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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Complete Poetical Works by Bret Harte
+#19 in our series by Bret Harte
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+Complete Poetical Works
+
+by Bret Harte
+
+February, 2000  [Etext #2507]
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Complete Poetical Works by Bret Harte
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+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS
+
+by
+
+Bret Harte
+
+
+"ARGONAUT EDITION" OF THE WORKS OF BRET HARTE, VOL. 8
+
+P. F. COLLIER & SON
+
+NEW YORK
+
+COPYRIGHT 1882, 1896, AND 1902
+
+By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY
+
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
+
+
+Although Bret Harte's name is identified with Californian life, it
+was not till he was fifteen that the author of "Plain Language from
+Truthful James" saw the country of his adoption.  Francis Bret
+Harte, to give the full name which he carried till he became famous,
+was born at Albany, New York, August 25, 1839.  He went with his
+widowed mother to California in 1854, and was thrown as a young man
+into the hurly-burly which he more than any other writer has made
+real to distant and later people.  He was by turns a miner, school-
+teacher, express messenger, printer, and journalist.  The types
+which live again in his pages are thus not only what he observed,
+but what he himself impersonated in his own experience.
+
+He began trying his pen in The Golden Era of San Francisco, where he
+was working as a compositor; and when The Californian, edited by
+Charles Henry Webb, was started in 1864 as a literary newspaper, he
+was one of a group of brilliant young fellows--Mark Twain, Charles
+Warren Stoddard, Webb himself, and Prentice Mulford--who gave at
+once a new interest in California beside what mining and agriculture
+caused.  Here in an early number appeared "The Ballad of the Emeu,"
+and he contributed many poems, grave and gay, as well as prose in a
+great variety of form.  At the same time he was appointed Secretary
+of the United States Branch Mint at San Francisco, holding the
+office till 1870.
+
+But Bret Harte's great opportunity came when The Overland Monthly
+was established in 1868 by Anton Roman.  This magazine was the
+outgrowth of the racy, exuberant literary spirit which had already
+found free expression in the journals named.  An eager ambition to
+lift all the new life of the Pacific into a recognized place in the
+world of letters made the young men we have named put their wits
+together in a monthly magazine which should rival the Atlantic in
+Boston and Blackwood in Edinburgh.  The name was easily had, and for
+a sign manual on the cover some one drew a grizzly bear, that
+formidable exemplar of Californian wildness.  But the design did not
+quite satisfy, until Bret Harte, with a felicitous stroke, drew two
+parallel lines just before the feet of the halting brute.  Now it
+was the grizzly of the wilderness drawing back before the railway of
+civilization, and the picture was complete as an emblem.
+
+Bret Harte became, by the common urgency of his companions, the
+first editor of the Overland, and at once his own tales and poems
+began, and in the second number appeared "The Luck of Roaring Camp,"
+which instantly brought him wide fame.  In a few months he found
+himself besought for poems and articles, sketches and stories, in
+influential magazines, and in 1871 he turned away from the Pacific
+coast, and took up his residence, first in New York, afterward in
+Boston.
+
+"No one," says his old friend, Mr. Stoddard, "who knows Mr. Harte,
+and knew the California of his day, wonders that he left it as he
+did.  Eastern editors were crying for his work.  Cities vied with one
+another in the offer of tempting bait.  When he turned his back on
+San Francisco, and started for Boston, he began a tour that the
+greatest author of any age might have been proud of.  It was a
+veritable ovation that swelled from sea to sea: the classic sheep
+was sacrificed all along the route.  I have often thought that if
+Bret Harte had met with a fatal accident during that transcontinental
+journey, the world would have declared with one voice that the
+greatest genius of his time was lost to it."
+
+In Boston he entered into an arrangement with the predecessors of
+the publishers of this volume, and his contributions appeared in
+their periodicals and were gathered into volumes.  The arrangement
+in one form or another continued to the time of his death, and has
+for witness a stately array of comely volumes; but the prose has far
+outstripped the poetry.  There are few writers of Mr. Harte's
+prodigality of nature who have used with so much fine reserve their
+faculty for melodious verse, and the present volume contains the
+entire body of his poetical work, growing by minute accretions
+during thirty odd years.
+
+In 1878 he was appointed United States Consul at Crefeld, Germany,
+and after that date he resided, with little interruption, on the
+Continent or in England.  He was transferred to Glasgow in March,
+1880, and remained there until July, 1885.  During the rest of his
+life he made his home in London.  His foreign residence is disclosed
+in a number of prose sketches and tales and in one or two poems; but
+life abroad never dimmed the vividness of the impressions made on
+him by the experience of his early manhood when he partook of the
+elixir vitae of California, and the stories which from year to year
+flowed from an apparently inexhaustible fountain glittered with the
+gold washed down from the mountain slopes of that country which
+through his imagination he had made so peculiarly his own.
+
+Mr. Harte died suddenly at Camberley, England, May 6, 1902.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I. NATIONAL.
+
+
+JOHN BURNS OF GETTYSBURG
+
+"HOW ARE YOU, SANITARY?"
+
+BATTLE BUNNY
+
+THE REVEILLE
+
+OUR PRIVILEGE
+
+RELIEVING GUARD
+
+THE GODDESS
+
+ON A PEN OF THOMAS STARR KING
+
+A SECOND REVIEW OF THE GRAND ARMY
+
+THE COPPERHEAD
+
+A SANITARY MESSAGE
+
+THE OLD MAJOR EXPLAINS
+
+CALIFORNIA'S GREETING TO SEWARD
+
+THE AGED STRANGER
+
+THE IDYL OP BATTLE HOLLOW
+
+CALDWELL OF SPRINGFIELD
+
+POEM, DELIVERED ON THE FOURTEENTH ANNIVERSARY OF CALIFORNIA'S
+ADMISSION INTO THE UNION
+
+MISS BLANCHE SAYS
+
+AN ARCTIC VISION
+
+ST. THOMAS
+
+OFF SCARBOROUGH
+
+CADET GREY
+
+
+II. SPANISH IDYLS AND LEGENDS.
+
+
+THE MIRACLE OF PADRE JUNIPERO
+
+THE WONDERFUL SPRING OF SAN JOAQUIN
+
+THE ANGELUS
+
+CONCEPCION DE ARGUELLO
+
+"FOR THE KING"
+
+RAMON
+
+DON DIEGO OF THE SOUTH
+
+AT THE HACIENDA
+
+FRIAR PEDRO'S RIDE
+
+IN THE MISSION GARDEN
+
+THE LOST GALLEON
+
+
+III. IN DIALECT.
+
+
+"JIM"
+
+CHIQUITA
+
+DOW'S FLAT
+
+IN THE TUNNEL
+
+"CICELY"
+
+PENELOPE
+
+PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES
+
+THE SOCIETY UPON THE STANISLAUS
+
+LUKE
+
+"THE BABES IN THE WOODS"
+
+THE LATEST CHINESE OUTRAGE
+
+TRUTHFUL JAMES TO THE EDITOR
+
+AN IDYL OF THE ROAD
+
+THOMPSON OF ANGELS
+
+THE HAWK'S NEST
+
+HER LETTER
+
+HIS ANSWER TO "HER LETTER"
+
+"THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS"
+
+FURTHER LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES
+
+AFTER THE ACCIDENT
+
+THE GHOST THAT JIM SAW
+
+"SEVENTY-NINE"
+
+THE STAGE-DRIVER'S STORY
+
+A QUESTION OF PRIVILEGE
+
+THE THOUGHT-READER OF ANGELS
+
+THE SPELLING BEE AT ANGELS
+
+ARTEMIS IN SIERRA
+
+JACK OF THE TULES
+
+
+IV. MISCELLANEOUS.
+
+
+A GREYPORT LEGEND
+
+A NEWPORT ROMANCE
+
+SAN FRANCISCO
+
+THE MOUNTAIN HEART'S-EASE
+
+GRIZZLY
+
+MADRONO
+
+COYOTE
+
+TO A SEA-BIRD
+
+WHAT THE CHIMNEY SANG
+
+DICKENS IN CAMP
+
+TWENTY YEARS
+
+FATE
+
+GRANDMOTHER TENTERDEN
+
+GUILD'S SIGNAL
+
+ASPIRING MISS DELAINE
+
+A LEGEND OF COLOGNE
+
+THE TALE OF A PONY
+
+ON A CONE OF THE BIG TREES
+
+LONE MOUNTAIN
+
+ALNASCHAR
+
+THE TWO SHIPS
+
+ADDRESS (OPENING OF THE CALIFORNIA THEATRE, SAN FRANCISCO, JANUARY
+19, 1870)
+
+DOLLY VARDEN
+
+TELEMACHUS VERSUS MENTOR
+
+WHAT THE WOLF REALLY SAID TO LITTLE RED RIDING-HOOD
+
+HALF AN HOUR BEFORE SUPPER
+
+WHAT THE BULLET SANG
+
+THE OLD CAMP-FIRE
+
+THE STATION-MASTER OF LONE PRAIRIE
+
+THE MISSION BELLS OF MONTEREY
+
+"CROTALUS"
+
+ON WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT
+
+THE BIRDS OF CIRENCESTER
+
+LINES TO A PORTRAIT, BY A SUPERIOR PERSON
+
+HER LAST LETTER: BEING A REPLY TO "HIS ANSWER"
+
+
+V. PARODIES.
+
+
+BEFORE THE CURTAIN
+
+TO THE PLIOCENE SKULL
+
+THE BALLAD OF MR. COOKE
+
+THE BALLAD OF THE EMEU
+
+MRS. JUDGE JENKINS
+
+A GEOLOGICAL MADRIGAL
+
+AVITOR
+
+THE WILLOWS
+
+NORTH BEACH
+
+THE LOST TAILS OF MILETUS
+
+THE RITUALIST
+
+A MORAL VINDICATOR
+
+CALIFORNIA MADRIGAL
+
+WHAT THE ENGINES SAID
+
+THE LEGENDS OF THE RHINE
+
+SONGS WITHOUT SENSE
+
+
+VI. LITTLE POSTERITY.
+
+
+MASTER JOHNNY'S NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR
+
+MISS EDITH'S MODEST REQUEST
+
+MISS EDITH MAKES IT PLEASANT FOR BROTHER JACK
+
+MISS EDITH MAKES ANOTHER FRIEND
+
+WHAT MISS EDITH SAW FROM HER WINDOW
+
+ON THE LANDING
+
+
+NOTES
+
+
+
+POEMS
+
+
+I. NATIONAL
+
+
+JOHN BURNS OF GETTYSBURG
+
+Have you heard the story that gossips tell
+Of Burns of Gettysburg?--No?  Ah, well:
+Brief is the glory that hero earns,
+Briefer the story of poor John Burns.
+He was the fellow who won renown,--
+The only man who didn't back down
+When the rebels rode through his native town;
+But held his own in the fight next day,
+When all his townsfolk ran away.
+That was in July sixty-three,
+The very day that General Lee,
+Flower of Southern chivalry,
+Baffled and beaten, backward reeled
+From a stubborn Meade and a barren field.
+
+I might tell how but the day before
+John Burns stood at his cottage door,
+Looking down the village street,
+Where, in the shade of his peaceful vine,
+He heard the low of his gathered kine,
+And felt their breath with incense sweet;
+Or I might say, when the sunset burned
+The old farm gable, he thought it turned
+The milk that fell like a babbling flood
+Into the milk-pail red as blood!
+Or how he fancied the hum of bees
+Were bullets buzzing among the trees.
+But all such fanciful thoughts as these
+Were strange to a practical man like Burns,
+Who minded only his own concerns,
+Troubled no more by fancies fine
+Than one of his calm-eyed, long-tailed kine,--
+Quite old-fashioned and matter-of-fact,
+Slow to argue, but quick to act.
+That was the reason, as some folk say,
+He fought so well on that terrible day.
+
+And it was terrible.  On the right
+Raged for hours the heady fight,
+Thundered the battery's double bass,--
+Difficult music for men to face
+While on the left--where now the graves
+Undulate like the living waves
+That all that day unceasing swept
+Up to the pits the rebels kept--
+Round shot ploughed the upland glades,
+Sown with bullets, reaped with blades;
+Shattered fences here and there
+Tossed their splinters in the air;
+The very trees were stripped and bare;
+The barns that once held yellow grain
+Were heaped with harvests of the slain;
+The cattle bellowed on the plain,
+The turkeys screamed with might and main,
+And brooding barn-fowl left their rest
+With strange shells bursting in each nest.
+
+Just where the tide of battle turns,
+Erect and lonely stood old John Burns.
+How do you think the man was dressed?
+He wore an ancient long buff vest,
+Yellow as saffron,--but his best;
+And buttoned over his manly breast
+Was a bright blue coat, with a rolling collar,
+And large gilt buttons,--size of a dollar,--
+With tails that the country-folk called "swaller."
+He wore a broad-brimmed, bell-crowned hat,
+White as the locks on which it sat.
+Never had such a sight been seen
+For forty years on the village green,
+Since old John Burns was a country beau,
+And went to the "quiltings" long ago.
+
+Close at his elbows all that day,
+Veterans of the Peninsula,
+Sunburnt and bearded, charged away;
+And striplings, downy of lip and chin,--
+Clerks that the Home Guard mustered in,--
+Glanced, as they passed, at the hat he wore,
+Then at the rifle his right hand bore,
+And hailed him, from out their youthful lore,
+With scraps of a slangy repertoire:
+"How are you, White Hat?"  "Put her through!"
+"Your head's level!" and "Bully for you!"
+Called him "Daddy,"--begged he'd disclose
+The name of the tailor who made his clothes,
+And what was the value he set on those;
+While Burns, unmindful of jeer and scoff,
+Stood there picking the rebels off,--
+With his long brown rifle and bell-crown hat,
+And the swallow-tails they were laughing at.
+
+'Twas but a moment, for that respect
+Which clothes all courage their voices checked;
+And something the wildest could understand
+Spake in the old man's strong right hand,
+And his corded throat, and the lurking frown
+Of his eyebrows under his old bell-crown;
+Until, as they gazed, there crept an awe
+Through the ranks in whispers, and some men saw,
+In the antique vestments and long white hair,
+The Past of the Nation in battle there;
+And some of the soldiers since declare
+That the gleam of his old white hat afar,
+Like the crested plume of the brave Navarre,
+That day was their oriflamme of war.
+
+So raged the battle.  You know the rest:
+How the rebels, beaten and backward pressed,
+Broke at the final charge and ran.
+At which John Burns--a practical man--
+Shouldered his rifle, unbent his brows,
+And then went back to his bees and cows.
+
+That is the story of old John Burns;
+This is the moral the reader learns:
+In fighting the battle, the question's whether
+You'll show a hat that's white, or a feather!
+
+
+"HOW ARE YOU, SANITARY?"
+
+Down the picket-guarded lane
+Rolled the comfort-laden wain,
+Cheered by shouts that shook the plain,
+   Soldier-like and merry:
+Phrases such as camps may teach,
+Sabre-cuts of Saxon speech,
+Such as "Bully!" "Them's the peach!"
+   "Wade in, Sanitary!"
+
+Right and left the caissons drew
+As the car went lumbering through,
+Quick succeeding in review
+   Squadrons military;
+Sunburnt men with beards like frieze,
+Smooth-faced boys, and cries like these,--
+"U. S. San. Com."  "That's the cheese!"
+   "Pass in, Sanitary!"
+
+In such cheer it struggled on
+Till the battle front was won:
+Then the car, its journey done,
+   Lo! was stationary;
+And where bullets whistling fly
+Came the sadder, fainter cry,
+"Help us, brothers, ere we die,--
+   Save us, Sanitary!"
+
+Such the work.  The phantom flies,
+Wrapped in battle clouds that rise:
+But the brave--whose dying eyes,
+   Veiled and visionary,
+See the jasper gates swung wide,
+See the parted throng outside--
+Hears the voice to those who ride:
+   "Pass in, Sanitary!"
+
+
+BATTLE BUNNY
+
+(MALVERN HILL, 1864)
+
+
+"After the men were ordered to lie down, a white rabbit, which had
+been hopping hither and thither over the field swept by grape and
+musketry, took refuge among the skirmishers, in the breast of a
+corporal."--Report of the Battle of Malvern Hill.
+
+
+Bunny, lying in the grass,
+Saw the shining column pass;
+Saw the starry banner fly,
+Saw the chargers fret and fume,
+Saw the flapping hat and plume,--
+Saw them with his moist and shy
+Most unspeculative eye,
+Thinking only, in the dew,
+That it was a fine review.
+
+Till a flash, not all of steel,
+Where the rolling caissons wheel,
+Brought a rumble and a roar
+Rolling down that velvet floor,
+And like blows of autumn flail
+Sharply threshed the iron hail.
+
+Bunny, thrilled by unknown fears,
+Raised his soft and pointed ears,
+Mumbled his prehensile lip,
+Quivered his pulsating hip,
+As the sharp vindictive yell
+Rose above the screaming shell;
+Thought the world and all its men,--
+All the charging squadrons meant,--
+All were rabbit-hunters then,
+All to capture him intent.
+Bunny was not much to blame:
+Wiser folk have thought the same,--
+Wiser folk who think they spy
+Every ill begins with "I."
+
+Wildly panting here and there,
+Bunny sought the freer air,
+Till he hopped below the hill,
+And saw, lying close and still,
+Men with muskets in their hands.
+(Never Bunny understands
+That hypocrisy of sleep,
+In the vigils grim they keep,
+As recumbent on that spot
+They elude the level shot.)
+
+One--a grave and quiet man,
+Thinking of his wife and child
+Far beyond the Rapidan,
+Where the Androscoggin smiled--
+Felt the little rabbit creep,
+Nestling by his arm and side,
+Wakened from strategic sleep,
+To that soft appeal replied,
+Drew him to his blackened breast,
+And--  But you have guessed the rest.
+
+Softly o'er that chosen pair
+Omnipresent Love and Care
+Drew a mightier Hand and Arm,
+Shielding them from every harm;
+Right and left the bullets waved,
+Saved the saviour for the saved.
+
+          ------
+
+Who believes that equal grace
+God extends in every place,
+Little difference he scans
+Twixt a rabbit's God and man's.
+
+
+THE REVEILLE
+
+Hark! I hear the tramp of thousands,
+  And of armed men the hum;
+Lo! a nation's hosts have gathered
+  Round the quick alarming drum,--
+      Saying, "Come,
+      Freemen, come!
+Ere your heritage be wasted," said the quick alarming drum.
+
+"Let me of my heart take counsel:
+  War is not of life the sum;
+Who shall stay and reap the harvest
+  When the autumn days shall come?"
+      But the drum
+      Echoed, "Come!
+Death shall reap the braver harvest," said the solemn-sounding drum.
+
+"But when won the coming battle,
+  What of profit springs therefrom?
+What if conquest, subjugation,
+  Even greater ills become?"
+      But the drum
+      Answered, "Come!
+You must do the sum to prove it," said the Yankee answering drum.
+
+"What if, 'mid the cannons' thunder,
+  Whistling shot and bursting bomb,
+When my brothers fall around me,
+  Should my heart grow cold and numb?"
+      But the drum
+      Answered, "Come!
+Better there in death united, than in life a recreant.--Come!"
+
+Thus they answered,--hoping, fearing,
+  Some in faith, and doubting some,
+Till a trumpet-voice proclaiming,
+  Said, "My chosen people, come!"
+      Then the drum,
+      Lo! was dumb,
+For the great heart of the nation, throbbing, answered, "Lord, we come!"
