When Love's dove folds her wing!

The great sea slept. In vast repose
His pillowed head half-hidden lay,
Half-drowned in dread Alaskan snows
That stretch to where no man can say.
His huge arms tossed to left, to right,
Where black woods, banked like bits of night,
As sleeping giants toss their arms
At night about their fearful forms.
A slim canoe, a night-bird's call,
Some gray sea-doves, just these and Love,
And Love indeed was all!

III

Far, far away such cradled Isles
As Jason dreamed and Argos sought
Surge up from endless watery miles!
And thou, the pale high priest of thought,
The everlasting thronèd king
Of fair Samoa! Shall I bring
Sweet sandal-wood? Or shall I lay
Rich wreaths of California's bay
From sobbing maidens? Stevenson,
Sleep well. Thy work is done; well done!
So bravely, bravely done!

166

And Molokia's lord of love
And tenderness, and piteous tears
For stricken man! Go forth, O dove!
With olive branch, and still the fears
Of those he meekly died to save.
They shall not perish. From that grave
Shall grow such healing! such as He
Gave stricken men by Galilee.
Great ocean cradle, cradle, keep
These two, the chosen of thy heart,
Rocked in sweet, baby sleep.

IV

Fair land of flowers, land of flame,
Of sun-born seas, of sea-born clime,
Of clouds low shepherded and tame
As white pet sheep at shearing time,
Of great, white, generous high-born rain,
Of rainbows builded not in vain—
Of rainbows builded for the feet
Of love to pass dry-shod and fleet
From isle to isle, when smell of musk
'Mid twilight is, and one lone star
Sits in the brow of dusk.

Oh, dying, sad-voiced, sea-born maid!
And plundered, dying, still sing on.
Thy breast against the thorn is laid—
Sing on, sing on, sweet dying swan.
How pitiful! And so despoiled
By those you fed, for whom you toiled!
Aloha! Hail you, and farewell,
Far echo of some lost sea-shell!
Some song that lost its way at sea,

167

Some sea-lost notes of nature, lost,
That crying, came to me.

Dusk maid, adieu! One sea-shell less!
Sad sea-shell silenced and forgot.
O Rachel in the wilderness,
Wail on! Your children they are not.
And they who took them, they who laid
Hard hand, shall they not feel afraid?
Shall they who in the name of God
Robbed and enslaved, escape His rod?
Give me some after-world afar
From these hard men, for well I know
Hell must be where they are.

V

Lo! suddenly the lone ship burst
Upon an uncompleted world,
A world so dazzling white, man durst
Not face the flashing search-light hurled
From heaven's snow-built battlements
And high-heaved camp of cloud-wreathed tents.
And boom! boom! boom! from sea or shore
Came one long, deep, continuous roar,
As if God wrought; as if the days,
The first six pregnant mother morns,
Had not quite gone their way.

What word is fitting but the Word
Here in this vast world-fashioning?
What tongue here name the nameless Lord?
What hand lay hand on anything?
Come, let us coin new words of might
And massiveness to name this light,

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This largeness, largeness everywhere!
White rivers hanging in the air,
Ice-tied through all eternity!
Nay, peace! It were profane to say:
We dare but hear and see.

Be silent! Hear the strokes resound!
'T is God's hand rounding down the earth
Take off thy shoes, 't is holy ground,—
Behold! a continent has birth!
The skies bow down, Madonna's blue
Enfolds the sea in sapphire. You
May lift, a little spell, your eyes
And feast them on the ice-propped skies,
And feast but for a little space:
Then let thy face fall grateful down
And let thy soul say grace.

VI

At anchor so, and all night through,
The two before God's temple kept.
He spake: “I know yon peak; I knew
A deep ice-cavern there. I slept
With hairy men, or monsters slew,
Or led down misty seas my crew
Of cruel savages and slaves,
And slew who dared the distant waves,
And once a strange, strong ship—and she,
I bore her to yon cave of ice,—
And Love companioned me.

169

VII

“Two scenes of all scenes from the first
Have come to me on this great sea:
The one when light from heaven burst,
The one when sweet Love came to me.
And of the two, or best or worst,
I ever hold this second first,
Bear with me. Yonder citadel
Of ice tells all my tongue can tell:
My thirst for love, my pain, my pride,
My soul's warm youth the while she lived,
Its old age when she died.

“I know not if she loved or no.
I only asked to serve and love;
To love and serve, and ever so
My love grew as grows light above,—
Grew from gray dawn to gold midday,
And swept the wide world in its sway.
The stars came down, so close they came,
I called them, named them with her name,
The kind moon came,—came once so near,
That in the hollow of her arm
I leaned my lifted spear.

“And yet, somehow, for all the stars,
And all the silver of the moon,
She looked from out her icy bars
As longing for some sultry noon;
As longing for some warmer kind,
Some far south sunland left behind.
Then I went down to sea. I sailed
Thro' seas where monstrous beasts prevailed,
Such slimy, shapeless, hungered things!

170

Red griffins, wide-winged, bat-like wings,
Black griffins, black or fire-fed,
That ate my fever-stricken men
Ere yet they were quite dead.

