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

Behind him lay the gray Azores,
Behind the Gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of shores;
Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said: “Now must we pray,
For lo! the very stars are gone,
Brave Adm'r'l speak; what shall I say?”
“Why, say: ‘Sail! on! sail on! and on!’”

“My men grow mutinous day by day;
My men grow ghastly, wan and weak.”
The stout mate thought of home; a spray
Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek.
“What shall I say, brave Adm'r'l, say,
If we sight naught but seas at dawn?”
“Why, you shall say at break of day:
‘Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!’”

They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow,
Until at last the blanched mate said:
“Why, now not even God would know
Should I and all my men fall dead.
These very winds forget their way,
For God from these dread seas is gone.
Now speak, brave Adm'r'l, speak and say—”
He said: ‘Sail on! sail on! and on!’”

152

They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate:
“This mad sea shows his teeth tonight.
He curls his lip, he lies in wait,
He lifts his teeth, as if to bite!
Brave Adm'r'l, say but one good word:
What shall we do when hope is gone?”
The words leapt like a leaping sword:
“Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!”

Then pale and worn, he paced his deck,
And peered through darkness. Ah, that night
Of all dark nights! And then a speck—
A light! A light! At last a light!
It grew, a starlit flag unfurled!
It grew to be Time's burst of dawn.
He gained a world; he gave that world
Its grandest lesson: “On! sail on!”

The London “Atheneum,” years after the royal reception given my first books, pronounced this the best American poem. Let me say to my following it is far from that; even I have done better; too much like a chorus. “The passing of Tennyson” is better. “The Missouri” better still. Besides, “The Missouri” has a right to exist, as it stirred the waters from “The Shining Mountains” to the Gulf of Mexico, and taught the nation to no longer disdain “The Father of Waters.”

But I accept the “Atheneum's” generous praise with gratitude and call the attention of my American doubters to the fact that my European triumphs were not due, as they have insisted, entirely to new scenes, for the Gates of Hercules and the Azores are as old as the hills.

Meantime, let it be borne in mind that the Missouri, “the great, dark water,” or “the mad, muddy water,” as some translate it, reaches from the heart of Montana to within hail of the Cuban seas. The Mississippi, clear as crystal from its conflux with the somber and surging Missouri up even to its source—“Veritas Caput” —Itasca Lake, is in every sense quite another river and entirely of another character, in all respects. Give the Missouri his due and we have here in the heart of the Republic, and all our own, the noblest, if not the longest, river on the globe.

153

THE MISSOURI

Where ranged thy black-maned, woolly bulls
By millions, fat and unafraid;
Where gold, unclaimed in cradlefuls,
Slept 'mid the grass roots, gorge, and glade;
Where peaks companioned with the stars,
And propped the blue with shining white,
With massive silver beams and bars,
With copper bastions, height on height—
There wast thou born, O lord of strength!
O yellow lion, leap and length
Of arm from out an Arctic chine
To far, fair Mexic seas are thine!

What colors? Copper, silver, gold
With sudden sweep and fury blent,
Enwound, unwound, inrolled, unrolled,
Mad molder of the continent!
What whirlpools and what choking cries
From out the concave swirl and sweep
As when some god cries out and dies
Ten fathoms down thy tawny deep!
Yet on, right on, no time for death,
No time to gasp a second breath!
You plow a pathway through the main
To Morro's castle, Cuba's plain.

Hoar sire of hot, sweet Cuban seas,
Gray father of the continent,
Fierce fashioner of destinies,
Of states thou hast upreared or rent,
Thou know'st no limit; seas turn back,
Bent, broken from the shaggy shore;
But thou, in thy resistless track,

154

Art lord and master evermore.
Missouri, surge and sing and sweep!
Missouri, master of the deep,
From snow-reared Rockies to the sea
Sweep on, sweep on eternally!

THE PASSING OF TENNYSON

My kingly kinsmen, kings of thought,
I hear your gathered symphonies,
Such nights as when the world is not,
And great stars chorus through my trees.

We knew it, as God's prophets knew;
We knew it, as mute red men know,
When Mars leapt searching heaven through
With flaming torch, that he must go.
Then Browning, he who knew the stars,
Stood forth and faced insatiate Mars.

Then up from Cambridge rose and turned
Sweet Lowell from his Druid trees—
Turned where the great star blazed and burned,
As if his own soul might appease.
Yet on and on through all the stars
Still searched and searched insatiate Mars.

Then stanch Walt Whitman saw and knew;
Forgetful of his “Leaves of Grass,”
He heard his “Drum Taps,” and God drew
His great soul through the shining pass,
Made light, made bright by burnished stars;
Made scintillant from flaming Mars.

155

Then soft-voiced Whittier was heard
To cease; was heard to sing no more,
As you have heard some sweetest bird
The more because its song is o'er.
Yet brighter up the street of stars
Still blazed and burned and beckoned Mars:

And then the king came; king of thought,
King David with his harp and crown. . . .
How wisely well the gods had wrought
That these had gone and sat them down
To wait and welcome 'mid the stars
All silent in the light of Mars.