+
+
+OUR PRIVILEGE
+
+Not ours, where battle smoke upcurls,
+  And battle dews lie wet,
+To meet the charge that treason hurls
+  By sword and bayonet.
+
+Not ours to guide the fatal scythe
+  The fleshless Reaper wields;
+The harvest moon looks calmly down
+  Upon our peaceful fields.
+
+The long grass dimples on the hill,
+  The pines sing by the sea,
+And Plenty, from her golden horn,
+  Is pouring far and free.
+
+O brothers by the farther sea!
+  Think still our faith is warm;
+The same bright flag above us waves
+  That swathed our baby form.
+
+The same red blood that dyes your fields
+  Here throbs in patriot pride,--
+The blood that flowed when Lander fell,
+  And Baker's crimson tide.
+
+And thus apart our hearts keep time
+  With every pulse ye feel,
+And Mercy's ringing gold shall chime
+  With Valor's clashing steel.
+
+
+RELIEVING GUARD
+
+THOMAS STARR KING.  OBIIT MARCH 4, 1864
+
+Came the relief. "What, sentry, ho!
+How passed the night through thy long waking?"
+"Cold, cheerless, dark,--as may befit
+The hour before the dawn is breaking."
+
+"No sight? no sound?"  "No; nothing save
+The plover from the marshes calling,
+And in yon western sky, about
+An hour ago, a star was falling."
+
+"A star?  There's nothing strange in that."
+"No, nothing; but, above the thicket,
+Somehow it seemed to me that God
+Somewhere had just relieved a picket."
+
+
+THE GODDESS
+
+CONTRIBUTED TO THE FAIR FOR THE LADIES' PATRIOTIC FUND OF THE PACIFIC
+
+"Who comes?"  The sentry's warning cry
+  Rings sharply on the evening air:
+Who comes?  The challenge: no reply,
+  Yet something motions there.
+
+A woman, by those graceful folds;
+  A soldier, by that martial tread:
+"Advance three paces.  Halt! until
+  Thy name and rank be said."
+
+"My name?  Her name, in ancient song,
+  Who fearless from Olympus came:
+Look on me!  Mortals know me best
+  In battle and in flame."
+
+"Enough! I know that clarion voice;
+  I know that gleaming eye and helm,
+Those crimson lips,--and in their dew
+  The best blood of the realm.
+
+"The young, the brave, the good and wise,
+  Have fallen in thy curst embrace:
+The juices of the grapes of wrath
+  Still stain thy guilty face.
+
+"My brother lies in yonder field,
+  Face downward to the quiet grass:
+Go back! he cannot see thee now;
+  But here thou shalt not pass."
+
+A crack upon the evening air,
+  A wakened echo from the hill:
+The watchdog on the distant shore
+  Gives mouth, and all is still.
+
+The sentry with his brother lies
+  Face downward on the quiet grass;
+And by him, in the pale moonshine,
+  A shadow seems to pass.
+
+No lance or warlike shield it bears:
+  A helmet in its pitying hands
+Brings water from the nearest brook,
+  To meet his last demands.
+
+Can this be she of haughty mien,
+  The goddess of the sword and shield?
+Ah, yes!  The Grecian poet's myth
+  Sways still each battlefield.
+
+For not alone that rugged War
+  Some grace or charm from Beauty gains;
+But, when the goddess' work is done,
+  The woman's still remains.
+
+
+ON A PEN OF THOMAS STARR KING
+
+This is the reed the dead musician dropped,
+  With tuneful magic in its sheath still hidden;
+The prompt allegro of its music stopped,
+  Its melodies unbidden.
+
+But who shall finish the unfinished strain,
+  Or wake the instrument to awe and wonder,
+And bid the slender barrel breathe again,
+  An organ-pipe of thunder!
+
+His pen! what humbler memories cling about
+  Its golden curves! what shapes and laughing graces
+Slipped from its point, when his full heart went out
+  In smiles and courtly phrases?
+
+The truth, half jesting, half in earnest flung;
+  The word of cheer, with recognition in it;
+The note of alms, whose golden speech outrung
+  The golden gift within it.
+
+But all in vain the enchanter's wand we wave:
+  No stroke of ours recalls his magic vision:
+The incantation that its power gave
+  Sleeps with the dead magician.
+
+
+A SECOND REVIEW OF THE GRAND ARMY
+
+I read last night of the grand review
+In Washington's chiefest avenue,--
+Two hundred thousand men in blue,
+    I think they said was the number,--
+Till I seemed to hear their trampling feet,
+The bugle blast and the drum's quick beat,
+The clatter of hoofs in the stony street,
+The cheers of people who came to greet,
+And the thousand details that to repeat
+    Would only my verse encumber,--
+Till I fell in a reverie, sad and sweet,
+    And then to a fitful slumber.
+
+When, lo! in a vision I seemed to stand
+In the lonely Capitol.  On each hand
+Far stretched the portico, dim and grand
+Its columns ranged like a martial band
+Of sheeted spectres, whom some command
+    Had called to a last reviewing.
+And the streets of the city were white and bare,
+No footfall echoed across the square;
+But out of the misty midnight air
+I heard in the distance a trumpet blare,
+And the wandering night-winds seemed to bear
+    The sound of a far tattooing.
+
+Then I held my breath with fear and dread
+For into the square, with a brazen tread,
+There rode a figure whose stately head
+    O'erlooked the review that morning,
+That never bowed from its firm-set seat
+When the living column passed its feet,
+Yet now rode steadily up the street
+    To the phantom bugle's warning:
+
+Till it reached the Capitol square, and wheeled,
+And there in the moonlight stood revealed
+A well-known form that in State and field
+    Had led our patriot sires:
+Whose face was turned to the sleeping camp,
+Afar through the river's fog and damp,
+That showed no flicker, nor waning lamp,
+    Nor wasted bivouac fires.
+
+And I saw a phantom army come,
+With never a sound of fife or drum,
+But keeping time to a throbbing hum
+    Of wailing and lamentation:
+The martyred heroes of Malvern Hill,
+Of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville,
+The men whose wasted figures fill
+    The patriot graves of the nation.
+
+And there came the nameless dead,--the men
+Who perished in fever swamp and fen,
+The slowly-starved of the prison pen;
+    And, marching beside the others,
+Came the dusky martyrs of Pillow's fight,
+With limbs enfranchised and bearing bright;
+I thought--perhaps 'twas the pale moonlight--
+    They looked as white as their brothers!
+
+And so all night marched the nation's dead,
+With never a banner above them spread,
+Nor a badge, nor a motto brandished;
+No mark--save the bare uncovered head
+    Of the silent bronze Reviewer;
+With never an arch save the vaulted sky;
+With never a flower save those that lie
+On the distant graves--for love could buy
+    No gift that was purer or truer.
+
+So all night long swept the strange array,
+So all night long till the morning gray
+I watched for one who had passed away;
+    With a reverent awe and wonder,--
+Till a blue cap waved in the length'ning line,
+And I knew that one who was kin of mine
+Had come; and I spake--and lo! that sign
+    Awakened me from my slumber.
+
+
+THE COPPERHEAD
+
+(1864)
+
+There is peace in the swamp where the Copperhead sleeps,
+Where the waters are stagnant, the white vapor creeps,
+Where the musk of Magnolia hangs thick in the air,
+And the lilies' phylacteries broaden in prayer.
+There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is death,
+Though the mist is miasma, the upas-tree's breath,
+Though no echo awakes to the cooing of doves,--
+There is peace: yes, the peace that the Copperhead loves.
+
+Go seek him: he coils in the ooze and the drip,
+Like a thong idly flung from the slave-driver's whip;
+But beware the false footstep,--the stumble that brings
+A deadlier lash than the overseer swings.
+Never arrow so true, never bullet so dread,
+As the straight steady stroke of that hammer-shaped head;
+Whether slave or proud planter, who braves that dull crest,
+Woe to him who shall trouble the Copperhead's rest!
+
+Then why waste your labors, brave hearts and strong men,
+In tracking a trail to the Copperhead's den?
+Lay your axe to the cypress, hew open the shade
+To the free sky and sunshine Jehovah has made;
+Let the breeze of the North sweep the vapors away,
+Till the stagnant lake ripples, the freed waters play;
+And then to your heel can you righteously doom
+The Copperhead born of its shadow and gloom!
+
+
+A SANITARY MESSAGE
+
+Last night, above the whistling wind,
+  I heard the welcome rain,--
+A fusillade upon the roof,
+  A tattoo on the pane:
+The keyhole piped; the chimney-top
+  A warlike trumpet blew;
+Yet, mingling with these sounds of strife,
+  A softer voice stole through.
+
+"Give thanks, O brothers!" said the voice,
+  "That He who sent the rains
+Hath spared your fields the scarlet dew
+  That drips from patriot veins:
+I've seen the grass on Eastern graves
+  In brighter verdure rise;
+But, oh! the rain that gave it life
+  Sprang first from human eyes.
+
+"I come to wash away no stain
+  Upon your wasted lea;
+I raise no banners, save the ones
+  The forest waves to me:
+Upon the mountain side, where Spring
+  Her farthest picket sets,
+My reveille awakes a host
+  Of grassy bayonets.
+
+"I visit every humble roof;
+  I mingle with the low:
+Only upon the highest peaks
+  My blessings fall in snow;
+Until, in tricklings of the stream
+  And drainings of the lea,
+My unspent bounty comes at last
+  To mingle with the sea."
+
+And thus all night, above the wind,
+  I heard the welcome rain,--
+A fusillade upon the roof,
+  A tattoo on the pane:
+The keyhole piped; the chimney-top
+  A warlike trumpet blew;
+But, mingling with these sounds of strife,
+  This hymn of peace stole through.
+
+
+THE OLD MAJOR EXPLAINS
+
+(RE-UNION, ARMY OF THE POTOMAC, 12TH MAY, 1871)
+
+Well, you see, the fact is, Colonel, I don't know as I can come:
+For the farm is not half planted, and there's work to do at home;
+And my leg is getting troublesome,--it laid me up last fall,--
+And the doctors, they have cut and hacked, and never found the ball.
+
+And then, for an old man like me, it's not exactly right,
+This kind o' playing soldier with no enemy in sight.
+"The Union,"--that was well enough way up to '66;
+But this "Re-Union," maybe now it's mixed with politics?
+
+No?  Well, you understand it best; but then, you see, my lad,
+I'm deacon now, and some might think that the example's bad.
+And week from next is Conference. . . .  You said the twelfth of May?
+Why, that's the day we broke their line at Spottsylvan-i-a!
+
+Hot work; eh, Colonel, wasn't it?  Ye mind that narrow front:
+They called it the "Death-Angle"!  Well, well, my lad, we won't
+Fight that old battle over now: I only meant to say
+I really can't engage to come upon the twelfth of May.
+
+How's Thompson?  What! will he be there?  Well, now I want to know!
+The first man in the rebel works! they called him "Swearing Joe."
+A wild young fellow, sir, I fear the rascal was; but then--
+Well, short of heaven, there wa'n't a place he dursn't lead his men.
+
+And Dick, you say, is coming too.  And Billy? ah! it's true
+We buried him at Gettysburg: I mind the spot; do you?
+A little field below the hill,--it must be green this May;
+Perhaps that's why the fields about bring him to me to-day.
+
+Well, well, excuse me, Colonel! but there are some things that drop
+The tail-board out one's feelings; and the only way's to stop.
+So they want to see the old man; ah, the rascals! do they, eh?
+Well, I've business down in Boston about the twelfth of May.
+
+
+CALIFORNIA'S GREETING TO SEWARD
+
+(1869)
+
+We know him well: no need of praise
+  Or bonfire from the windy hill
+To light to softer paths and ways
+  The world-worn man we honor still.
+
+No need to quote the truths he spoke
+  That burned through years of war and shame,
+While History carves with surer stroke
+  Across our map his noonday fame.
+
+No need to bid him show the scars
+  Of blows dealt by the Scaean gate,
+Who lived to pass its shattered bars,
+  And see the foe capitulate:
+
+Who lived to turn his slower feet
+  Toward the western setting sun,
+To see his harvest all complete,
+  His dream fulfilled, his duty done,
+
+The one flag streaming from the pole,
+  The one faith borne from sea to sea:
+For such a triumph, and such goal,
+  Poor must our human greeting be.
+
+Ah! rather that the conscious land
+  In simpler ways salute the Man,--
+The tall pines bowing where they stand,
+  The bared head of El Capitan!
+
+The tumult of the waterfalls,
+  Pohono's kerchief in the breeze,
+The waving from the rocky walls,
+  The stir and rustle of the trees;
+
+Till, lapped in sunset skies of hope,
+  In sunset lands by sunset seas,
+The Young World's Premier treads the slope
+  Of sunset years in calm and peace.
+
+
+THE AGED STRANGER
+
+AN INCIDENT OF THE WAR
+
+"I was with Grant"--the stranger said;
+  Said the farmer, "Say no more,
+But rest thee here at my cottage porch,
+  For thy feet are weary and sore."
+
+"I was with Grant"--the stranger said;
+  Said the farmer, "Nay, no more,--
+I prithee sit at my frugal board,
+  And eat of my humble store.
+
+"How fares my boy,--my soldier boy,
+  Of the old Ninth Army Corps?
+I warrant he bore him gallantly
+  In the smoke and the battle's roar!"
+
+"I know him not," said the aged man,
+  "And, as I remarked before,
+I was with Grant"--  "Nay, nay, I know,"
+  Said the farmer, "say no more:
+
+"He fell in battle,--I see, alas!
+  Thou'dst smooth these tidings o'er,--
+Nay, speak the truth, whatever it be,
+  Though it rend my bosom's core.
+
+"How fell he?  With his face to the foe,
+  Upholding the flag he bore?
+Oh, say not that my boy disgraced
+  The uniform that he wore!"
+
+"I cannot tell," said the aged man,
+  "And should have remarked before.
+That I was with Grant,--in Illinois,--
+  Some three years before the war."
+
+Then the farmer spake him never a word,
+  But beat with his fist full sore
+That aged man who had worked for Grant
+  Some three years before the war.
+
+
+THE IDYL OF BATTLE HOLLOW
+
+(WAR OF THE REBELLION, 1884)
+
+No, I won't,--thar, now, so!  And it ain't nothin',--no!
+And thar's nary to tell that you folks yer don't know;
+And it's "Belle, tell us, do!" and it's "Belle, is it true?"
+And "Wot's this yer yarn of the Major and you?"
+Till I'm sick of it all,--so I am, but I s'pose
+Thet is nothin' to you. . . .  Well, then, listen! yer goes!
+
+It was after the fight, and around us all night
+Thar was poppin' and shootin' a powerful sight;
+And the niggers had fled, and Aunt Chlo was abed,
+And Pinky and Milly were hid in the shed:
+And I ran out at daybreak, and nothin' was nigh
+But the growlin' of cannon low down in the sky.
+
+And I saw not a thing, as I ran to the spring,
+But a splintered fence rail and a broken-down swing,
+And a bird said "Kerchee!" as it sat on a tree,
+As if it was lonesome, and glad to see me;
+And I filled up my pail and was risin' to go,
+When up comes the Major a-canterin' slow.
+
+When he saw me he drew in his reins, and then threw
+On the gate-post his bridle, and--what does he do
+But come down where I sat; and he lifted his hat,
+And he says--well, thar ain't any need to tell THAT;
+'Twas some foolishness, sure, but it 'mounted to this,
+Thet he asked for a drink, and he wanted--a kiss.
+
+Then I said (I was mad), "For the water, my lad,
+You're too big and must stoop; for a kiss, it's as bad,--
+You ain't near big enough."  And I turned in a huff,
+When that Major he laid his white hand on my cuff,
+And he says, "You're a trump!  Take my pistol, don't fear!
+But shoot the next man that insults you, my dear."
+
+Then he stooped to the pool, very quiet and cool,
+Leavin' me with that pistol stuck there like a fool,
+When thar flashed on my sight a quick glimmer of light
+From the top of the little stone fence on the right,
+And I knew 'twas a rifle, and back of it all
+Rose the face of that bushwhacker, Cherokee Hall!
+
+Then I felt in my dread that the moment the head
+Of the Major was lifted, the Major was dead;
+And I stood still and white, but Lord! gals, in spite
+Of my care, that derned pistol went off in my fright!
+Went off--true as gospil!--and, strangest of all,
+It actooally injured that Cherokee Hall!
+
+Thet's all--now, go 'long!  Yes, some folks thinks it's wrong,
+And thar's some wants to know to what side I belong;
+But I says, "Served him right!" and I go, all my might,
+In love or in war, for a fair stand-up fight;
+And as for the Major--sho! gals, don't you know
+Thet--Lord! thar's his step in the garden below.
+
+
+CALDWELL OF SPRINGFIELD
+
+(NEW JERSEY, 1780)
+
+Here's the spot.  Look around you.  Above on the height
+Lay the Hessians encamped.  By that church on the right
+Stood the gaunt Jersey farmers.  And here ran a wall,--
+You may dig anywhere and you'll turn up a ball.
+Nothing more.  Grasses spring, waters run, flowers blow,
+Pretty much as they did ninety-three years ago.
+
+Nothing more, did I say?  Stay one moment: you've heard
+Of Caldwell, the parson, who once preached the word
+Down at Springfield?  What, no?  Come--that's bad; why, he had
+All the Jerseys aflame!  And they gave him the name
+Of the "rebel high priest."  He stuck in their gorge,
+For he loved the Lord God--and he hated King George!
+
+He had cause, you might say!  When the Hessians that day
+Marched up with Knyphausen, they stopped on their way
+At the "farms," where his wife, with a child in her arms,
+Sat alone in the house.  How it happened none knew
+But God--and that one of the hireling crew
+Who fired the shot!  Enough!--there she lay,
+And Caldwell, the chaplain, her husband, away!
+
+Did he preach--did he pray?  Think of him as you stand
+By the old church to-day,--think of him and his band
+Of militant ploughboys!  See the smoke and the heat
+Of that reckless advance, of that straggling retreat!
+Keep the ghost of that wife, foully slain, in your view--
+And what could you, what should you, what would YOU do?
+
+Why, just what HE did!  They were left in the lurch
+For the want of more wadding.  He ran to the church,
+Broke the door, stripped the pews, and dashed out in the road
+With his arms full of hymn-books, and threw down his load
+At their feet!  Then above all the shouting and shots
+Rang his voice: "Put Watts into 'em!  Boys, give 'em Watts!"
+
+And they did.  That is all.  Grasses spring, flowers blow,
+Pretty much as they did ninety-three years ago.
+You may dig anywhere and you'll turn up a ball--
+But not always a hero like this--and that's all.
+
+
+POEM
+
+DELIVERED ON THE FOURTEENTH ANNIVERSARY OF CALIFORNIA'S ADMISSION
+INTO THE UNION, SEPTEMBER 9, 1864
+
+We meet in peace, though from our native East
+The sun that sparkles on our birthday feast
+Glanced as he rose on fields whose dews were red
+With darker tints than those Aurora spread.
+Though shorn his rays, his welcome disk concealed
+In the dim smoke that veiled each battlefield,
+Still striving upward, in meridian pride,
+He climbed the walls that East and West divide,--
+Saw his bright face flashed back from golden sand,
+And sapphire seas that lave the Western land.
+
+Strange was the contrast that such scenes disclose
+From his high vantage o'er eternal snows;
+There War's alarm the brazen trumpet rings--
+Here his love-song the mailed cicala sings;
+There bayonets glitter through the forest glades--
+Here yellow cornfields stack their peaceful blades;
+There the deep trench where Valor finds a grave--
+Here the long ditch that curbs the peaceful wave;
+There the bold sapper with his lighted train--
+Here the dark tunnel and its stores of gain;
+Here the full harvest and the wain's advance--
+There the Grim Reaper and the ambulance.