“I could not find her love for her,
Or land, or fit thing for her touch,
And I came back, sad worshiper,
And watched and longed and loved so much!
I watched huge monsters climb and pass
Reflected in great walls, like glass;
Dark, draggled, hairy, fearful forms
Upblown by ever-battling storms,
And streaming still with slime and spray;
So huge from out their sultry seas,
Like storm-torn islands they.

“Then even these she ceased to note,
She ceased at last to look on me,
But, baring to the sun her throat,
She looked and looked incessantly
Away against the south, away
Against the sun the livelong day.
At last I saw her watch the swan
Surge tow'rd the north, surge on and on.
I saw her smile, her first, faint smile;
Then burst a new-born thought, and I,
I nursed that all the while.

VIII

“I somehow dreamed, or guessed, or knew
That somewhere in the dear earth's heart
Was warmth and tenderness and true
Delight, and all love's nobler part.

171

I tried to think, aye, thought and thought;
In all the strange fruits that I brought
For her delight I could but find
The sweetness deep within the rind.
All beasts, all birds, some better part
Of central being deepest housed;
And earth must have a heart.

“I watched the wide-winged birds that blew
Continually against the bleak
And ice-built north, and surely knew
The long, lorn croak, the reaching beak,
Led not to ruin evermore;
For they came back, came swooping o'er
Each spring, with clouds of younger ones,
So dense, they dimmed the summer suns.
And thus I knew somehow, somewhere,
Beyond earth's ice-built, star-tipt peaks
They found a softer air.

“And too, I heard strange stories, held
In memories of my hairy men,
Vague, dim traditions, dim with eld,
Of other lands and ages when
Nor ices were, nor anything;
But ever one warm, restful spring
Of radiant sunlight: stories told
By dauntless men of giant mold,
Who kept their cavern's icy mouth
Ice-locked, and hungered where they sat,
With sad eyes tow'rd the south:

“Tales of a time ere hate began,
Of herds of reindeer, wild beasts tamed,
When man walked forth in love with man,

172

Walked naked, and was not ashamed;
Of how a brother beast he slew,
Then night, and all sad sorrows knew;
How tame beasts were no longer tame;
How God drew His great sword of flame
And drove man naked to the snow,
Till, pitying, He made of skins
A coat, and clothed him so.

“And, true or not true, still the same,
I saw continually at night
That far, bright, flashing sword of flame,
Misnamed the Borealis light;
I saw my men, in coats of skin
As God had clothed them, felt the sin
And suffering of that first death
Each day in every icy breath.
Then why should I still disbelieve
These tales of fairer lands than mine,
And let my lady grieve?

IX

“Yea, I would find that land for her!
Then dogs, and sleds, and swift reindeer;
Huge, hairy men, all mailed in fur,
Who knew not yet the name of fear,
Nor knew fatigue, nor aught that ever
To this day has balked endeavor.
And we swept forth, while wide, swift wings
Still sought the Pole in endless strings.
I left her sitting looking south,
Still leaning, looking to the sun,—
My kisses on her mouth!

173

X

“Far toward the north, so tall, so far,
One tallest ice shaft starward stood—
Stood as if 'twere itself a star,
Scarce fallen from its sisterhood.
Tip-top the glowing apex there
Upreared a huge white polar bear;
He pushed his swart nose up and out,
Then walked the North Star round about,
Below the Great Bear of the main,
The upper main, and as if chained,
Chained with a star-linked chain.

XI

“And we pushed on, up, on, and on,
Until, as in the world of dreams,
We found the very doors of dawn
With warm sun bursting through the seams.
We brake them through, then down, far down,
Until, as in some park-set town,
We found lost Eden. Very rare
The fruit, and all the perfumed air
So sweet, we sat us down to feed
And rest, without a thought or care,
Or ever other need.

“For all earth's pretty birds were here;
And women fair, and very fair;
Sweet song was in the atmosphere,
Nor effort was, nor noise, nor care.
As cocoons from their silken house
Wing forth and in the sun carouse,
My men let fall their housings and

174

Passed on and on, far down the land
Of purple grapes and poppy bloom.
Such warm, sweet land, such peaceful land!
Sweet peace and sweet perfume!

“And I pushed down ere I returned
To climb the cold world's walls of snow,
And saw where earth's heart beat and burned,
An hundred sultry leagues below;
Saw deep seas set with deep-sea isles
Of waving verdure; miles on miles
Of rising sea-birds with their broods,
In all their noisy, happy moods!
Aye, then I knew earth has a heart,
That Nature wastes nor space or place,
But husbands every part.

XII

“My reindeer fretted: I turned back
For her, the heart of me, my soul!
Ah, then, how swift, how white my track!
All Paradise beneath the Pole
Were but a mockery till she
Should share its dreamful sweets with me.
I know not well what next befell,
Save that white heaven grew black hell.
She sat with sad face to the south,
Still sat, sat still; but she was dead—
My kisses on her mouth.

XIII

“What else to do but droop and die?
But dying, how my poor soul yearned

175

To fly as swift south birds may fly—
To pass that way her eyes had turned,
The dear days she had sat with me,
And search and search eternity!
And, do you know, I surely know
That God has given us to go
The way we will in life or death—
To go, to grow, or good or ill,
As one may draw a breath?”