All silent. . . . So, he lies in state. . . .
Our redwoods drip and drip with rain. . . .
Against our rock-locked Golden Gate
We hear the great, sad, sobbing main.
But silent all. . . . He passed the stars
That year the whole world turned to Mars.

THE AMERICAN OCEAN

“Ten thousand miles of mobile sea—
This sea of all seas blent as one
Wide, unbound book of mystery,
Of awe, of sibly prophecy,
Ere yet a ghost or misty ken
Of God's far, first beginning when
Vast darkness lay upon the deep:”
[OMITTED]
“He looked to heaven, God; but she
Saw only his face and the sea.”
[OMITTED]

156

“Aye, day is done, the dying sun
Sinks wounded unto death tonight;
A great, hurt swan, he sinks to rest,
His wings all crimson, blood his breast!
With wide, low wings, reached left and right,
He sings, and night and swan are one—
One huge, black swan of Helicon.”

THE BIRDS AND BEES

I think the bees, our blessed bees,
Are better, wiser far than we,
The very wild birds in the trees
Are wiser far, it seems to me;
For love and light and sun and air
Are theirs, and not a bit of care.

What bird makes claim to all God's trees?
What bee makes claim to all God's flowers?
Behold their perfect harmonies,
Their common hoard, the common hours!
Say, why should man be less than these,
The happy birds, the hoarding bees?

CALIFORNIA'S CUP OF GOLD

The golden poppy is God's gold,
The gold that lifts, nor weighs us down
The gold that knows no miser's hold,
The gold that banks not in the town,
But singing, laughing, freely spills
Its hoard far up the happy hills;
Far up, far down, at every turn.—
What beggar has not gold to burn!

157

THE FORTUNATE ISLES

You sail and you seek for the Fortunate Isles,
The old Greek Isles of the yellow bird's song?
Then steer straight on through the watery miles,
Straight on, straight on, and you can't go wrong.
Nay not to the left, nay not to the right,
But on, straight on, and the Isles are in sight,
The old Greek Isles where yellow birds sing
And life lies girt with a golden ring.

These Fortunate Isles they are not so far,
They lie within reach of the lowliest door;
You can see them gleam by the twilight star;
You can hear them sing by the moon's white shore—
Nay, never look back! Those leveled grave stones
They were landing steps; they were steps unto thrones
Of glory for souls that have gone before,
And have set white feet on the fortunate shore.

And what are the names of the Fortunate Isles?
Why, Duty and Love and a large Content.
Lo! these are the Isles of the watery miles,
That God let down from the firmament.
Aye! Duty, and Love, and a true man's trust;
Your forehead to God though your feet in the dust.
Aye! Duty to man, and to God meanwhiles,
And these, O friend, are the Fortunate Isles.

158

DON'T STOP AT THE STATION DESPAIR

We must trust the Conductor, most surely;
Why, millions of millions before
Have made this same journey securely
And come to that ultimate shore.
And we, we will reach it in season;
And ah, what a welcome is there!
Reflect then, how out of all reason
To stop at the Station Despair.

Aye, midnights and many a potion
Of bitter black water have we
As we journey from ocean to ocean—
From sea unto ultimate sea—
To that deep sea of seas, and all silence
Of passion, concern and of care—
That vast sea of Eden-set Islands—
Don't stop at the Station Despair!

Go forward, whatever may follow,
Go forward, friend-led, or alone;
Ah me, to leap off in some hollow
Or fen, in the night and unknown—
Leap off like a thief; try to hide you
From angels, all waiting you there!
Go forward; whatever betide you,
Don't stop at the Station Despair!

TO RUSSIA

“Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?”—

Bible.

Who tamed your lawless Tartar blood?
What David bearded in her den
The Russian bear in ages when

159

You strode your black, unbridled stud,
A skin-clad savage of your steeps?
Why, one who now sits low and weeps,
Why, one who now wails out to you—
The Jew, the Jew, the homeless Jew.

Who girt the thews of your young prime
And bound your fierce divided force?
Why, who but Moses shaped your course
United down the grooves of time?
Your mighty millions all today
The hated, homeless, Jew obey.
Who taught all poetry to you?
The Jew, the Jew, your hated Jew.

Who taught you tender Bible tales
Of honey-lands, of milk and wine?
Of happy, peaceful Palestine?
Of Jordan's holy harvest vales?
Who gave the patient Christ? I say,
Who gave your Christian creed? Yea, yea,
Who gave your very God to you?
Your Jew! Your Jew! Your hated Jew!

TO ANDREW CARNEGIE

Hail, fat king Ned!
Hail, fighting Ted,
Grand William,
Grim Oom Paul!
But I'd rather twist
Carnegie's wrist,
That open hand in this,
Than shake hands with ye all.