+
+With scenes so adverse, what mysterious bond
+Links our fair fortunes to the shores beyond?
+Why come we here--last of a scattered fold--
+To pour new metal in the broken mould?
+To yield our tribute, stamped with Caesar's face,
+To Caesar, stricken in the market-place?
+
+Ah! love of country is the secret tie
+That joins these contrasts 'neath one arching sky;
+Though brighter paths our peaceful steps explore,
+We meet together at the Nation's door.
+War winds her horn, and giant cliffs go down
+Like the high walls that girt the sacred town,
+And bares the pathway to her throbbing heart,
+From clustered village and from crowded mart.
+
+Part of God's providence it was to found
+A Nation's bulwark on this chosen ground;
+Not Jesuit's zeal nor pioneer's unrest
+Planted these pickets in the distant West,
+But He who first the Nation's fate forecast
+Placed here His fountains sealed for ages past,
+Rock-ribbed and guarded till the coming time
+Should fit the people for their work sublime;
+When a new Moses with his rod of steel
+Smote the tall cliffs with one wide-ringing peal,
+And the old miracle in record told
+To the new Nation was revealed in gold.
+
+Judge not too idly that our toils are mean,
+Though no new levies marshal on our green;
+Nor deem too rashly that our gains are small,
+Weighed with the prizes for which heroes fall.
+See, where thick vapor wreathes the battle-line;
+There Mercy follows with her oil and wine;
+Or where brown Labor with its peaceful charm
+Stiffens the sinews of the Nation's arm.
+What nerves its hands to strike a deadlier blow
+And hurl its legions on the rebel foe?
+Lo! for each town new rising o'er our State
+See the foe's hamlet waste and desolate,
+While each new factory lifts its chimney tall,
+Like a fresh mortar trained on Richmond's wall.
+
+For this, O brothers, swings the fruitful vine,
+Spread our broad pastures with their countless kine:
+For this o'erhead the arching vault springs clear,
+Sunlit and cloudless for one half the year;
+For this no snowflake, e'er so lightly pressed,
+Chills the warm impulse of our mother's breast.
+Quick to reply, from meadows brown and sere,
+She thrills responsive to Spring's earliest tear;
+Breaks into blossom, flings her loveliest rose
+Ere the white crocus mounts Atlantic snows;
+And the example of her liberal creed
+Teaches the lesson that to-day we heed.
+
+Thus ours the lot with peaceful, generous hand
+To spread our bounty o'er the suffering land;
+As the deep cleft in Mariposa's wall
+Hurls a vast river splintering in its fall,--
+Though the rapt soul who stands in awe below
+Sees but the arching of the promised bow,
+Lo! the far streamlet drinks its dews unseen,
+And the whole valley wakes a brighter green.
+
+
+MISS BLANCHE SAYS
+
+And you are the poet, and so you want
+  Something--what is it?--a theme, a fancy?
+Something or other the Muse won't grant
+  To your old poetical necromancy;
+Why, one half you poets--you can't deny--
+  Don't know the Muse when you chance to meet her,
+But sit in your attics and mope and sigh
+For a faineant goddess to drop from the sky,
+When flesh and blood may be standing by
+  Quite at your service, should you but greet her.
+
+What if I told you my own romance?
+  Women are poets, if you so take them,
+One third poet,--the rest what chance
+  Of man and marriage may choose to make them.
+Give me ten minutes before you go,--
+  Here at the window we'll sit together,
+Watching the currents that ebb and flow;
+Watching the world as it drifts below
+Up the hot Avenue's dusty glow:
+  Isn't it pleasant, this bright June weather?
+
+Well, it was after the war broke out,
+  And I was a schoolgirl fresh from Paris;
+Papa had contracts, and roamed about,
+  And I--did nothing--for I was an heiress.
+Picked some lint, now I think; perhaps
+  Knitted some stockings--a dozen nearly:
+Havelocks made for the soldiers' caps;
+Stood at fair-tables and peddled traps
+Quite at a profit.  The "shoulder-straps"
+  Thought I was pretty.  Ah, thank you! really?
+
+Still it was stupid.  Rata-tat-tat!
+  Those were the sounds of that battle summer,
+Till the earth seemed a parchment round and flat,
+  And every footfall the tap of a drummer;
+And day by day down the Avenue went
+  Cavalry, infantry, all together,
+Till my pitying angel one day sent
+My fate in the shape of a regiment,
+That halted, just as the day was spent,
+  Here at our door in the bright June weather.
+
+None of your dandy warriors they,--
+  Men from the West, but where I know not;
+Haggard and travel-stained, worn and gray,
+  With never a ribbon or lace or bow-knot:
+And I opened the window, and, leaning there,
+  I felt in their presence the free winds blowing.
+My neck and shoulders and arms were bare,--
+I did not dream they might think me fair,
+But I had some flowers that night in my hair,
+  And here, on my bosom, a red rose glowing.
+
+And I looked from the window along the line,
+  Dusty and dirty and grim and solemn,
+Till an eye like a bayonet flash met mine,
+  And a dark face shone from the darkening column,
+And a quick flame leaped to my eyes and hair,
+  Till cheeks and shoulders burned all together,
+And the next I found myself standing there
+With my eyelids wet and my cheeks less fair,
+And the rose from my bosom tossed high in air,
+  Like a blood-drop falling on plume and feather.
+
+Then I drew back quickly: there came a cheer,
+  A rush of figures, a noise and tussle,
+And then it was over, and high and clear
+  My red rose bloomed on his gun's black muzzle.
+Then far in the darkness a sharp voice cried,
+  And slowly and steadily, all together,
+Shoulder to shoulder and side to side,
+Rising and falling and swaying wide,
+But bearing above them the rose, my pride,
+  They marched away in the twilight weather.
+
+And I leaned from my window and watched my rose
+  Tossed on the waves of the surging column,
+Warmed from above in the sunset glows,
+  Borne from below by an impulse solemn.
+Then I shut the window.  I heard no more
+  Of my soldier friend, nor my flower neither,
+But lived my life as I did before.
+I did not go as a nurse to the war,--
+Sick folks to me are a dreadful bore,--
+  So I didn't go to the hospital either.
+
+You smile, O poet, and what do you?
+  You lean from your window, and watch life's column
+Trampling and struggling through dust and dew,
+  Filled with its purposes grave and solemn;
+And an act, a gesture, a face--who knows?--
+  Touches your fancy to thrill and haunt you,
+And you pluck from your bosom the verse that grows
+And down it flies like my red, red rose,
+And you sit and dream as away it goes,
+  And think that your duty is done,--now don't you?
+
+I know your answer.  I'm not yet through.
+  Look at this photograph,--"In the Trenches"!
+That dead man in the coat of blue
+  Holds a withered rose in his hand.  That clenches
+Nothing!--except that the sun paints true,
+  And a woman is sometimes prophetic-minded.
+And that's my romance.  And, poet, you
+Take it and mould it to suit your view;
+And who knows but you may find it too
+  Come to your heart once more, as mine did.
+
+
+AN ARCTIC VISION
+
+Where the short-legged Esquimaux
+Waddle in the ice and snow,
+And the playful Polar bear
+Nips the hunter unaware;
+Where by day they track the ermine,
+And by night another vermin,--
+Segment of the frigid zone,
+Where the temperature alone
+Warms on St. Elias' cone;
+Polar dock, where Nature slips
+From the ways her icy ships;
+Land of fox and deer and sable,
+Shore end of our western cable,--
+Let the news that flying goes
+Thrill through all your Arctic floes,
+And reverberate the boast
+From the cliffs off Beechey's coast,
+Till the tidings, circling round
+Every bay of Norton Sound,
+Throw the vocal tide-wave back
+To the isles of Kodiac.
+Let the stately Polar bears
+Waltz around the pole in pairs,
+And the walrus, in his glee,
+Bare his tusk of ivory;
+While the bold sea-unicorn
+Calmly takes an extra horn;
+All ye Polar skies, reveal your
+Very rarest of parhelia;
+Trip it, all ye merry dancers,
+In the airiest of "Lancers;"
+Slide, ye solemn glaciers, slide,
+One inch farther to the tide,
+Nor in rash precipitation
+Upset Tyndall's calculation.
+Know you not what fate awaits you,
+Or to whom the future mates you?
+All ye icebergs, make salaam,--
+You belong to Uncle Sam!
+
+On the spot where Eugene Sue
+Led his wretched Wandering Jew,
+Stands a form whose features strike
+Russ and Esquimaux alike.
+He it is whom Skalds of old
+In their Runic rhymes foretold;
+Lean of flank and lank of jaw,
+See the real Northern Thor!
+See the awful Yankee leering
+Just across the Straits of Behring;
+On the drifted snow, too plain,
+Sinks his fresh tobacco stain,
+Just beside the deep inden-
+Tation of his Number 10.
+
+Leaning on his icy hammer
+Stands the hero of this drama,
+And above the wild-duck's clamor,
+In his own peculiar grammar,
+With its linguistic disguises,
+La! the Arctic prologue rises:
+"Wall, I reckon 'tain't so bad,
+Seein' ez 'twas all they had.
+
+True, the Springs are rather late,
+And early Falls predominate;
+But the ice-crop's pretty sure,
+And the air is kind o' pure;
+'Tain't so very mean a trade,
+When the land is all surveyed.
+There's a right smart chance for fur-chase
+All along this recent purchase,
+And, unless the stories fail,
+Every fish from cod to whale;
+Rocks, too; mebbe quartz; let's see,--
+'Twould be strange if there should be,--
+Seems I've heerd such stories told;
+Eh!--why, bless us,--yes, it's gold!"
+
+While the blows are falling thick
+From his California pick,
+You may recognize the Thor
+Of the vision that I saw,--
+Freed from legendary glamour,
+See the real magician's hammer.
+
+
+ST. THOMAS
+
+(A GEOGRAPHICAL SURVEY, 1868)
+
+Very fair and full of promise
+Lay the island of St. Thomas:
+Ocean o'er its reefs and bars
+Hid its elemental scars;
+Groves of cocoanut and guava
+Grew above its fields of lava.
+So the gem of the Antilles--
+"Isles of Eden," where no ill is--
+Like a great green turtle slumbered
+On the sea that it encumbered.
+
+Then said William Henry Seward,
+As he cast his eye to leeward,
+"Quite important to our commerce
+Is this island of St. Thomas."
+
+Said the Mountain ranges, "Thank'ee,
+But we cannot stand the Yankee
+O'er our scars and fissures poring,
+In our very vitals boring,
+In our sacred caverns prying,
+All our secret problems trying,--
+Digging, blasting, with dynamit
+Mocking all our thunders!  Damn it!
+Other lands may be more civil;
+Bust our lava crust if we will!"
+
+Said the Sea, its white teeth gnashing
+Through its coral-reef lips flashing,
+"Shall I let this scheming mortal
+Shut with stone my shining portal,
+Curb my tide and check my play,
+Fence with wharves my shining bay?
+Rather let me be drawn out
+In one awful waterspout!"
+
+Said the black-browed Hurricane,
+Brooding down the Spanish Main,
+"Shall I see my forces, zounds!
+Measured by square inch and pounds,
+With detectives at my back
+When I double on my track,
+And my secret paths made clear,
+Published o'er the hemisphere
+To each gaping, prying crew?
+Shall I?  Blow me if I do!"
+
+So the Mountains shook and thundered,
+And the Hurricane came sweeping,
+And the people stared and wondered
+As the Sea came on them leaping:
+Each, according to his promise,
+Made things lively at St. Thomas.
+
+Till one morn, when Mr. Seward
+Cast his weather eye to leeward,
+There was not an inch of dry land
+Left to mark his recent island.
+Not a flagstaff or a sentry,
+Not a wharf or port of entry,--
+Only--to cut matters shorter--
+Just a patch of muddy water
+In the open ocean lying,
+And a gull above it flying.
+
+
+OFF SCARBOROUGH
+
+(SEPTEMBER, 1779)
+
+I
+
+"Have a care!" the bailiffs cried
+  From their cockleshell that lay
+Off the frigate's yellow side,
+  Tossing on Scarborough Bay,
+While the forty sail it convoyed on a bowline stretched away.
+"Take your chicks beneath your wings,
+  And your claws and feathers spread,
+Ere the hawk upon them springs,--
+  Ere around Flamborough Head
+Swoops Paul Jones, the Yankee falcon, with his beak and talons red."
+
+II
+
+How we laughed!--my mate and I,--
+  On the "Bon Homme Richard's" deck,
+As we saw that convoy fly
+  Like a snow-squall, till each fleck
+Melted in the twilight shadows of the coast-line, speck by speck;
+And scuffling back to shore
+  The Scarborough bailiffs sped,
+As the "Richard" with a roar
+  Of her cannon round the Head,
+Crossed her royal yards and signaled to her consort: "Chase ahead"
+
+III
+
+But the devil seize Landais
+  In that consort ship of France!
+For the shabby, lubber way
+  That he worked the "Alliance"
+In the offing,--nor a broadside fired save to our mischance!--
+When tumbling to the van,
+  With his battle-lanterns set,
+Rose the burly Englishman
+  'Gainst our hull as black as jet,--
+Rode the yellow-sided "Serapis," and all alone we met!
+
+IV
+
+All alone, though far at sea
+  Hung his consort, rounding to;
+All alone, though on our lee
+  Fought our "Pallas," stanch and true!
+For the first broadside around us both a smoky circle drew:
+And, like champions in a ring,
+  There was cleared a little space--
+Scarce a cable's length to swing--
+  Ere we grappled in embrace,
+All the world shut out around us, and we only face to face!
+
+V
+
+Then awoke all hell below
+  From that broadside, doubly curst,
+For our long eighteens in row
+  Leaped the first discharge and burst!
+And on deck our men came pouring, fearing their own guns the worst.
+And as dumb we lay, till, through
+  Smoke and flame and bitter cry,
+Hailed the "Serapis:" "Have you
+  Struck your colors?" Our reply,
+"We have not yet begun to fight!" went shouting to the sky!
+
+VI
+
+Roux of Brest, old fisher, lay
+  Like a herring gasping here;
+Bunker of Nantucket Bay,
+  Blown from out the port, dropped sheer
+Half a cable's length to leeward; yet we faintly raised a cheer
+As with his own right hand
+  Our Commodore made fast
+The foeman's head-gear and
+  The "Richard's" mizzen-mast,
+And in that death-lock clinging held us there from first to last!
+
+VII
+
+Yet the foeman, gun on gun,
+  Through the "Richard" tore a road,
+With his gunners' rammers run
+  Through our ports at every load,
+Till clear the blue beyond us through our yawning timbers showed.
+Yet with entrails torn we clung
+  Like the Spartan to our fox,
+And on deck no coward tongue
+  Wailed the enemy's hard knocks,
+Nor that all below us trembled like a wreck upon the rocks.
+
+VIII
+
+Then a thought rose in my brain,
+  As through Channel mists the sun.
+From our tops a fire like rain
+  Drove below decks every one
+Of the enemy's ship's company to hide or work a gun:
+And that thought took shape as I
+  On the "Richard's" yard lay out,
+That a man might do and die,
+  If the doing brought about
+Freedom for his home and country, and his messmates' cheering shout!
+
+IX
+
+Then I crept out in the dark
+  Till I hung above the hatch
+Of the "Serapis,"--a mark
+  For her marksmen!--with a match
+And a hand-grenade, but lingered just a moment more to snatch
+One last look at sea and sky!
+  At the lighthouse on the hill!
+At the harvest-moon on high!
+  And our pine flag fluttering still!
+Then turned and down her yawning throat I launched that devil's pill!
+
+X
+
+Then a blank was all between
+  As the flames around me spun!
+Had I fired the magazine?
+  Was the victory lost or won?
+Nor knew I till the fight was o'er but half my work was done:
+For I lay among the dead
+  In the cockpit of our foe,
+With a roar above my head,--
+  Till a trampling to and fro,
+And a lantern showed my mate's face, and I knew what now you know!
+
+
+CADET GREY
+
+CANTO I
+
+I
+
+Act first, scene first.  A study.  Of a kind
+  Half cell, half salon, opulent yet grave;
+Rare books, low-shelved, yet far above the mind
+  Of common man to compass or to crave;
+Some slight relief of pamphlets that inclined
+  The soul at first to trifling, till, dismayed
+By text and title, it drew back resigned,
+  Nor cared with levity to vex a shade
+  That to itself such perfect concord made.
+
+II
+
+Some thoughts like these perplexed the patriot brain
+  Of Jones, Lawgiver to the Commonwealth,
+As on the threshold of this chaste domain
+  He paused expectant, and looked up in stealth
+To darkened canvases that frowned amain,
+  With stern-eyed Puritans, who first began
+To spread their roots in Georgius Primus' reign,
+  Nor dropped till now, obedient to some plan,
+  Their century fruit,--the perfect Boston man.
+
+III
+
+Somewhere within that Russia-scented gloom
+  A voice catarrhal thrilled the Member's ear:
+"Brief is our business, Jones.  Look round this room!
+  Regard yon portraits!  Read their meaning clear!
+These much proclaim MY station.  I presume
+  YOU are our Congressman, before whose wit
+And sober judgment shall the youth appear
+  Who for West Point is deemed most just and fit
+  To serve his country and to honor it.
+
+IV
+
+"Such is my son!  Elsewhere perhaps 'twere wise
+  Trial competitive should guide your choice.
+There are some people I can well surmise
+  Themselves must show their merits.  History's voice
+Spares me that trouble: all desert that lies
+  In yonder ancestor of Queen Anne's day,
+Or yon grave Governor, is all my boy's,--
+  Reverts to him; entailed, as one might say;
+  In brief, result in Winthrop Adams Grey!"
+
+V
+
+He turned and laid his well-bred hand, and smiled,
+  On the cropped head of one who stood beside.
+Ah me! in sooth it was no ruddy child
+  Nor brawny youth that thrilled the father's pride;
+'Twas but a Mind that somehow had beguiled
+  From soulless Matter processes that served
+For speech and motion and digestion mild,
+  Content if all one moral purpose nerved,
+  Nor recked thereby its spine were somewhat curved.
+
+VI
+
+He was scarce eighteen.  Yet ere he was eight
+  He had despoiled the classics; much he knew
+Of Sanskrit; not that he placed undue weight
+  On this, but that it helped him with Hebrew,
+His favorite tongue.  He learned, alas! too late,
+  One can't begin too early,--would regret
+That boyish whim to ascertain the state
+  Of Venus' atmosphere made him forget
+  That philologic goal on which his soul was set.
+
+VII
+
+He too had traveled; at the age of ten
+  Found Paris empty, dull except for art
+And accent.  "Mabille" with its glories then
+  Less than Egyptian "Almees" touched a heart
+Nothing if not pure classic.  If some men
+  Thought him a prig, it vexed not his conceit,
+But moved his pity, and ofttimes his pen,
+  The better to instruct them, through some sheet
+  Published in Boston, and signed "Beacon Street."
+
+VIII
+
+From premises so plain the blind could see
+  But one deduction, and it came next day.
+"In times like these, the very name of G.
+  Speaks volumes," wrote the Honorable J.
+"Inclosed please find appointment."  Presently
+  Came a reception to which Harvard lent
+Fourteen professors, and, to give esprit,
+  The Liberal Club some eighteen ladies sent,
+  Five that spoke Greek, and thirteen sentiment.
+
+IX
+
+Four poets came who loved each other's song,
+  And two philosophers, who thought that they
+Were in most things impractical and wrong;
+  And two reformers, each in his own way
+Peculiar,--one who had waxed strong
+  On herbs and water, and such simple fare;
+Two foreign lions, "Ram See" and "Chy Long,"
+  And several artists claimed attention there,
+  Based on the fact they had been snubbed elsewhere.
+
+X
+
+With this indorsement nothing now remained
+  But counsel, Godspeed, and some calm adieux;
+No foolish tear the father's eyelash stained,
+  And Winthrop's cheek as guiltless shone of dew.
+A slight publicity, such as obtained
+  In classic Rome, these few last hours attended.
+The day arrived, the train and depot gained,
+  The mayor's own presence this last act commended
+  The train moved off and here the first act ended.
+
+CANTO II
+
+I
+
+Where West Point crouches, and with lifted shield
+  Turns the whole river eastward through the pass;
+Whose jutting crags, half silver, stand revealed
+  Like bossy bucklers of Leonidas;
+Where buttressed low against the storms that wield
+  Their summer lightnings where her eaglets swarm,
+By Freedom's cradle Nature's self has steeled
+  Her heart, like Winkelried, and to that storm
+  Of leveled lances bares her bosom warm.
+
+II
+
+But not to-night.  The air and woods are still,
+  The faintest rustle in the trees below,
+The lowest tremor from the mountain rill,
+  Come to the ear as but the trailing flow
+Of spirit robes that walk unseen the hill;
+  The moon low sailing o'er the upland farm,
+The moon low sailing where the waters fill
+  The lozenge lake, beside the banks of balm,
+  Gleams like a chevron on the river's arm.
+
+III
+
+All space breathes languor: from the hilltop high,
+  Where Putnam's bastion crumbles in the past,
+To swooning depths where drowsy cannon lie
+  And wide-mouthed mortars gape in slumbers vast;
+Stroke upon stroke, the far oars glance and die
+  On the hushed bosom of the sleeping stream;
+Bright for one moment drifts a white sail by,
+  Bright for one moment shows a bayonet gleam
+  Far on the level plain, then passes as a dream.
+
+IV
+
+Soft down the line of darkened battlements,
+  Bright on each lattice of the barrack walls,
+Where the low arching sallyport indents,
+  Seen through its gloom beyond, the moonbeam falls.
+All is repose save where the camping tents
+  Mock the white gravestones farther on, where sound
+No morning guns for reveille, nor whence
+  No drum-beat calls retreat, but still is ever found
+  Waiting and present on each sentry's round.
+
+V
+
+Within the camp they lie, the young, the brave,
+  Half knight, half schoolboy, acolytes of fame,
+Pledged to one altar, and perchance one grave;
+  Bred to fear nothing but reproach and blame,
+Ascetic dandies o'er whom vestals rave,
+  Clean-limbed young Spartans, disciplined young elves,
+Taught to destroy, that they may live to save,
+  Students embattled, soldiers at their shelves,
+  Heroes whose conquests are at first themselves.
+
+VI
+
+Within the camp they lie, in dreams are freed
+  From the grim discipline they learn to love;
+In dreams no more the sentry's challenge heed,
+  In dreams afar beyond their pickets rove;
+One treads once more the piny paths that lead
+  To his green mountain home, and pausing hears
+The cattle call; one treads the tangled weed
+  Of slippery rocks beside Atlantic piers;
+  One smiles in sleep, one wakens wet with tears.
+
+VII
+
+One scents the breath of jasmine flowers that twine
+  The pillared porches of his Southern home;
+One hears the coo of pigeons in the pine
+  Of Western woods where he was wont to roam;
+One sees the sunset fire the distant line
+  Where the long prairie sweeps its levels down;
+One treads the snow-peaks; one by lamps that shine
+  Down the broad highways of the sea-girt town;
+  And two are missing,--Cadets Grey and Brown!
+
+VIII
+
+Much as I grieve to chronicle the fact,
+  That selfsame truant known as "Cadet Grey"
+Was the young hero of our moral tract,
+  Shorn of his twofold names on entrance-day.
+"Winthrop" and "Adams" dropped in that one act
+  Of martial curtness, and the roll-call thinned
+Of his ancestors, he with youthful tact
+  Indulgence claimed, since Winthrop no more sinned,
+Nor sainted Adams winced when he, plain Grey, was "skinned."
+
+
+IX
+
+He had known trials since we saw him last,
+  By sheer good luck had just escaped rejection,
+Not for his learning, but that it was cast
+  In a spare frame scarce fit for drill inspection;
+But when he ope'd his lips a stream so vast
+  Of information flooded each professor,
+They quite forgot his eyeglass,--something past
+  All precedent,--accepting the transgressor,
+  Weak eyes and all of which he was possessor.
+
+X
+
+E'en the first day he touched a blackboard's space--
+  So the tradition of his glory lingers--
+Two wise professors fainted, each with face
+  White as the chalk within his rapid fingers:
+All day he ciphered, at such frantic pace,
+  His form was hid in chalk precipitation
+Of every problem, till they said his case
+  Could meet from them no fair examination
+  Till Congress made a new appropriation.
+
+XI
+
+Famous in molecules, he demonstrated
+  From the mess hash to many a listening classful;
+Great as a botanist, he separated
+  Three kinds of "Mentha" in one julep's glassful;
+High in astronomy, it has been stated
+  He was the first at West Point to discover
+Mars' missing satellites, and calculated
+  Their true positions, not the heavens over,
+  But 'neath the window of Miss Kitty Rover.
+
+XII
+
+Indeed, I fear this novelty celestial
+  That very night was visible and clear;
+At least two youths of aspect most terrestrial,
+  And clad in uniform, were loitering near
+A villa's casement, where a gentle vestal
+  Took their impatience somewhat patiently,
+Knowing the youths were somewhat green and "bestial"--
+  (A certain slang of the Academy,
+  I beg the reader won't refer to me).
+
+XIII
+
+For when they ceased their ardent strain, Miss Kitty
+  Glowed not with anger nor a kindred flame,
+But rather flushed with an odd sort of pity,
+  Half matron's kindness, and half coquette's shame;
+Proud yet quite blameful, when she heard their ditty
+  She gave her soul poetical expression,
+And being clever too, as she was pretty,
+  From her high casement warbled this confession,--
+  Half provocation and one half repression:--
+
+
+                 NOT YET
+
+Not yet, O friend, not yet! the patient stars
+Lean from their lattices, content to wait.
+All is illusion till the morning bars
+Slip from the levels of the Eastern gate.
+Night is too young, O friend! day is too near;
+Wait for the day that maketh all things clear.
+      Not yet, O friend, not yet!
+
+Not yet, O love, not yet! all is not true,
+All is not ever as it seemeth now.
+Soon shall the river take another blue,
+Soon dies yon light upon the mountain brow.
+What lieth dark, O love, bright day will fill;
+Wait for thy morning, be it good or ill.
+      Not yet, O love, not yet!
+
+
+XIV
+
+The strain was finished; softly as the night
+  Her voice died from the window, yet e'en then
+Fluttered and fell likewise a kerchief white;
+  But that no doubt was accident, for when
+She sought her couch she deemed her conduct quite
+  Beyond the reach of scandalous commenter,--
+Washing her hands of either gallant wight,
+  Knowing the moralist might compliment her,--
+  Thus voicing Siren with the words of Mentor.
+
+XV
+
+She little knew the youths below, who straight
+  Dived for her kerchief, and quite overlooked
+The pregnant moral she would inculcate;
+  Nor dreamed the less how little Winthrop brooked
+Her right to doubt his soul's maturer state.
+  Brown--who was Western, amiable, and new--
+Might take the moral and accept his fate;
+  The which he did, but, being stronger too,
+  Took the white kerchief, also, as his due.
+
+XVI
+
+They did not quarrel, which no doubt seemed queer
+  To those who knew not how their friendship blended;
+Each was opposed, and each the other's peer,
+  Yet each the other in some things transcended.
+Where Brown lacked culture, brains,--and oft, I fear,
+  Cash in his pocket,--Grey of course supplied him;
+Where Grey lacked frankness, force, and faith sincere,
+  Brown of his manhood suffered none to chide him,
+  But in his faults stood manfully beside him.
+
+XVII
+
+In academic walks and studies grave,
+  In the camp drill and martial occupation,
+They helped each other: but just here I crave
+  Space for the reader's full imagination,--
+The fact is patent, Grey became a slave!
+  A tool, a fag, a "pleb"!  To state it plainer,
+All that blue blood and ancestry e'er gave
+  Cleaned guns, brought water!--was, in fact, retainer
+  To Jones, whose uncle was a paper-stainer!
+
+XVIII
+
+How they bore this at home I cannot say:
+  I only know so runs the gossip's tale.
+It chanced one day that the paternal Grey
+  Came to West Point that he himself might hail
+The future hero in some proper way
+  Consistent with his lineage.  With him came
+A judge, a poet, and a brave array
+  Of aunts and uncles, bearing each a name,
+  Eyeglass and respirator with the same.
+
+XIX
+
+"Observe!" quoth Grey the elder to his friends,
+  "Not in these giddy youths at baseball playing
+You'll notice Winthrop Adams!  Greater ends
+  Than these absorb HIS leisure.  No doubt straying
+With Caesar's Commentaries, he attends
+  Some Roman council.  Let us ask, however,
+Yon grimy urchin, who my soul offends
+  By wheeling offal, if he will endeavor
+  To find--  What! heaven!  Winthrop!  Oh! no! never!"
+
+XX
+
+Alas! too true!  The last of all the Greys
+  Was "doing police detail,"--it had come
+To this; in vain the rare historic bays
+  That crowned the pictured Puritans at home!
+And yet 'twas certain that in grosser ways
+  Of health and physique he was quite improving.
+Straighter he stood, and had achieved some praise
+  In other exercise, much more behooving
+  A soldier's taste than merely dirt removing.
+
+XXI
+
+But to resume: we left the youthful pair,
+  Some stanzas back, before a lady's bower;
+'Tis to be hoped they were no longer there,
+  For stars were pointing to the morning hour.
+Their escapade discovered, ill 'twould fare
+  With our two heroes, derelict of orders;
+But, like the ghost, they "scent the morning air,"
+  And back again they steal across the borders,
+  Unseen, unheeded, by their martial warders.
+
+XXII
+
+They got to bed with speed: young Grey to dream
+  Of some vague future with a general's star,
+And Mistress Kitty basking in its gleam;
+  While Brown, content to worship her afar,
+Dreamed himself dying by some lonely stream,
+  Having snatched Kitty from eighteen Nez Perces,
+Till a far bugle, with the morning beam,
+  In his dull ear its fateful song rehearses,
+  Which Winthrop Adams after put to verses.
+
+XXIII
+
+So passed three years of their novitiate,
+  The first real boyhood Grey had ever known.
+His youth ran clear,--not choked like his Cochituate,
+  In civic pipes, but free and pure alone;
+Yet knew repression, could himself habituate
+  To having mind and body well rubbed down,
+Could read himself in others, and could situate
+  Themselves in him,--except, I grieve to own,
+  He couldn't see what Kitty saw in Brown!
+
+XXIV
+
+At last came graduation; Brown received
+  In the One Hundredth Cavalry commission;
+Then frolic, flirting, parting,--when none grieved
+  Save Brown, who loved our young Academician.
+And Grey, who felt his friend was still deceived
+  By Mistress Kitty, who with other beauties
+Graced the occasion, and it was believed
+  Had promised Brown that when he could recruit his
+  Promised command, she'd share with him those duties.
+
+XXV
+
+Howe'er this was I know not; all I know,
+  The night was June's, the moon rode high and clear;
+"'Twas such a night as this," three years ago,
+  Miss Kitty sang the song that two might hear.
+There is a walk where trees o'erarching grow,
+  Too wide for one, not wide enough for three
+(A fact precluding any plural beau),
+  Which quite explained Miss Kitty's company,
+  But not why Grey that favored one should be.
+
+XXVI
+
+There is a spring, whose limpid waters hide
+  Somewhere within the shadows of that path
+Called Kosciusko's.  There two figures bide,--
+  Grey and Miss Kitty.  Surely Nature hath
+No fairer mirror for a might-be bride
+  Than this same pool that caught our gentle belle
+To its dark heart one moment.  At her side
+  Grey bent.  A something trembled o'er the well,
+  Bright, spherical--a tear?  Ah no! a button fell!
+
+XXVII
+
+"Material minds might think that gravitation,"
+  Quoth Grey, "drew yon metallic spheroid down.
+The soul poetic views the situation
+  Fraught with more meaning.  When thy girlish crown
+Was mirrored there, there was disintegration
+  Of me, and all my spirit moved to you,
+Taking the form of slow precipitation!"
+  But here came "Taps," a start, a smile, adieu!
+  A blush, a sigh, and end of Canto II.
+
+   BUGLE SONG
+
+Fades the light,
+  And afar
+Goeth day, cometh night;
+  And a star
+      Leadeth all,
+      Speedeth all
+             To their rest!
+
+Love, good-night!
+  Must thou go
+  When the day
+And the light
+      Need thee so,--
+Needeth all,
+Heedeth all,
+      That is best?
+
+CANTO III
+
+I
+
+Where the sun sinks through leagues of arid sky,
+  Where the sun dies o'er leagues of arid plain,
+Where the dead bones of wasted rivers lie,
+  Trailed from their channels in yon mountain chain;
+Where day by day naught takes the wearied eye
+  But the low-rimming mountains, sharply based
+On the dead levels, moving far or nigh,
+  As the sick vision wanders o'er the waste,
+  But ever day by day against the sunset traced:
+
+II
+
+There moving through a poisonous cloud that stings
+  With dust of alkali the trampling band
+Of Indian ponies, ride on dusky wings
+  The red marauders of the Western land;
+Heavy with spoil, they seek the trail that brings
+  Their flaunting lances to that sheltered bank
+Where lie their lodges; and the river sings
+  Forgetful of the plain beyond, that drank
+  Its life blood, where the wasted caravan sank.
+
+III
+
+They brought with them the thief's ignoble spoil,
+  The beggar's dole, the greed of chiffonnier,
+The scum of camps, the implements of toil
+  Snatched from dead hands, to rust as useless here;
+All they could rake or glean from hut or soil
+  Piled their lean ponies, with the jackdaw's greed
+For vacant glitter.  It were scarce a foil
+  To all this tinsel that one feathered reed
+  Bore on its barb two scalps that freshly bleed!
+
+IV
+
+They brought with them, alas! a wounded foe,
+  Bound hand and foot, yet nursed with cruel care,
+Lest that in death he might escape one throe
+  They had decreed his living flesh should bear:
+A youthful officer, by one foul blow
+  Of treachery surprised, yet fighting still
+Amid his ambushed train, calm as the snow
+  Above him; hopeless, yet content to spill
+  His blood with theirs, and fighting but to kill.
+
+V
+
+He had fought nobly, and in that brief spell
+  Had won the awe of those rude border men
+Who gathered round him, and beside him fell
+  In loyal faith and silence, save that when
+By smoke embarrassed, and near sight as well,
+  He paused to wipe his eyeglass, and decide
+Its nearer focus, there arose a yell
+  Of approbation, and Bob Barker cried,
+  "Wade in, Dundreary!" tossed his cap and--died.
+
+VI
+
+Their sole survivor now! his captors bear
+  Him all unconscious, and beside the stream
+Leave him to rest; meantime the squaws prepare
+  The stake for sacrifice: nor wakes a gleam
+Of pity in those Furies' eyes that glare
+  Expectant of the torture; yet alway
+His steadfast spirit shines and mocks them there
+  With peace they know not, till at close of day
+  On his dull ear there thrills a whispered "Grey!"
+
+VII
+
+He starts!  Was it a trick?  Had angels kind
+  Touched with compassion some weak woman's breast?
+Such things he'd read of!  Faintly to his mind
+  Came Pocahontas pleading for her guest.
+But then, this voice, though soft, was still inclined
+  To baritone!  A squaw in ragged gown
+Stood near him, frowning hatred.  Was he blind?
+  Whose eye was this beneath that beetling frown?
+  The frown was painted, but that wink meant--Brown!
+
+VIII
+
+"Hush! for your life and mine! the thongs are cut,"
+  He whispers; "in yon thicket stands my horse.
+One dash!--I follow close, as if to glut
+  My own revenge, yet bar the others' course.
+Now!"  And 'tis done.  Grey speeds, Brown follows; but
+  Ere yet they reach the shade, Grey, fainting, reels,
+Yet not before Brown's circling arms close shut
+  His in, uplifting him!  Anon he feels
+  A horse beneath him bound, and hears the rattling heels.
+
+IX
+
+Then rose a yell of baffled hate, and sprang
+  Headlong the savages in swift pursuit;
+Though speed the fugitives, they hope to hang
+  Hot on their heels, like wolves, with tireless foot.
+Long is the chase; Brown hears with inward pang
+  The short, hard panting of his gallant steed
+Beneath its double burden; vainly rang
+  Both voice and spur.  The heaving flanks may bleed,
+  Yet comes the sequel that they still must heed!
+
+X
+
+Brown saw it--reined his steed; dismounting, stood
+  Calm and inflexible.  "Old chap! you see
+There is but ONE escape.  You know it?  Good!
+  There is ONE man to take it.  You are he.
+The horse won't carry double.  If he could,
+  'Twould but protract this bother.  I shall stay:
+I've business with these devils, they with me;
+  I will occupy them till you get away.
+  Hush! quick time, forward.  There! God bless you, Grey!"
+
+XI
+
+But as he finished, Grey slipped to his feet,
+  Calm as his ancestors in voice and eye:
+"You do forget yourself when you compete
+  With him whose RIGHT it is to stay and die:
+That's not YOUR duty.  Please regain your seat;
+  And take my ORDERS--since I rank you here!--
+Mount and rejoin your men, and my defeat
+  Report at quarters.  Take this letter; ne'er
+  Give it to aught but HER, nor let aught interfere."
+
+XII
+
+And, shamed and blushing, Brown the letter took
+  Obediently and placed it in his pocket;
+Then, drawing forth another, said, "I look
+  For death as you do, wherefore take this locket
+And letter."  Here his comrade's hand he shook
+  In silence.  "Should we both together fall,
+Some other man"--but here all speech forsook
+  His lips, as ringing cheerily o'er all
+  He heard afar his own dear bugle-call!
+
+XIII
+
+'Twas his command and succor, but e'en then
+  Grey fainted, with poor Brown, who had forgot
+He likewise had been wounded, and both men
+  Were picked up quite unconscious of their lot.
+Long lay they in extremity, and when
+  They both grew stronger, and once more exchanged
+Old vows and memories, one common "den"
+  In hospital was theirs, and free they ranged,
+  Awaiting orders, but no more estranged.
+
+XIV
+
+And yet 'twas strange--nor can I end my tale
+  Without this moral, to be fair and just:
+They never sought to know why each did fail
+  The prompt fulfillment of the other's trust.
+It was suggested they could not avail
+  Themselves of either letter, since they were
+Duly dispatched to their address by mail
+  By Captain X., who knew Miss Rover fair
+  Now meant stout Mistress Bloggs of Blank Blank Square.
+
+
+
+II. SPANISH IDYLS AND LEGENDS
+
+
+THE MIRACLE OF PADRE JUNIPERO
+
+This is the tale that the Chronicle
+Tells of the wonderful miracle
+Wrought by the pious Padre Serro,
+The very reverend Junipero.