160

I dislike personal and occasional lines so entirely that I think you can search these six volumes through in vain for another poem of this character. But there is only this one Carnegie; the best-hearted and the best-headed American citizen that ever wrote a book. Not long ago, when he was about to sail away, the Authors' Club of New York gave him a dinner, my publisher asked me for some lines. I did not know Mr. Carnegie then, personally, but as I admired him and his work as heartily as I despised his petty detractors, I sent the above brief summing up of Kings, with Carnegie at the head.

TRUE GREATNESS

How sad that all great things are sad,—
That greatness knows not to be glad.
The boundless, spouseless, fearful sea
Pursues the moon incessantly;
And Cæsar childless lives and dies.
The thunder-torn Sequoia tree
In solemn isolation cries
Sad chorus with the homeless wind
Above the clouds, above his kind,
Above the bastioned peak, above
All sign or sound or sense of love.
How mateless, desolate and drear
His lorn, long seven thousand year!
My comrades, lovers, dare to be
More truly great than Cæsar; he
Who hewed three hundred towns apart,
Yet never truly touched one heart.
The tearful, lorn, complaining sea
The very moon looks down upon,

161

Then changes,—as a saber drawn;
The great Sequoia lords as lone
As God upon that fabled throne.
No, no! True greatness, glory, fame,
Is his who claims not place nor name,
But loves, and lives content, complete,
With baby flowers at his feet.

ON THE FIRING LINE

For glory? For good? For fortune, or for fame?
Why, ho, for the front where the battle is on!
Leave the rear to the dolt, the lazy, the lame;
Go forward as ever the valiant have gone.
Whether city or field, whether mountain or mine,
Go forward, right on for the firing line!

Whether newsboy or plowboy or cowboy or clerk,
Fight forward; be ready, be steady, be first;
Be fairest, be bravest, be best at your work;
Exult and be glad; dare to hunger, to thirst,
As David, as Alfred—let dogs skulk and whine—
There is room but for men on the firing line.

Aye, the one place to fight and the one place to fall—
As fall we must all, in God's good time—
It is where the manliest man is the wall,
Where boys are as men in their pride and prime.
Where glory gleams brightest, where brightest eyes shine—
Far out on the roaring red firing line.

—Success Magazine.

162

TO RACHAEL IN RUSSIA

“To bring them unto a good land and a large; unto a land flowing with milk and honey.”

O thou, whose patient, peaceful blood
Paints Sharon's roses on thy cheek,
And down thy breasts played hide and seek,
Six thousand years a stainless flood,
Rise up and set thy sad face hence.
Rise up and come where Freedom waits
Within these white, wide ocean gates
To give thee God's inheritance;
To bind thy wounds in this despair;
To braid thy long, strong, loosened hair.

O Rachel, weeping where the flood
Of icy Volga grinds and flows
Against his banks of blood-red snows—
White banks made red with Rachel's blood—
Lift up thy head, be comforted;
For, as thou didst on manna feed,
When Russia roamed a bear in deed,
And on her own foul essence fed,
So shalt thou flourish as a tree
When Russ and Cossack shall not be.

Then come where yellow harvests swell;
Forsake that savage land of snows;
Forget the brutal Russian's blows;
And come where Kings of Conscience dwell.
Oh come, Rebecca to the well!
The voice of Rachel shall be sweet!
The Gleaner rest safe at the feet
Of one who loves her; and the spell
Of Peace that blesses Paradise
Shall kiss thy large and lonely eyes.

—Century Magazine.

163

CUBA LIBRE

Comes a cry from Cuban water—
From the warm, dusk Antilles—
From the lost Atlanta's daughter,
Drowned in blood as drowned in seas;
Comes a cry of purpled anguish—
See her struggles, hear her cries!
Shall she live, or shall she languish?
Shall she sink, or shall she rise?

She shall rise, by all that's holy!
She shall live and she shall last;
Rise as we, when crushed and lowly,
From the blackness of the past.
Bid her strike! Lo, it is written
Blood for blood and life for life.
Bid her smite, as she is smitten;
Behold, our stars were born of strife!

Once we flashed her lights of freedom,
Lights that dazzled her dark eyes
Till she could but yearning heed them,
Reach her hands and try to rise.
Then they stabbed her, choked her, drowned her,
Till we scarce could hear a note.
Ah! these rusting chains that bound her!
Oh! these robbers at her throat!

And the kind who forged these fetters?
Ask five hundred years for news.
Stake and thumbscrew for their betters?
Inquisitions! Banished Jews!
Chains and slavery! What reminder
Of one red man in that land?

164

Why, these very chains that bind her
Bound Columbus, foot and hand!

She shall rise as rose Columbus,
From his chains, from shame and wrong—
Rise as Morning, matchless, wondrous—
Rise as some rich morning song—
Rise a ringing song and story,
Valor, Love personified. . . .
Stars and stripes, espouse her glory,
Love and Liberty allied.

Written for and read by the Baroness de Bazus in all our great cities before the Spanish war.