+
+The heathen stood on his ancient mound,
+Looking over the desert bound
+Into the distant, hazy South,
+Over the dusty and broad champaign,
+Where, with many a gaping mouth
+And fissure, cracked by the fervid drouth,
+For seven months had the wasted plain
+Known no moisture of dew or rain.
+The wells were empty and choked with sand;
+The rivers had perished from the land;
+Only the sea-fogs to and fro
+Slipped like ghosts of the streams below.
+Deep in its bed lay the river's bones,
+Bleaching in pebbles and milk-white stones,
+And tracked o'er the desert faint and far,
+Its ribs shone bright on each sandy bar.
+
+Thus they stood as the sun went down
+Over the foot-hills bare and brown;
+Thus they looked to the South, wherefrom
+The pale-face medicine-man should come,
+Not in anger or in strife,
+But to bring--so ran the tale--
+The welcome springs of eternal life,
+The living waters that should not fail.
+
+Said one, "He will come like Manitou,
+Unseen, unheard, in the falling dew."
+Said another, "He will come full soon
+Out of the round-faced watery moon."
+And another said, "He is here!" and lo,
+Faltering, staggering, feeble and slow,
+Out from the desert's blinding heat
+The Padre dropped at the heathen's feet.
+
+They stood and gazed for a little space
+Down on his pallid and careworn face,
+And a smile of scorn went round the band
+As they touched alternate with foot and hand
+This mortal waif, that the outer space
+Of dim mysterious sky and sand
+Flung with so little of Christian grace
+Down on their barren, sterile strand.
+
+Said one to him: "It seems thy God
+Is a very pitiful kind of God:
+He could not shield thine aching eyes
+From the blowing desert sands that rise,
+Nor turn aside from thy old gray head
+The glittering blade that is brandished
+By the sun He set in the heavens high;
+He could not moisten thy lips when dry;
+The desert fire is in thy brain;
+Thy limbs are racked with the fever-pain.
+If this be the grace He showeth thee
+Who art His servant, what may we,
+Strange to His ways and His commands,
+Seek at His unforgiving hands?"
+
+"Drink but this cup," said the Padre, straight,
+"And thou shalt know whose mercy bore
+These aching limbs to your heathen door,
+And purged my soul of its gross estate.
+Drink in His name, and thou shalt see
+The hidden depths of this mystery.
+Drink!" and he held the cup.  One blow
+From the heathen dashed to the ground below
+The sacred cup that the Padre bore,
+And the thirsty soil drank the precious store
+Of sacramental and holy wine,
+That emblem and consecrated sign
+And blessed symbol of blood divine.
+
+Then, says the legend (and they who doubt
+The same as heretics be accurst),
+From the dry and feverish soil leaped out
+A living fountain; a well-spring burst
+Over the dusty and broad champaign,
+Over the sandy and sterile plain,
+Till the granite ribs and the milk-white stones
+That lay in the valley--the scattered bones--
+Moved in the river and lived again!
+
+Such was the wonderful miracle
+Wrought by the cup of wine that fell
+From the hands of the pious Padre Serro,
+The very reverend Junipero.
+
+
+THE WONDERFUL SPRING OF SAN JOAQUIN
+
+Of all the fountains that poets sing,--
+Crystal, thermal, or mineral spring,
+Ponce de Leon's Fount of Youth,
+Wells with bottoms of doubtful truth,--
+In short, of all the springs of Time
+That ever were flowing in fact or rhyme,
+That ever were tasted, felt, or seen,
+There were none like the Spring of San Joaquin.
+
+Anno Domini eighteen-seven,
+Father Dominguez (now in heaven,--
+Obiit eighteen twenty-seven)
+Found the spring, and found it, too,
+By his mule's miraculous cast of a shoe;
+For his beast--a descendant of Balaam's ass--
+Stopped on the instant, and would not pass.
+
+The Padre thought the omen good,
+And bent his lips to the trickling flood;
+Then--as the Chronicles declare,
+On the honest faith of a true believer--
+His cheeks, though wasted, lank, and bare,
+Filled like a withered russet pear
+In the vacuum of a glass receiver,
+And the snows that seventy winters bring
+Melted away in that magic spring.
+
+Such, at least, was the wondrous news
+The Padre brought into Santa Cruz.
+The Church, of course, had its own views
+Of who were worthiest to use
+The magic spring; but the prior claim
+Fell to the aged, sick, and lame.
+Far and wide the people came:
+Some from the healthful Aptos Creek
+Hastened to bring their helpless sick;
+Even the fishers of rude Soquel
+Suddenly found they were far from well;
+The brawny dwellers of San Lorenzo
+Said, in fact, they had never been so;
+And all were ailing,--strange to say,--
+From Pescadero to Monterey.
+
+Over the mountain they poured in,
+With leathern bottles and bags of skin;
+Through the canyons a motley throng
+Trotted, hobbled, and limped along.
+The Fathers gazed at the moving scene
+With pious joy and with souls serene;
+And then--a result perhaps foreseen--
+They laid out the Mission of San Joaquin.
+
+Not in the eyes of faith alone
+The good effects of the water shone;
+But skins grew rosy, eyes waxed clear,
+Of rough vaquero and muleteer;
+Angular forms were rounded out,
+Limbs grew supple and waists grew stout;
+And as for the girls,--for miles about
+They had no equal!  To this day,
+From Pescadero to Monterey,
+You'll still find eyes in which are seen
+The liquid graces of San Joaquin.
+
+There is a limit to human bliss,
+And the Mission of San Joaquin had this;
+None went abroad to roam or stay
+But they fell sick in the queerest way,--
+A singular maladie du pays,
+With gastric symptoms: so they spent
+Their days in a sensuous content,
+Caring little for things unseen
+Beyond their bowers of living green,
+Beyond the mountains that lay between
+The world and the Mission of San Joaquin.
+
+Winter passed, and the summer came
+The trunks of madrono, all aflame,
+Here and there through the underwood
+Like pillars of fire starkly stood.
+All of the breezy solitude
+  Was filled with the spicing of pine and bay
+And resinous odors mixed and blended;
+  And dim and ghostlike, far away,
+The smoke of the burning woods ascended.
+Then of a sudden the mountains swam,
+The rivers piled their floods in a dam,
+The ridge above Los Gatos Creek
+  Arched its spine in a feline fashion;
+The forests waltzed till they grew sick,
+  And Nature shook in a speechless passion;
+And, swallowed up in the earthquake's spleen,
+The wonderful Spring of San Joaquin
+Vanished, and never more was seen!
+
+Two days passed: the Mission folk
+Out of their rosy dream awoke;
+Some of them looked a trifle white,
+But that, no doubt, was from earthquake fright.
+Three days: there was sore distress,
+Headache, nausea, giddiness.
+Four days: faintings, tenderness
+Of the mouth and fauces; and in less
+Than one week--here the story closes;
+We won't continue the prognosis--
+Enough that now no trace is seen
+Of Spring or Mission of San Joaquin.
+
+MORAL
+
+You see the point?  Don't be too quick
+To break bad habits: better stick,
+Like the Mission folk, to your ARSENIC.
+
+
+THE ANGELUS
+
+(HEARD AT THE MISSION DOLORES, 1868)
+
+Bells of the Past, whose long-forgotten music
+         Still fills the wide expanse,
+Tingeing the sober twilight of the Present
+         With color of romance!
+
+I hear your call, and see the sun descending
+         On rock and wave and sand,
+As down the coast the Mission voices, blending,
+         Girdle the heathen land.
+
+Within the circle of your incantation
+         No blight nor mildew falls;
+Nor fierce unrest, nor lust, nor low ambition
+         Passes those airy walls.
+
+Borne on the swell of your long waves receding,
+         I touch the farther Past;
+I see the dying glow of Spanish glory,
+         The sunset dream and last!
+
+Before me rise the dome-shaped Mission towers,
+         The white Presidio;
+The swart commander in his leathern jerkin,
+         The priest in stole of snow.
+
+Once more I see Portala's cross uplifting
+         Above the setting sun;
+And past the headland, northward, slowly drifting,
+         The freighted galleon.
+
+O solemn bells! whose consecrated masses
+         Recall the faith of old;
+O tinkling bells! that lulled with twilight music
+         The spiritual fold!
+
+Your voices break and falter in the darkness,--
+         Break, falter, and are still;
+And veiled and mystic, like the Host descending,
+         The sun sinks from the hill!
+
+
+CONCEPCION DE ARGUELLO
+
+(PRESIDIO DE SAN FRANCISCO, 1800)
+
+I
+
+Looking seaward, o'er the sand-hills stands the fortress, old and
+   quaint,
+By the San Francisco friars lifted to their patron saint,--
+
+Sponsor to that wondrous city, now apostate to the creed,
+On whose youthful walls the Padre saw the angel's golden reed;
+
+All its trophies long since scattered, all its blazon brushed away;
+And the flag that flies above it but a triumph of to-day.
+
+Never scar of siege or battle challenges the wandering eye,
+Never breach of warlike onset holds the curious passer-by;
+
+Only one sweet human fancy interweaves its threads of gold
+With the plain and homespun present, and a love that ne'er grows old;
+
+Only one thing holds its crumbling walls above the meaner dust,--
+Listen to the simple story of a woman's love and trust.
+
+II
+
+Count von Resanoff, the Russian, envoy of the mighty Czar,
+Stood beside the deep embrasures, where the brazen cannon are.
+
+He with grave provincial magnates long had held serene debate
+On the Treaty of Alliance and the high affairs of state;
+
+He from grave provincial magnates oft had turned to talk apart
+With the Commandante's daughter on the questions of the heart,
+
+Until points of gravest import yielded slowly one by one,
+And by Love was consummated what Diplomacy begun;
+
+Till beside the deep embrasures, where the brazen cannon are,
+He received the twofold contract for approval of the Czar;
+
+Till beside the brazen cannon the betrothed bade adieu,
+And from sallyport and gateway north the Russian eagles flew.
+
+III
+
+Long beside the deep embrasures, where the brazen cannon are,
+Did they wait the promised bridegroom and the answer of the Czar;
+
+Day by day on wall and bastion beat the hollow, empty breeze,--
+Day by day the sunlight glittered on the vacant, smiling seas:
+
+Week by week the near hills whitened in their dusty leather cloaks,--
+Week by week the far hills darkened from the fringing plain of oaks;
+
+Till the rains came, and far breaking, on the fierce southwester tost,
+Dashed the whole long coast with color, and then vanished and were
+   lost.
+
+So each year the seasons shifted,--wet and warm and drear and dry
+Half a year of clouds and flowers, half a year of dust and sky.
+
+Still it brought no ship nor message,--brought no tidings, ill or meet,
+For the statesmanlike Commander, for the daughter fair and sweet.
+
+Yet she heard the varying message, voiceless to all ears beside:
+"He will come," the flowers whispered; "Come no more," the dry hills
+   sighed.
+
+Still she found him with the waters lifted by the morning breeze,--
+Still she lost him with the folding of the great white-tented seas;
+
+Until hollows chased the dimples from her cheeks of olive brown,
+And at times a swift, shy moisture dragged the long sweet lashes down;
+
+Or the small mouth curved and quivered as for some denied caress,
+And the fair young brow was knitted in an infantine distress.
+
+Then the grim Commander, pacing where the brazen cannon are,
+Comforted the maid with proverbs, wisdom gathered from afar;
+
+Bits of ancient observation by his fathers garnered, each
+As a pebble worn and polished in the current of his speech:
+
+"'Those who wait the coming rider travel twice as far as he;'
+'Tired wench and coming butter never did in time agree;'
+
+"'He that getteth himself honey, though a clown, he shall have flies;'
+'In the end God grinds the miller;' 'In the dark the mole has eyes;'
+
+"'He whose father is Alcalde of his trial hath no fear,'--
+And be sure the Count has reasons that will make his conduct clear."
+
+Then the voice sententious faltered, and the wisdom it would teach
+Lost itself in fondest trifles of his soft Castilian speech;
+
+And on "Concha" "Conchitita," and "Conchita" he would dwell
+With the fond reiteration which the Spaniard knows so well.
+
+So with proverbs and caresses, half in faith and half in doubt,
+Every day some hope was kindled, flickered, faded, and went out.
+
+IV
+
+Yearly, down the hillside sweeping, came the stately cavalcade,
+Bringing revel to vaquero, joy and comfort to each maid;
+
+Bringing days of formal visit, social feast and rustic sport,
+Of bull-baiting on the plaza, of love-making in the court.
+
+Vainly then at Concha's lattice, vainly as the idle wind,
+Rose the thin high Spanish tenor that bespoke the youth too kind;
+
+Vainly, leaning from their saddles, caballeros, bold and fleet,
+Plucked for her the buried chicken from beneath their mustang's feet;
+
+So in vain the barren hillsides with their gay serapes blazed,--
+Blazed and vanished in the dust-cloud that their flying hoofs had
+   raised.
+
+Then the drum called from the rampart, and once more, with patient
+   mien,
+The Commander and his daughter each took up the dull routine,--
+
+Each took up the petty duties of a life apart and lone,
+Till the slow years wrought a music in its dreary monotone.
+
+V
+
+Forty years on wall and bastion swept the hollow idle breeze,
+Since the Russian eagle fluttered from the California seas;
+
+Forty years on wall and bastion wrought its slow but sure decay,
+And St. George's cross was lifted in the port of Monterey;
+
+And the citadel was lighted, and the hall was gayly drest,
+All to honor Sir George Simpson, famous traveler and guest.
+
+Far and near the people gathered to the costly banquet set,
+And exchanged congratulations with the English baronet;
+
+Till, the formal speeches ended, and amidst the laugh and wine,
+Some one spoke of Concha's lover,--heedless of the warning sign.
+
+Quickly then cried Sir George Simpson: "Speak no ill of him, I pray!
+He is dead.  He died, poor fellow, forty years ago this day,--
+
+"Died while speeding home to Russia, falling from a fractious horse.
+Left a sweetheart, too, they tell me.  Married, I suppose, of course!
+
+"Lives she yet?"  A deathlike silence fell on banquet, guests, and
+   hall,
+And a trembling figure rising fixed the awestruck gaze of all.
+
+Two black eyes in darkened orbits gleamed beneath the nun's white hood;
+Black serge hid the wasted figure, bowed and stricken where it stood.
+
+"Lives she yet?" Sir George repeated.  All were hushed as Concha drew
+Closer yet her nun's attire.  "Senor, pardon, she died, too!"
+
+
+"FOR THE KING"
+
+(NORTHERN MEXICO, 1640)
+
+As you look from the plaza at Leon west
+You can see her house, but the view is best
+From the porch of the church where she lies at rest;
+
+Where much of her past still lives, I think,
+In the scowling brows and sidelong blink
+Of the worshiping throng that rise or sink
+
+To the waxen saints that, yellow and lank,
+Lean out from their niches, rank on rank,
+With a bloodless Saviour on either flank;
+
+In the gouty pillars, whose cracks begin
+To show the adobe core within,--
+A soul of earth in a whitewashed skin.
+
+And I think that the moral of all, you'll say,
+Is the sculptured legend that moulds away
+On a tomb in the choir: "Por el Rey."
+
+"Por el Rey!  "Well, the king is gone
+Ages ago, and the Hapsburg one
+Shot--but the Rock of the Church lives on.
+
+"Por el Rey!"  What matters, indeed,
+If king or president succeed
+To a country haggard with sloth and greed,
+
+As long as one granary is fat,
+And yonder priest, in a shovel hat,
+Peeps out from the bin like a sleek brown rat?
+
+What matters?  Naught, if it serves to bring
+The legend nearer,--no other thing,--
+We'll spare the moral, "Live the king!"
+
+Two hundred years ago, they say,
+The Viceroy, Marquis of Monte-Rey,
+Rode with his retinue that way:
+
+Grave, as befitted Spain's grandee;
+Grave, as the substitute should be
+Of His Most Catholic Majesty;
+
+Yet, from his black plume's curving grace
+To his slim black gauntlet's smaller space,
+Exquisite as a piece of lace!
+
+Two hundred years ago--e'en so--
+The Marquis stopped where the lime-trees blow,
+While Leon's seneschal bent him low,
+
+And begged that the Marquis would that night take
+His humble roof for the royal sake,
+And then, as the custom demanded, spake
+
+The usual wish, that his guest would hold
+The house, and all that it might enfold,
+As his--with the bride scarce three days old.
+
+Be sure that the Marquis, in his place,
+Replied to all with the measured grace
+Of chosen speech and unmoved face;
+
+Nor raised his head till his black plume swept
+The hem of the lady's robe, who kept
+Her place, as her husband backward stept.
+
+And then (I know not how nor why)
+A subtle flame in the lady's eye--
+Unseen by the courtiers standing by--
+
+Burned through his lace and titled wreath,
+Burned through his body's jeweled sheath,
+Till it touched the steel of the man beneath!
+
+(And yet, mayhap, no more was meant
+Than to point a well-worn compliment,
+And the lady's beauty, her worst intent.)
+
+Howbeit, the Marquis bowed again:
+"Who rules with awe well serveth Spain,
+But best whose law is love made plain."
+
+Be sure that night no pillow prest
+The seneschal, but with the rest
+Watched, as was due a royal guest,--
+
+Watched from the wall till he saw the square
+Fill with the moonlight, white and bare,--
+Watched till he saw two shadows fare
+
+Out from his garden, where the shade
+That the old church tower and belfry made
+Like a benedictory hand was laid.
+
+Few words spoke the seneschal as he turned
+To his nearest sentry: "These monks have learned
+That stolen fruit is sweetly earned.
+
+"Myself shall punish yon acolyte
+Who gathers my garden grapes by night;
+Meanwhile, wait thou till the morning light."
+
+Yet not till the sun was riding high
+Did the sentry meet his commander's eye,
+Nor then till the Viceroy stood by.
+
+To the lovers of grave formalities
+No greeting was ever so fine, I wis,
+As this host's and guest's high courtesies!
+
+The seneschal feared, as the wind was west,
+A blast from Morena had chilled his rest;
+The Viceroy languidly confest
+
+That cares of state, and--he dared to say--
+Some fears that the King could not repay
+The thoughtful zeal of his host, some way
+
+Had marred his rest.  Yet he trusted much
+None shared his wakefulness; though such
+Indeed might be!  If he dared to touch
+
+A theme so fine--the bride, perchance,
+Still slept!  At least, they missed her glance
+To give this greeting countenance.
+
+Be sure that the seneschal, in turn,
+Was deeply bowed with the grave concern
+Of the painful news his guest should learn:
+
+"Last night, to her father's dying bed
+By a priest was the lady summoned;
+Nor know we yet how well she sped,
+
+"But hope for the best."  The grave Viceroy
+(Though grieved his visit had such alloy)
+Must still wish the seneschal great joy
+
+Of a bride so true to her filial trust!
+Yet now, as the day waxed on, they must
+To horse, if they'd 'scape the noonday dust.
+
+"Nay," said the seneschal, "at least,
+To mend the news of this funeral priest,
+Myself shall ride as your escort east."
+
+The Viceroy bowed.  Then turned aside
+To his nearest follower: "With me ride--
+You and Felipe--on either side.
+
+"And list!  Should anything me befall,
+Mischance of ambush or musket-ball,
+Cleave to his saddle yon seneschal!
+
+"No more."  Then gravely in accents clear
+Took formal leave of his late good cheer;
+Whiles the seneschal whispered a musketeer,
+
+Carelessly stroking his pommel top:
+"If from the saddle ye see me drop,
+Riddle me quickly yon solemn fop!"
+
+So these, with many a compliment,
+Each on his own dark thought intent,
+With grave politeness onward went,
+
+Riding high, and in sight of all,
+Viceroy, escort, and seneschal,
+Under the shade of the Almandral;
+
+Holding their secret hard and fast,
+Silent and grave they ride at last
+Into the dusty traveled Past.
+
+Even like this they passed away
+Two hundred years ago to-day.
+What of the lady?  Who shall say?
+
+Do the souls of the dying ever yearn
+To some favored spot for the dust's return,
+For the homely peace of the family urn?
+
+I know not.  Yet did the seneschal,
+Chancing in after-years to fall
+Pierced by a Flemish musket-ball,
+
+Call to his side a trusty friar,
+And bid him swear, as his last desire,
+To bear his corse to San Pedro's choir
+
+At Leon, where 'neath a shield azure
+Should his mortal frame find sepulture:
+This much, for the pains Christ did endure.
+
+Be sure that the friar loyally
+Fulfilled his trust by land and sea,
+Till the spires of Leon silently
+
+Rose through the green of the Almandral,
+As if to beckon the seneschal
+To his kindred dust 'neath the choir wall.
+
+I wot that the saints on either side
+Leaned from their niches open-eyed
+To see the doors of the church swing wide;
+
+That the wounds of the Saviour on either flank
+Bled fresh, as the mourners, rank by rank,
+Went by with the coffin, clank on clank.
+
+For why?  When they raised the marble door
+Of the tomb, untouched for years before,
+The friar swooned on the choir floor;
+
+For there, in her laces and festal dress,
+Lay the dead man's wife, her loveliness
+Scarcely changed by her long duress,--
+
+As on the night she had passed away;
+Only that near her a dagger lay,
+With the written legend, "Por el Rey."
+
+What was their greeting, the groom and bride,
+They whom that steel and the years divide?
+I know not.  Here they lie side by side.
+
+Side by side!  Though the king has his way,
+Even the dead at last have their day.
+Make you the moral.  "Por el Rey!"
+
+
+RAMON
+
+(REFUGIO MINE, NORTHERN MEXICO)
+
+    Drunk and senseless in his place,
+    Prone and sprawling on his face,
+More like brute than any man
+           Alive or dead,
+    By his great pump out of gear,
+    Lay the peon engineer,
+    Waking only just to hear,
+           Overhead,
+    Angry tones that called his name,
+    Oaths and cries of bitter blame,--
+Woke to hear all this, and, waking, turned and fled!
+
+    "To the man who'll bring to me,"
+    Cried Intendant Harry Lee,--
+Harry Lee, the English foreman of the mine,--
+    "Bring the sot alive or dead,
+    I will give to him," he said,
+    "Fifteen hundred pesos down,
+    Just to set the rascal's crown
+Underneath this heel of mine:
+           Since but death
+    Deserves the man whose deed,
+    Be it vice or want of heed,
+    Stops the pumps that give us breath,--
+    Stops the pumps that suck the death
+From the poisoned lower levels of the mine!"
+
+    No one answered; for a cry
+    From the shaft rose up on high,
+And shuffling, scrambling, tumbling from below,
+    Came the miners each, the bolder
+    Mounting on the weaker's shoulder,
+    Grappling, clinging to their hold or
+           Letting go,
+    As the weaker gasped and fell
+    From the ladder to the well,--
+    To the poisoned pit of hell
+           Down below!
+
+    "To the man who sets them free,"
+    Cried the foreman, Harry Lee,--
+Harry Lee, the English foreman of the mine,--
+    "Brings them out and sets them free,
+    I will give that man," said he,
+    "Twice that sum, who with a rope
+    Face to face with Death shall cope.
+    Let him come who dares to hope!"
+    "Hold your peace!" some one replied,
+    Standing by the foreman's side;
+"There has one already gone, whoe'er he be!"
+
+    Then they held their breath with awe,
+    Pulling on the rope, and saw
+    Fainting figures reappear,
+    On the black rope swinging clear,
+Fastened by some skillful hand from below;
+    Till a score the level gained,
+    And but one alone remained,--
+    He the hero and the last,
+    He whose skillful hand made fast
+The long line that brought them back to hope and cheer!
+
+    Haggard, gasping, down dropped he
+    At the feet of Harry Lee,--
+Harry Lee, the English foreman of the mine.
+    "I have come," he gasped, "to claim
+    Both rewards.  Senor, my name
+           Is Ramon!
+    I'm the drunken engineer,
+    I'm the coward, Senor"--  Here
+    He fell over, by that sign,
+           Dead as stone!
+
+
+DON DIEGO OF THE SOUTH
+
+(REFECTORY, MISSION SAN GABRIEL, 1869)
+
+Good!--said the Padre,--believe me still,
+"Don Giovanni," or what you will,
+The type's eternal!  We knew him here
+As Don Diego del Sud.  I fear
+The story's no new one!  Will you hear?
+
+One of those spirits you can't tell why
+God has permitted.  Therein I
+Have the advantage, for I hold
+That wolves are sent to the purest fold,
+And we'd save the wolf if we'd get the lamb.
+You're no believer?  Good!  I am.
+
+Well, for some purpose, I grant you dim,
+The Don loved women, and they loved him.
+Each thought herself his LAST love!  Worst,
+Many believed that they were his FIRST!
+And, such are these creatures since the Fall,
+The very doubt had a charm for all!
+
+You laugh!  You are young, but I--indeed
+I have no patience . . .  To proceed:--
+You saw, as you passed through the upper town,
+The Eucinal where the road goes down
+To San Felipe!  There one morn
+They found Diego,--his mantle torn,
+And as many holes through his doublet's band
+As there were wronged husbands--you understand!
+
+"Dying," so said the gossips.  "Dead"
+Was what the friars who found him said.
+May be.  Quien sabe?  Who else should know?
+It was a hundred years ago.
+There was a funeral.  Small indeed--
+Private.  What would you?  To proceed:--
+
+Scarcely the year had flown.  One night
+The Commandante awoke in fright,
+Hearing below his casement's bar
+The well-known twang of the Don's guitar;
+And rushed to the window, just to see
+His wife a-swoon on the balcony.
+
+One week later, Don Juan Ramirez
+Found his own daughter, the Dona Inez,
+Pale as a ghost, leaning out to hear
+The song of that phantom cavalier.
+Even Alcalde Pedro Blas
+Saw, it was said, through his niece's glass,
+The shade of Diego twice repass.
+
+What these gentlemen each confessed
+Heaven and the Church only knows.  At best
+The case was a bad one.  How to deal
+With Sin as a Ghost, they couldn't but feel
+Was an awful thing.  Till a certain Fray
+Humbly offered to show the way.
+
+And the way was this.  Did I say before
+That the Fray was a stranger?  No, Senor?
+Strange! very strange!  I should have said
+That the very week that the Don lay dead
+He came among us.  Bread he broke
+Silent, nor ever to one he spoke.
+So he had vowed it!  Below his brows
+His face was hidden.  There are such vows!
+
+Strange! are they not?  You do not use
+Snuff?  A bad habit!
+
+                      Well, the views
+Of the Fray were these: that the penance done
+By the caballeros was right; but one
+Was due from the CAUSE, and that, in brief,
+Was Dona Dolores Gomez, chief,
+And Inez, Sanchicha, Concepcion,
+And Carmen,--well, half the girls in town
+On his tablets the Friar had written down.
+
+These were to come on a certain day
+And ask at the hands of the pious Fray
+For absolution.  That done, small fear
+But the shade of Diego would disappear.
+
+They came; each knelt in her turn and place
+To the pious Fray with his hidden face
+And voiceless lips, and each again
+Took back her soul freed from spot or stain,
+Till the Dona Inez, with eyes downcast
+And a tear on their fringes, knelt her last.
+
+And then--perhaps that her voice was low
+From fear or from shame--the monks said so--
+But the Fray leaned forward, when, presto! all
+Were thrilled by a scream, and saw her fall
+Fainting beside the confessional.
+
+And so was the ghost of Diego laid
+As the Fray had said.  Never more his shade
+Was seen at San Gabriel's Mission.  Eh!
+The girl interests you?  I dare say!
+"Nothing," said she, when they brought her to--
+"Only a faintness!"  They spoke more true
+Who said 'twas a stubborn soul. But then--
+Women are women, and men are men!
+
+So, to return.  As I said before,
+Having got the wolf, by the same high law
+We saved the lamb in the wolf's own jaw,
+And that's my moral.  The tale, I fear,
+But poorly told.  Yet it strikes me here
+Is stuff for a moral.  What's your view?
+You smile, Don Pancho.  Ah! that's like you!
+
+
+AT THE HACIENDA
+
+Know I not whom thou mayst be
+  Carved upon this olive-tree,--
+    "Manuela of La Torre,"--
+For around on broken walls
+Summer sun and spring rain falls,
+And in vain the low wind calls
+    "Manuela of La Torre."
+
+Of that song no words remain
+  But the musical refrain,--
+    "Manuela of La Torre."
+Yet at night, when winds are still,
+Tinkles on the distant hill
+A guitar, and words that thrill
+  Tell to me the old, old story,--
+Old when first thy charms were sung,
+Old when these old walls were young,
+    "Manuela of La Torre."
+
+
+FRIAR PEDRO'S RIDE
+
+It was the morning season of the year;
+  It was the morning era of the land;
+The watercourses rang full loud and clear;
+  Portala's cross stood where Portala's hand
+Had planted it when Faith was taught by Fear,
+  When monks and missions held the sole command
+Of all that shore beside the peaceful sea,
+Where spring-tides beat their long-drawn reveille.
+
+Out of the mission of San Luis Rey,
+  All in that brisk, tumultuous spring weather,
+Rode Friar Pedro, in a pious way,
+  With six dragoons in cuirasses of leather,
+Each armed alike for either prayer or fray;
+  Handcuffs and missals they had slung together,
+And as an aid the gospel truth to scatter
+Each swung a lasso--alias a "riata."
+
+In sooth, that year the harvest had been slack,
+  The crop of converts scarce worth computation;
+Some souls were lost, whose owners had turned back
+  To save their bodies frequent flagellation;
+And some preferred the songs of birds, alack!
+  To Latin matins and their souls' salvation,
+And thought their own wild whoopings were less dreary
+Than Father Pedro's droning miserere.
+
+To bring them back to matins and to prime,
+  To pious works and secular submission,
+To prove to them that liberty was crime,--
+  This was, in fact, the Padre's present mission;
+To get new souls perchance at the same time,
+  And bring them to a "sense of their condition,"--
+That easy phrase, which, in the past and present,
+Means making that condition most unpleasant.
+
+He saw the glebe land guiltless of a furrow;
+  He saw the wild oats wrestle on the hill;
+He saw the gopher working in his burrow;
+  He saw the squirrel scampering at his will:--
+He saw all this, and felt no doubt a thorough
+  And deep conviction of God's goodness; still
+He failed to see that in His glory He
+Yet left the humblest of His creatures free.
+
+He saw the flapping crow, whose frequent note
+  Voiced the monotony of land and sky,
+Mocking with graceless wing and rusty coat
+  His priestly presence as he trotted by.
+He would have cursed the bird by bell and rote,
+  But other game just then was in his eye,--
+A savage camp, whose occupants preferred
+Their heathen darkness to the living Word.
+
+He rang his bell, and at the martial sound
+  Twelve silver spurs their jingling rowels clashed;
+Six horses sprang across the level ground
+  As six dragoons in open order dashed;
+Above their heads the lassos circled round,
+  In every eye a pious fervor flashed;
+They charged the camp, and in one moment more
+They lassoed six and reconverted four.
+
+The Friar saw the conflict from a knoll,
+  And sang Laus Deo and cheered on his men:
+"Well thrown, Bautista,--that's another soul;
+  After him, Gomez,--try it once again;
+This way, Felipe,--there the heathen stole;
+  Bones of St. Francis!--surely that makes TEN;
+Te Deum laudamus--but they're very wild;
+Non nobis Domine--all right, my child!"
+
+When at that moment--as the story goes--
+  A certain squaw, who had her foes eluded,
+Ran past the Friar, just before his nose.
+  He stared a moment, and in silence brooded;
+Then in his breast a pious frenzy rose
+  And every other prudent thought excluded;
+He caught a lasso, and dashed in a canter
+After that Occidental Atalanta.
+
+High o'er his head he swirled the dreadful noose;
+  But, as the practice was quite unfamiliar,
+His first cast tore Felipe's captive loose,
+  And almost choked Tiburcio Camilla,
+And might have interfered with that brave youth's
+  Ability to gorge the tough tortilla;
+But all things come by practice, and at last
+His flying slip-knot caught the maiden fast.
+
+Then rose above the plain a mingled yell
+  Of rage and triumph,--a demoniac whoop:
+The Padre heard it like a passing knell,
+  And would have loosened his unchristian loop;
+But the tough raw-hide held the captive well,
+  And held, alas! too well the captor-dupe;
+For with one bound the savage fled amain,
+Dragging horse, Friar, down the lonely plain.
+
+Down the arroyo, out across the mead,
+  By heath and hollow, sped the flying maid,
+Dragging behind her still the panting steed
+  And helpless Friar, who in vain essayed
+To cut the lasso or to check his speed.
+  He felt himself beyond all human aid,
+And trusted to the saints,--and, for that matter,
+To some weak spot in Felipe's riata.
+
+Alas! the lasso had been duly blessed,
+  And, like baptism, held the flying wretch,--
+A doctrine that the priest had oft expressed,
+  Which, like the lasso, might be made to stretch,
+But would not break; so neither could divest
+  Themselves of it, but, like some awful fetch,
+The holy Friar had to recognize
+The image of his fate in heathen guise.
+
+He saw the glebe land guiltless of a furrow;
+  He saw the wild oats wrestle on the hill;
+He saw the gopher standing in his burrow;
+  He saw the squirrel scampering at his will:--
+He saw all this, and felt no doubt how thorough
+  The contrast was to his condition; still
+The squaw kept onward to the sea, till night
+And the cold sea-fog hid them both from sight.
+
+The morning came above the serried coast,
+  Lighting the snow-peaks with its beacon-fires,
+Driving before it all the fleet-winged host
+  Of chattering birds above the Mission spires,
+Filling the land with light and joy, but most
+  The savage woods with all their leafy lyres;
+In pearly tints and opal flame and fire
+The morning came, but not the holy Friar.
+
+Weeks passed away.  In vain the Fathers sought
+  Some trace or token that might tell his story;
+Some thought him dead, or, like Elijah, caught
+  Up to the heavens in a blaze of glory.
+In this surmise some miracles were wrought
+  On his account, and souls in purgatory
+Were thought to profit from his intercession;
+In brief, his absence made a "deep impression."
+
+A twelvemonth passed; the welcome Spring once more
+  Made green the hills beside the white-faced Mission,
+Spread her bright dais by the western shore,
+  And sat enthroned, a most resplendent vision.
+The heathen converts thronged the chapel door
+  At morning mass, when, says the old tradition,
+A frightful whoop throughout the church resounded,
+And to their feet the congregation bounded.
+
+A tramp of hoofs upon the beaten course,
+  Then came a sight that made the bravest quail:
+A phantom Friar on a spectre horse,
+  Dragged by a creature decked with horns and tail.
+By the lone Mission, with the whirlwind's force,
+  They madly swept, and left a sulphurous trail:
+And that was all,--enough to tell the story,
+And leave unblessed those souls in purgatory.
+
+And ever after, on that fatal day
+  That Friar Pedro rode abroad lassoing,
+A ghostly couple came and went away
+  With savage whoop and heathenish hallooing,
+Which brought discredit on San Luis Rey,
+  And proved the Mission's ruin and undoing;
+For ere ten years had passed, the squaw and Friar
+Performed to empty walls and fallen spire.
+
+The Mission is no more; upon its wall.
+  The golden lizards slip, or breathless pause,
+Still as the sunshine brokenly that falls
+  Through crannied roof and spider-webs of gauze;
+No more the bell its solemn warning calls,--
+  A holier silence thrills and overawes;
+And the sharp lights and shadows of to-day
+Outline the Mission of San Luis Rey.
+
+
+IN THE MISSION GARDEN
+
+(1865)
+
+FATHER FELIPE
+
+I speak not the English well, but Pachita,
+She speak for me; is it not so, my Pancha?
+Eh, little rogue?  Come, salute me the stranger
+     Americano.
+
+Sir, in my country we say, "Where the heart is,
+There live the speech."  Ah! you not understand?  So!
+Pardon an old man,--what you call "old fogy,"--
+     Padre Felipe!
+
+Old, Senor, old! just so old as the Mission.
+You see that pear-tree?  How old you think, Senor?
+Fifteen year?  Twenty?  Ah, Senor, just fifty
+     Gone since I plant him!
+
+You like the wine?  It is some at the Mission,
+Made from the grape of the year eighteen hundred;
+All the same time when the earthquake he come to
+     San Juan Bautista.
+
+But Pancha is twelve, and she is the rose-tree;
+And I am the olive, and this is the garden:
+And "Pancha" we say, but her name is "Francisca,"
+     Same like her mother.
+
+Eh, you knew HER?  No?  Ah! it is a story;
+But I speak not, like Pachita, the English:
+So! if I try, you will sit here beside me,
+     And shall not laugh, eh?
+
+When the American come to the Mission,
+Many arrive at the house of Francisca:
+One,--he was fine man,--he buy the cattle
+     Of Jose Castro.
+
+So! he came much, and Francisca, she saw him:
+And it was love,--and a very dry season;
+And the pears bake on the tree,--and the rain come,
+     But not Francisca.
+
+Not for one year; and one night I have walk much
+Under the olive-tree, when comes Francisca,--
+Comes to me here, with her child, this Francisca,--
+     Under the olive-tree.
+
+Sir, it was sad; . . . but I speak not the English;
+So! . . . she stay here, and she wait for her husband:
+He come no more, and she sleep on the hillside;
+     There stands Pachita.
+
+Ah! there's the Angelus.  Will you not enter?
+Or shall you walk in the garden with Pancha?
+Go, little rogue--st! attend to the stranger!
+     Adios, Senor.
+
+PACHITA (briskly).
+
+So, he's been telling that yarn about mother!
+Bless you! he tells it to every stranger:
+Folks about yer say the old man's my father;
+     What's your opinion?
+
+
+THE LOST GALLEON*
+
+In sixteen hundred and forty-one,
+The regular yearly galleon,
+Laden with odorous gums and spice,
+India cottons and India rice,
+And the richest silks of far Cathay,
+Was due at Acapulco Bay.
+
+Due she was, and overdue,--
+Galleon, merchandise and crew,
+Creeping along through rain and shine,
+Through the tropics, under the line.
+The trains were waiting outside the walls,
+The wives of sailors thronged the town,
+The traders sat by their empty stalls,
+And the Viceroy himself came down;
+The bells in the tower were all a-trip,
+Te Deums were on each Father's lip,
+The limes were ripening in the sun
+For the sick of the coming galleon.
+
+All in vain.  Weeks passed away,
+And yet no galleon saw the bay.
+India goods advanced in price;
+The Governor missed his favorite spice;
+The Senoritas mourned for sandal
+And the famous cottons of Coromandel;
+And some for an absent lover lost,
+And one for a husband,--Dona Julia,
+Wife of the captain tempest-tossed,
+In circumstances so peculiar;
+Even the Fathers, unawares,
+Grumbled a little at their prayers;
+And all along the coast that year
+Votive candles wore scarce and dear.
+
+Never a tear bedims the eye
+That time and patience will not dry;
+Never a lip is curved with pain
+That can't be kissed into smiles again;
+And these same truths, as far as I know,
+Obtained on the coast of Mexico
+More than two hundred years ago,
+In sixteen hundred and fifty-one,--
+Ten years after the deed was done,--
+And folks had forgotten the galleon:
+The divers plunged in the gulf for pearls,
+White as the teeth of the Indian girls;
+The traders sat by their full bazaars;
+The mules with many a weary load,
+And oxen dragging their creaking cars,
+Came and went on the mountain road.
+
+Where was the galleon all this while?
+Wrecked on some lonely coral isle,
+Burnt by the roving sea-marauders,
+Or sailing north under secret orders?
+Had she found the Anian passage famed,
+By lying Maldonado claimed,
+And sailed through the sixty-fifth degree
+Direct to the North Atlantic Sea?
+Or had she found the "River of Kings,"
+Of which De Fonte told such strange things,
+In sixteen forty?  Never a sign,
+East or west or under the line,
+They saw of the missing galleon;
+Never a sail or plank or chip
+They found of the long-lost treasure-ship,
+Or enough to build a tale upon.
+But when she was lost, and where and how,
+Are the facts we're coming to just now.
+
+Take, if you please, the chart of that day,
+Published at Madrid,--por el Rey;
+Look for a spot in the old South Sea,
+The hundred and eightieth degree
+Longitude west of Madrid: there,
+Under the equatorial glare,
+Just where the east and west are one,
+You'll find the missing galleon,--
+You'll find the San Gregorio, yet
+Riding the seas, with sails all set,
+Fresh as upon the very day
+She sailed from Acapulco Bay.
+
+How did she get there?  What strange spell
+Kept her two hundred years so well,
+Free from decay and mortal taint?
+What but the prayers of a patron saint!
+
+A hundred leagues from Manilla town,
+The San Gregorio's helm came down;
+Round she went on her heel, and not
+A cable's length from a galliot
+That rocked on the waters just abreast
+Of the galleon's course, which was west-sou'-west.
+
+Then said the galleon's commandante,
+General Pedro Sobriente
+(That was his rank on land and main,
+A regular custom of Old Spain),
+"My pilot is dead of scurvy: may
+I ask the longitude, time, and day?"
+The first two given and compared;
+The third--the commandante stared!
+"The FIRST of June?  I make it second."
+Said the stranger, "Then you've wrongly reckoned;
+I make it FIRST: as you came this way,
+You should have lost, d'ye see, a day;
+Lost a day, as plainly see,
+On the hundred and eightieth degree."
+"Lost a day?"  "Yes; if not rude,
+When did you make east longitude?"
+"On the ninth of May,--our patron's day."
+"On the ninth?--YOU HAD NO NINTH OF MAY!
+Eighth and tenth was there; but stay"--
+Too late; for the galleon bore away.
+
+Lost was the day they should have kept,
+Lost unheeded and lost unwept;
+Lost in a way that made search vain,
+Lost in a trackless and boundless main;
+Lost like the day of Job's awful curse,
+In his third chapter, third and fourth verse;
+Wrecked was their patron's only day,--
+What would the holy Fathers say?
+
+Said the Fray Antonio Estavan,
+The galleon's chaplain,--a learned man,--
+"Nothing is lost that you can regain;
+And the way to look for a thing is plain,
+To go where you lost it, back again.
+Back with your galleon till you see
+The hundred and eightieth degree.
+Wait till the rolling year goes round,
+And there will the missing day be found;
+For you'll find, if computation's true,
+That sailing EAST will give to you
+Not only one ninth of May, but two,--
+One for the good saint's present cheer,
+And one for the day we lost last year."
+
+Back to the spot sailed the galleon;
+Where, for a twelvemonth, off and on
+The hundred and eightieth degree
+She rose and fell on a tropic sea.
+But lo! when it came to the ninth of May,
+All of a sudden becalmed she lay
+One degree from that fatal spot,
+Without the power to move a knot;
+And of course the moment she lost her way,
+Gone was her chance to save that day.
+
+To cut a lengthening story short,
+She never saved it.  Made the sport
+Of evil spirits and baffling wind,
+She was always before or just behind,
+One day too soon or one day too late,
+And the sun, meanwhile, would never wait.
+She had two Eighths, as she idly lay,
+Two Tenths, but never a NINTH of May;
+And there she rides through two hundred years
+Of dreary penance and anxious fears;
+Yet, through the grace of the saint she served,
+Captain and crew are still preserved.
+
+By a computation that still holds good,
+Made by the Holy Brotherhood,
+The San Gregorio will cross that line
+In nineteen hundred and thirty-nine:
+Just three hundred years to a day
+From the time she lost the ninth of May.
+And the folk in Acapulco town,
+Over the waters looking down,
+Will see in the glow of the setting sun
+The sails of the missing galleon,
+And the royal standard of Philip Rey,
+The gleaming mast and glistening spar,
+As she nears the surf of the outer bar.
+A Te Deum sung on her crowded deck,
+An odor of spice along the shore,
+A crash, a cry from a shattered wreck,--
+And the yearly galleon sails no more
+In or out of the olden bay;
+For the blessed patron has found his day.
+
+            -------
+
+Such is the legend.  Hear this truth:
+  Over the trackless past, somewhere,
+Lie the lost days of our tropic youth,
+  Only regained by faith and prayer,
+Only recalled by prayer and plaint:
+Each lost day has its patron saint!
+
+
+* See notes at end.
+
+
+
+III. IN DIALECT
+
+
+"JIM"
+
+Say there!  P'r'aps
+Some on you chaps
+  Might know Jim Wild?
+Well,--no offense:
+Thar ain't no sense
+  In gittin' riled!
+
+Jim was my chum
+  Up on the Bar:
+That's why I come
+  Down from up yar,
+Lookin' for Jim.
+Thank ye, sir!  YOU
+Ain't of that crew,--
+Blest if you are!
+
+Money?  Not much:
+  That ain't my kind;
+I ain't no such.
+  Rum?  I don't mind,
+Seein' it's you.
+
+Well, this yer Jim,--
+Did you know him?
+Jes' 'bout your size;
+Same kind of eyes;--
+Well, that is strange:
+  Why, it's two year
+  Since he came here,
+Sick, for a change.
+
+Well, here's to us:
+    Eh?
+The h--- you say!
+    Dead?
+That little cuss?
+
+What makes you star',
+You over thar?
+Can't a man drop
+'s glass in yer shop
+But you must r'ar?
+  It wouldn't take
+  D----d much to break
+You and your bar.
+
+    Dead!
+Poor--little--Jim!
+Why, thar was me,
+Jones, and Bob Lee,
+Harry and Ben,--
+No-account men:
+Then to take HIM!
+
+Well, thar--  Good-by--
+No more, sir--I--
+    Eh?
+What's that you say?
+Why, dern it!--sho!--
+No?  Yes!  By Joe!
+    Sold!
+
+Sold!  Why, you limb,
+You ornery,
+    Derned old
+Long-legged Jim.
+
+
+CHIQUITA
+
+Beautiful!  Sir, you may say so.  Thar isn't her match in the county;
+Is thar, old gal,--Chiquita, my darling, my beauty?
+Feel of that neck, sir,--thar's velvet!  Whoa! steady,--ah, will you,
+   you vixen!
+Whoa! I say.  Jack, trot her out; let the gentleman look at her paces.
+
+Morgan!--she ain't nothing else, and I've got the papers to prove it.
+Sired by Chippewa Chief, and twelve hundred dollars won't buy her.
+Briggs of Tuolumne owned her.  Did you know Briggs of Tuolumne?
+Busted hisself in White Pine, and blew out his brains down in 'Frisco?
+
+Hedn't no savey, hed Briggs.  Thar, Jack! that'll do,--quit that
+   foolin'!
+Nothin' to what she kin do, when she's got her work cut out before her.
+Hosses is hosses, you know, and likewise, too, jockeys is jockeys:
+And 'tain't ev'ry man as can ride as knows what a hoss has got in him.
+
+Know the old ford on the Fork, that nearly got Flanigan's leaders?
+Nasty in daylight, you bet, and a mighty rough ford in low water!
+Well, it ain't six weeks ago that me and the Jedge and his nevey
+Struck for that ford in the night, in the rain, and the water all
+   round us;
+
+Up to our flanks in the gulch, and Rattlesnake Creek just a-bilin',
+Not a plank left in the dam, and nary a bridge on the river.
+I had the gray, and the Jedge had his roan, and his nevey, Chiquita;
+And after us trundled the rocks jest loosed from the top of the
+   canyon.
+
+Lickity, lickity, switch, we came to the ford, and Chiquita
+Buckled right down to her work, and, a fore I could yell to her rider,
+Took water jest at the ford, and there was the Jedge and me standing,
+And twelve hundred dollars of hoss-flesh afloat, and a-driftin' to
+   thunder!
+
+Would ye b'lieve it?  That night, that hoss, that 'ar filly, Chiquita,
+Walked herself into her stall, and stood there, all quiet and dripping:
+Clean as a beaver or rat, with nary a buckle of harness,
+Just as she swam the Fork,--that hoss, that 'ar filly, Chiquita.
+
+That's what I call a hoss! and--  What did you say?--  Oh, the nevey?
+Drownded, I reckon,--leastways, he never kem beck to deny it.
+Ye see the derned fool had no seat, ye couldn't have made him a
+   rider;
+And then, ye know, boys will be boys, and hosses--well, hosses is
+   hosses!
+
+
+DOW'S FLAT
+
+(1856)
+
+Dow's Flat.  That's its name;
+  And I reckon that you
+Are a stranger?  The same?
+  Well, I thought it was true,--
+For thar isn't a man on the river as can't spot the place at first
+    view.
+
+It was called after Dow,--
+  Which the same was an ass,--
+And as to the how
+  Thet the thing kem to pass,--
+Jest tie up your hoss to that buckeye, and sit ye down here in the
+    grass.
+
+You see this 'yer Dow
+  Hed the worst kind of luck;
+He slipped up somehow
+  On each thing thet he struck.
+Why, ef he'd a straddled thet fence-rail, the derned thing'd get up
+    and buck.
+
+He mined on the bar
+  Till he couldn't pay rates;
+He was smashed by a car
+  When he tunneled with Bates;
+And right on the top of his trouble kem his wife and five kids from
+    the States.
+
+It was rough,--mighty rough;
+  But the boys they stood by,
+And they brought him the stuff
+  For a house, on the sly;
+And the old woman,--well, she did washing, and took on when no one
+    was nigh.
+
+But this 'yer luck of Dow's
+  Was so powerful mean
+That the spring near his house
+  Dried right up on the green;
+And he sunk forty feet down for water, but nary a drop to be seen.
+
+Then the bar petered out,
+  And the boys wouldn't stay;
+And the chills got about,
+  And his wife fell away;
+But Dow in his well kept a peggin' in his usual ridikilous way.
+
+One day,--it was June,
+  And a year ago, jest--
+This Dow kem at noon
+  To his work like the rest,
+With a shovel and pick on his shoulder, and derringer hid in his
+    breast.
+
+He goes to the well,
+  And he stands on the brink,
+And stops for a spell
+  Jest to listen and think:
+For the sun in his eyes (jest like this, sir!), you see, kinder made
+    the cuss blink.
+
+His two ragged gals
+  In the gulch were at play,
+And a gownd that was Sal's
+  Kinder flapped on a bay:
+Not much for a man to be leavin', but his all,--as I've heer'd the
+    folks say.
+
+And--That's a peart hoss
+  Thet you've got,--ain't it now?
+What might be her cost?
+  Eh?  Oh!--Well, then, Dow--
+Let's see,--well, that forty-foot grave wasn't his, sir, that day,
+    anyhow.
+
+For a blow of his pick
+  Sorter caved in the side,
+And he looked and turned sick,
+  Then he trembled and cried.
+For you see the dern cuss had struck--"Water?"--Beg your parding,
+    young man,--there you lied!
+
+It was GOLD,--in the quartz,
+  And it ran all alike;
+And I reckon five oughts
+  Was the worth of that strike;
+And that house with the coopilow's his'n,--which the same isn't bad
+    for a Pike.
+
+Thet's why it's Dow's Flat;
+  And the thing of it is
+That he kinder got that
+  Through sheer contrairiness:
+For 'twas WATER the derned cuss was seekin', and his luck made him
+    certain to miss.
+
+Thet's so!  Thar's your way,
+  To the left of yon tree;
+But--a--look h'yur, say?
+  Won't you come up to tea?
+No?  Well, then the next time you're passin'; and ask after Dow,--
+    and thet's ME.
+
+
+IN THE TUNNEL
+
+Didn't know Flynn,--
+Flynn of Virginia,--
+Long as he's been 'yar?
+Look 'ee here, stranger,
+Whar HEV you been?
+
+Here in this tunnel
+  He was my pardner,
+That same Tom Flynn,--
+  Working together,
+  In wind and weather,
+Day out and in.
+
+Didn't know Flynn!
+  Well, that IS queer;
+Why, it's a sin
+To think of Tom Flynn,--
+  Tom with his cheer,
+  Tom without fear,--
+  Stranger, look 'yar!
+
+Thar in the drift,
+  Back to the wall,
+He held the timbers
+  Ready to fall;
+Then in the darkness
+I heard him call:
+  "Run for your life, Jake!
+  Run for your wife's sake!
+  Don't wait for me."
+And that was all
+  Heard in the din,
+  Heard of Tom Flynn,--
+    Flynn of Virginia.
+
+That's all about
+  Flynn of Virginia.
+That lets me out.
+  Here in the damp,--
+Out of the sun,--
+  That 'ar derned lamp
+Makes my eyes run.
+Well, there,--I'm done!
+
+But, sir, when you'll
+Hear the next fool
+  Asking of Flynn,--
+Flynn of Virginia,--
+  Just you chip in,
+Say you knew Flynn;
+Say that you've been 'yar.
+
+
+"CICELY"
+
+(ALKALI STATION)
+
+Cicely says you're a poet; maybe,--I ain't much on rhyme:
+I reckon you'd give me a hundred, and beat me every time.
+Poetry!--that's the way some chaps puts up an idee,
+But I takes mine "straight without sugar," and that's what's the
+   matter with me.
+
+Poetry!--just look round you,--alkali, rock, and sage;
+Sage-brush, rock, and alkali; ain't it a pretty page!
+Sun in the east at mornin', sun in the west at night,
+And the shadow of this 'yer station the on'y thing moves in sight.
+
+Poetry!--Well now--Polly!  Polly, run to your mam;
+Run right away, my pooty!  By-by!  Ain't she a lamb?
+Poetry!--that reminds me o' suthin' right in that suit:
+Jest shet that door thar, will yer?--for Cicely's ears is cute.
+
+Ye noticed Polly,--the baby?  A month afore she was born,
+Cicely--my old woman--was moody-like and forlorn;
+Out of her head and crazy, and talked of flowers and trees;
+Family man yourself, sir?  Well, you know what a woman be's.
+
+Narvous she was, and restless,--said that she "couldn't stay."
+Stay!--and the nearest woman seventeen miles away.
+But I fixed it up with the doctor, and he said he would be on hand,
+And I kinder stuck by the shanty, and fenced in that bit o' land.
+
+One night,--the tenth of October,--I woke with a chill and a fright,
+For the door it was standing open, and Cicely warn't in sight,
+But a note was pinned on the blanket, which it said that she
+   "couldn't stay,"
+But had gone to visit her neighbor,--seventeen miles away!
+
+When and how she stampeded, I didn't wait for to see,
+For out in the road, next minit, I started as wild as she;
+Running first this way and that way, like a hound that is off the
+   scent,
+For there warn't no track in the darkness to tell me the way she went.
+
+I've had some mighty mean moments afore I kem to this spot,--
+Lost on the Plains in '50, drownded almost and shot;
+But out on this alkali desert, a-hunting a crazy wife,
+Was ra'ly as on-satis-factory as anything in my life.
+
+"Cicely! Cicely! Cicely!" I called, and I held my breath,
+And "Cicely!" came from the canyon,--and all was as still as death.
+And "Cicely! Cicely! Cicely!" came from the rocks below,
+And jest but a whisper of "Cicely!" down from them peaks of snow.
+
+I ain't what you call religious,--but I jest looked up to the sky,
+And--this 'yer's to what I'm coming, and maybe ye think I lie:
+But up away to the east'ard, yaller and big and far,
+I saw of a suddent rising the singlerist kind of star.
+
+Big and yaller and dancing, it seemed to beckon to me:
+Yaller and big and dancing, such as you never see:
+Big and yaller and dancing,--I never saw such a star,
+And I thought of them sharps in the Bible, and I went for it then
+   and thar.
+
+Over the brush and bowlders I stumbled and pushed ahead,
+Keeping the star afore me, I went wherever it led.
+It might hev been for an hour, when suddent and peart and nigh,
+Out of the yearth afore me thar riz up a baby's cry.
+
+Listen! thar's the same music; but her lungs they are stronger now
+Than the day I packed her and her mother,--I'm derned if I jest know
+   how.
+But the doctor kem the next minit, and the joke o' the whole thing is
+That Cis never knew what happened from that very night to this!
+
+But Cicely says you're a poet, and maybe you might, some day,
+Jest sling her a rhyme 'bout a baby that was born in a curious way,
+And see what she says; and, old fellow, when you speak of the star,
+   don't tell
+As how 'twas the doctor's lantern,--for maybe 'twon't sound so well.
+
+
+PENELOPE
+
+(SIMPSON'S BAR, 1858)
+
+So you've kem 'yer agen,
+  And one answer won't do?
+Well, of all the derned men
+  That I've struck, it is you.
+O Sal! 'yer's that derned fool from Simpson's, cavortin' round 'yer
+   in the dew.
+
+Kem in, ef you WILL.
+  Thar,--quit!  Take a cheer.
+Not that; you can't fill
+  Them theer cushings this year,--
+For that cheer was my old man's, Joe Simpson, and they don't make
+   such men about 'yer.
+
+He was tall, was my Jack,
+  And as strong as a tree.
+Thar's his gun on the rack,--
+  Jest you heft it, and see.
+And YOU come a courtin' his widder!  Lord! where can that critter,
+   Sal, be!
+
+You'd fill my Jack's place?
+  And a man of your size,--
+With no baird to his face,
+  Nor a snap to his eyes,
+And nary--Sho! thar! I was foolin',--I was, Joe, for sartain,--don't
+   rise.
+
+Sit down.  Law! why, sho!
+  I'm as weak as a gal.
+Sal!  Don't you go, Joe,
+  Or I'll faint,--sure, I shall.
+Sit down,--ANYWHEER, where you like, Joe,--in that cheer, if you
+   choose,--Lord! where's Sal?
+
+
+PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES
+
+(TABLE MOUNTAIN, 1870)
+
+Which I wish to remark,
+  And my language is plain,
+That for ways that are dark
+  And for tricks that are vain,
+The heathen Chinee is peculiar,
+ Which the same I would rise to explain.
+
+Ah Sin was his name;
+  And I shall not deny,
+In regard to the same,
+  What that name might imply;
+But his smile it was pensive and childlike,
+  As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye.
+
+It was August the third,
+  And quite soft was the skies;
+Which it might be inferred
+  That Ah Sin was likewise;
+Yet he played it that day upon William
+  And me in a way I despise.
+
+Which we had a small game,
+  And Ah Sin took a hand:
+It was Euchre.  The same
+  He did not understand;
+But he smiled as he sat by the table,
+  With the smile that was childlike and bland.
+
+Yet the cards they were stocked
+  In a way that I grieve,
+And my feelings were shocked
+  At the state of Nye's sleeve,
+Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers,
+  And the same with intent to deceive.
+
+But the hands that were played
+  By that heathen Chinee,
+And the points that he made,
+  Were quite frightful to see,--
+Till at last he put down a right bower,
+  Which the same Nye had dealt unto me.
+
+Then I looked up at Nye,
+  And he gazed upon me;
+And he rose with a sigh,
+  And said, "Can this be?
+We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor,"--
+  And he went for that heathen Chinee.
+
+In the scene that ensued
+  I did not take a hand,
+But the floor it was strewed
+  Like the leaves on the strand
+With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding,
+  In the game "he did not understand."
+
+In his sleeves, which were long,
+  He had twenty-four packs,--
+Which was coming it strong,
+  Yet I state but the facts;
+And we found on his nails, which were taper,
+  What is frequent in tapers,--that's wax.
+
+Which is why I remark,
+  And my language is plain,
+That for ways that are dark
+  And for tricks that are vain,
+The heathen Chinee is peculiar,--
+  Which the same I am free to maintain.
+
+
+THE SOCIETY UPON THE STANISLAUS
+
+I reside at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
+I am not up to small deceit or any sinful games;
+And I'll tell in simple language what I know about the row
+That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow.
+
+But first I would remark, that it is not a proper plan
+For any scientific gent to whale his fellow-man,
+And, if a member don't agree with his peculiar whim,
+To lay for that same member for to "put a head" on him.
+
+Now nothing could be finer or more beautiful to see
+Than the first six months' proceedings of that same Society,
+Till Brown of Calaveras brought a lot of fossil bones
+That he found within a tunnel near the tenement of Jones.
+
+Then Brown he read a paper, and he reconstructed there,
+From those same bones, an animal that was extremely rare;
+And Jones then asked the Chair for a suspension of the rules,
+Till he could prove that those same bones was one of his lost mules.
+
+Then Brown he smiled a bitter smile, and said he was at fault,
+It seemed he had been trespassing on Jones's family vault;
+He was a most sarcastic man, this quiet Mr. Brown,
+And on several occasions he had cleaned out the town.
+
+Now I hold it is not decent for a scientific gent
+To say another is an ass,--at least, to all intent;
+Nor should the individual who happens to be meant
+Reply by heaving rocks at him, to any great extent.
+
+Then Abner Dean of Angel's raised a point of order, when
+A chunk of old red sandstone took him in the abdomen,
+And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor,
+And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.
+
+For, in less time than I write it, every member did engage
+In a warfare with the remnants of a palaeozoic age;
+And the way they heaved those fossils in their anger was a sin,
+Till the skull of an old mammoth caved the head of Thompson in.
+
+And this is all I have to say of these improper games,
+For I live at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
+And I've told in simple language what I know about the row
+That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow.
+
+
+LUKE
+
+(IN THE COLORADO PARK, 1873)
+
+Wot's that you're readin'?--a novel?  A novel!--well, darn my skin!
+You a man grown and bearded and histin' such stuff ez that in--
+Stuff about gals and their sweethearts!  No wonder you're thin ez a
+   knife.
+Look at me--clar two hundred--and never read one in my life!
+
+That's my opinion o' novels.  And ez to their lyin' round here,
+They belong to the Jedge's daughter--the Jedge who came up last year
+On account of his lungs and the mountains and the balsam o' pine and
+   fir;
+And his daughter--well, she read novels, and that's what's the
+matter with her.
+
+Yet she was sweet on the Jedge, and stuck by him day and night,
+Alone in the cabin up 'yer--till she grew like a ghost, all white.
+She wus only a slip of a thing, ez light and ez up and away
+Ez rifle smoke blown through the woods, but she wasn't my kind--no
+   way!
+
+Speakin' o' gals, d'ye mind that house ez you rise the hill,
+A mile and a half from White's, and jist above Mattingly's mill?
+You do?  Well now THAR's a gal!  What! you saw her?  Oh, come now,
+   thar! quit!
+She was only bedevlin' you boys, for to me she don't cotton one bit.
+
+Now she's what I call a gal--ez pretty and plump ez a quail;
+Teeth ez white ez a hound's, and they'd go through a ten-penny nail;
+Eyes that kin snap like a cap.  So she asked to know "whar I was hid?"
+She did!  Oh, it's jist like her sass, for she's peart ez a Katydid.
+
+But what was I talking of?--Oh! the Jedge and his daughter--she read
+Novels the whole day long, and I reckon she read them abed;
+And sometimes she read them out loud to the Jedge on the porch where
+   he sat,
+And 'twas how "Lord Augustus" said this, and how "Lady Blanche" she
+   said that.
+
+But the sickest of all that I heerd was a yarn thet they read 'bout
+   a chap,
+"Leather-stocking" by name, and a hunter chock full o' the greenest
+   o' sap;
+And they asked me to hear, but I says, "Miss Mabel, not any for me;
+When I likes I kin sling my own lies, and thet chap and I shouldn't
+   agree."
+
+Yet somehow or other that gal allus said that I brought her to mind
+Of folks about whom she had read, or suthin belike of thet kind,
+And thar warn't no end o' the names that she give me thet summer up
+   here--
+"Robin Hood," "Leather-stocking" "Rob Roy,"--Oh, I tell you, the
+   critter was queer!
+
+And yet, ef she hadn't been spiled, she was harmless enough in her
+   way;
+She could jabber in French to her dad, and they said that she knew
+   how to play;
+And she worked me that shot-pouch up thar, which the man doesn't
+   live ez kin use;
+And slippers--you see 'em down 'yer--ez would cradle an Injin's
+   papoose.
+
+Yet along o' them novels, you see, she was wastin' and mopin' away,
+And then she got shy with her tongue, and at last she had nothin' to
+   say;
+And whenever I happened around, her face it was hid by a book,
+And it warn't till the day she left that she give me ez much ez a
+   look.
+
+And this was the way it was.  It was night when I kem up here
+To say to 'em all "good-by," for I reckoned to go for deer
+At "sun up" the day they left.  So I shook 'em all round by the hand,
+'Cept Mabel, and she was sick, ez they give me to understand.
+
+But jist ez I passed the house next morning at dawn, some one,
+Like a little waver o' mist got up on the hill with the sun;
+Miss Mabel it was, alone--all wrapped in a mantle o' lace--
+And she stood there straight in the road, with a touch o' the sun in
+   her face.
+
+And she looked me right in the eye--I'd seen suthin' like it before
+When I hunted a wounded doe to the edge o' the Clear Lake Shore,
+And I had my knee on its neck, and I jist was raisin' my knife,
+When it give me a look like that, and--well, it got off with its life.
+
+"We are going to-day," she said, "and I thought I would say good-by
+To you in your own house, Luke--these woods and the bright blue sky!
+You've always been kind to us, Luke, and papa has found you still
+As good as the air he breathes, and wholesome as Laurel Tree Hill.
+
+"And we'll always think of you, Luke, as the thing we could not take
+   away,--
+The balsam that dwells in the woods, the rainbow that lives in the
+   spray.
+And you'll sometimes think of ME, Luke, as you know you once used to
+   say,
+A rifle smoke blown through the woods, a moment, but never to stay."
+
+And then we shook hands.  She turned, but a-suddent she tottered and
+   fell,
+And I caught her sharp by the waist, and held her a minit.  Well,
+It was only a minit, you know, thet ez cold and ez white she lay
+Ez a snowflake here on my breast, and then--well, she melted away--
+
+And was gone. . . . And thar are her books; but I says not any for me;
+Good enough may be for some, but them and I mightn't agree.
+They spiled a decent gal ez might hev made some chap a wife,
+And look at me!--clar two hundred--and never read one in my life!
+
+
+"THE BABES IN THE WOODS"
+
+(BIG PINE FLAT, 1871)
+
+"Something characteristic," eh?
+  Humph!  I reckon you mean by that
+Something that happened in our way,
+  Here at the crossin' of Big Pine Flat.
+Times aren't now as they used to be,
+  When gold was flush and the boys were frisky,
+And a man would pull out his battery
+  For anything--maybe the price of whiskey.
+
+Nothing of that sort, eh?  That's strange!
+  Why, I thought you might be diverted
+Hearing how Jones of Red Rock Range
+  Drawed his "hint to the unconverted,"
+And saying, "Whar will you have it?" shot
+  Cherokee Bob at the last debating!
+What was the question I forgot,
+  But Jones didn't like Bob's way of stating.
+
+Nothing of that kind, eh?  You mean
+  Something milder?  Let's see!--O Joe!
+Tell to the stranger that little scene
+  Out of the "Babes in the Woods."  You know,
+"Babes" was the name that we gave 'em, sir,
+  Two lean lads in their teens, and greener
+Than even the belt of spruce and fir
+  Where they built their nest, and each day grew leaner.
+
+No one knew where they came from.  None
+  Cared to ask if they had a mother.
+Runaway schoolboys, maybe.  One
+  Tall and dark as a spruce; the other
+Blue and gold in the eyes and hair,
+  Soft and low in his speech, but rarely
+Talking with us; and we didn't care
+  To get at their secret at all unfairly.
+
+For they were so quiet, so sad and shy,
+  Content to trust each other solely,
+That somehow we'd always shut one eye,
+  And never seem to observe them wholly
+As they passed to their work.  'Twas a worn-out claim,
+  And it paid them grub.  They could live without it,
+For the boys had a way of leaving game
+  In their tent, and forgetting all about it.
+
+Yet no one asked for their secret.  Dumb
+  It lay in their big eyes' heavy hollows.
+It was understood that no one should come
+  To their tent unawares, save the bees and swallows.
+So they lived alone.  Until one warm night
+  I was sitting here at the tent-door,--so, sir!
+When out of the sunset's rosy light
+  Up rose the Sheriff of Mariposa.
+
+I knew at once there was something wrong,
+  For his hand and his voice shook just a little,
+And there isn't much you can fetch along
+  To make the sinews of Jack Hill brittle.
+"Go warn the Babes!" he whispered, hoarse;
+  "Tell them I'm coming--to get and scurry;
+For I've got a story that's bad,--and worse,
+  I've got a warrant: G-d d--n it, hurry!"
+
+Too late! they had seen him cross the hill;
+  I ran to their tent and found them lying
+Dead in each other's arms, and still
+  Clasping the drug they had taken flying.
+And there lay their secret cold and bare,
+  Their life, their trial--the old, old story!
+For the sweet blue eyes and the golden hair
+  Was a WOMAN'S shame and a WOMAN'S glory.
+
+"Who were they?"  Ask no more, or ask
+  The sun that visits their grave so lightly;
+Ask of the whispering reeds, or task
+  The mourning crickets that chirrup nightly.
+All of their life but its love forgot,
+  Everything tender and soft and mystic,
+These are our Babes in the Woods,--you've got,
+  Well--human nature--that's characteristic.
+
+
+THE LATEST CHINESE OUTRAGE
+
+It was noon by the sun; we had finished our game,
+And was passin' remarks goin' back to our claim;
+Jones was countin' his chips, Smith relievin' his mind
+Of ideas that a "straight" should beat "three of a kind,"
+When Johnson of Elko came gallopin' down,
+With a look on his face 'twixt a grin and a frown,
+And he calls, "Drop your shovels and face right about,
+For them Chinees from Murphy's are cleanin' us out--
+     With their ching-a-ring-chow
+     And their chic-colorow
+     They're bent upon making
+     No slouch of a row."
+
+Then Jones--my own pardner--looks up with a sigh;
+"It's your wash-bill," sez he, and I answers, "You lie!"
+But afore he could draw or the others could arm,
+Up tumbles the Bates boys, who heard the alarm.
+And a yell from the hill-top and roar of a gong,
+Mixed up with remarks like "Hi! yi! Chang-a-wong,"
+And bombs, shells, and crackers, that crashed through the trees,
+Revealed in their war-togs four hundred Chinees!
+     Four hundred Chinee;
+     We are eight, don't ye see!
+     That made a square fifty
+     To just one o' we.
+
+They were dressed in their best, but I grieve that that same
+Was largely made up of our own, to their shame;
+And my pardner's best shirt and his trousers were hung
+On a spear, and above him were tauntingly swung;
+While that beggar, Chey Lee, like a conjurer sat
+Pullin' out eggs and chickens from Johnson's best hat;
+And Bates's game rooster was part of their "loot,"
+And all of Smith's pigs were skyugled to boot;
+But the climax was reached and I like to have died
+When my demijohn, empty, came down the hillside,--
+     Down the hillside--
+     What once held the pride
+     Of Robertson County
+     Pitched down the hillside!
+
+Then we axed for a parley.  When out of the din
+To the front comes a-rockin' that heathen, Ah Sin!
+"You owe flowty dollee--me washee you camp,
+You catchee my washee--me catchee no stamp;
+One dollar hap dozen, me no catchee yet,
+Now that flowty dollee--no hab?--how can get?
+Me catchee you piggee--me sellee for cash,
+It catchee me licee--you catchee no 'hash;'
+Me belly good Sheliff--me lebbee when can,
+Me allee same halp pin as Melican man!
+     But Melican man
+     He washee him pan
+     On BOTTOM side hillee
+     And catchee--how can?"
+
+"Are we men?" says Joe Johnson, "and list to this jaw,
+Without process of warrant or color of law?
+Are we men or--a-chew!"--here be gasped in his speech,
+For a stink-pot had fallen just out of his reach.
+"Shall we stand here as idle, and let Asia pour
+Her barbaric hordes on this civilized shore?
+Has the White Man no country?  Are we left in the lurch?
+And likewise what's gone of the Established Church?
+One man to four hundred is great odds, I own,
+But this 'yer's a White Man--I plays it alone!"
+And he sprang up the hillside--to stop him none dare--
+Till a yell from the top told a "White Man was there!"
+     A White Man was there!
+     We prayed he might spare
+     Those misguided heathens
+     The few clothes they wear.
+
+They fled, and he followed, but no matter where;
+They fled to escape him,--the "White Man was there,"--
+Till we missed first his voice on the pine-wooded slope,
+And we knew for the heathen henceforth was no hope;
+And the yells they grew fainter, when Petersen said,
+"It simply was human to bury his dead."
+     And then, with slow tread,
+     We crept up, in dread,
+     But found nary mortal there,
+     Living or dead.
+
+But there was his trail, and the way that they came,
+And yonder, no doubt, he was bagging his game.
+When Jones drops his pickaxe, and Thompson says "Shoo!"
+And both of 'em points to a cage of bamboo
+Hanging down from a tree, with a label that swung
+Conspicuous, with letters in some foreign tongue,
+Which, when freely translated, the same did appear
+Was the Chinese for saying, "A White Man is here!"
+     And as we drew near,
+     In anger and fear,
+     Bound hand and foot, Johnson
+     Looked down with a leer!
+
+In his mouth was an opium pipe--which was why
+He leered at us so with a drunken-like eye!
+They had shaved off his eyebrows, and tacked on a cue,
+They had painted his face of a coppery hue,
+And rigged him all up in a heathenish suit,
+Then softly departed, each man with his "loot."
+     Yes, every galoot,
+     And Ah Sin, to boot,
+     Had left him there hanging
+     Like ripening fruit.
+
+At a mass meeting held up at Murphy's next day
+There were seventeen speakers and each had his say;
+There were twelve resolutions that instantly passed,
+And each resolution was worse than the last;
+There were fourteen petitions, which, granting the same,
+Will determine what Governor Murphy's shall name;
+And the man from our district that goes up next year
+Goes up on one issue--that's patent and clear:
+     "Can the work of a mean,
+     Degraded, unclean
+     Believer in Buddha
+     Be held as a lien?"
+
+
+TRUTHFUL JAMES TO THE EDITOR
+
+(YREKA, 1873)
+
+Which it is not my style
+  To produce needless pain
+By statements that rile
+  Or that go 'gin the grain,
+But here's Captain Jack still a-livin', and Nye has no skelp on his
+   brain!
+
+On that Caucasian head
+  There is no crown of hair;
+It has gone, it has fled!
+  And Echo sez "Where?"
+And I asks, "Is this Nation a White Man's, and is generally things
+   on the square?"
+
+She was known in the camp
+  As "Nye's other squaw,"
+And folks of that stamp
+  Hez no rights in the law,
+But is treacherous, sinful, and slimy, as Nye might hev well known
+   before.
+
+But she said that she knew
+  Where the Injins was hid,
+And the statement was true,
+  For it seemed that she did,
+Since she led William where he was covered by seventeen Modocs, and--
+   slid!
+
+Then they reached for his hair;
+  But Nye sez, "By the law
+Of nations, forbear!
+  I surrenders--no more:
+And I looks to be treated,--you hear me?--as a pris'ner, a pris'ner
+   of war!"
+
+But Captain Jack rose
+  And he sez, "It's too thin!
+Such statements as those
+  It's too late to begin.
+There's a MODOC INDICTMENT agin you, O Paleface, and you're goin' in!
+
+"You stole Schonchin's squaw
+  In the year sixty-two;
+It was in sixty-four
+  That Long Jack you went through,
+And you burned Nasty Jim's rancheria, and his wives and his papooses
+   too.
+
+"This gun in my hand
+  Was sold me by you
+'Gainst the law of the land,
+  And I grieves it is true!"
+And he buried his face in his blanket and wept as he hid it from view.
+
+But you're tried and condemned,
+  And skelping's your doom,"
+And he paused and he hemmed--
+  But why this resume?
+He was skelped 'gainst the custom of nations, and cut off like a rose
+   in its bloom.
+
+So I asks without guile,
+  And I trusts not in vain,
+If this is the style
+  That is going to obtain--
+If here's Captain Jack still a-livin', and Nye with no skelp on his
+   brain?
+
+
+AN IDYL OF THE ROAD
+
+(SIERRAS, 1876)
+
+
+DRAMATIS PERSONAE
+
+First Tourist
+Second Tourist
+Yuba Bill, Driver
+A Stranger
+
+
+FIRST TOURIST
+
+Look how the upland plunges into cover,
+  Green where the pines fade sullenly away.
+Wonderful those olive depths! and wonderful, moreover--
+
+SECOND TOURIST
+
+  The red dust that rises in a suffocating way.
+
+FIRST TOURIST
+
+Small is the soul that cannot soar above it,
+  Cannot but cling to its ever-kindred clay:
+Better be yon bird, that seems to breathe and love it--
+
+SECOND TOURIST
+
+  Doubtless a hawk or some other bird of prey.
+Were we, like him, as sure of a dinner
+  That on our stomachs would comfortably stay;
+Or were the fried ham a shade or two just thinner,
+  That must confront us at closing of the day:
+Then might you sing like Theocritus or Virgil,
+  Then might we each make a metrical essay;
+But verse just now--I must protest and urge--ill
+  Fits a digestion by travel led astray.
+
+CHORUS OF PASSENGERS
+
+Speed, Yuba Bill! oh, speed us to our dinner!
+Speed to the sunset that beckons far away.
+
+SECOND TOURIST
+
+William of Yuba, O Son of Nimshi, hearken!
+  Check thy profanity, but not thy chariot's play.
+Tell us, O William, before the shadows darken,
+  Where, and, oh! how we shall dine?  O William, say!
+
+YUBA BILL
+
+It ain't my fault, nor the Kumpeney's, I reckon,
+  Ye can't get ez square meal ez any on the Bay,
+Up at you place, whar the senset 'pears to beckon--
+  Ez thet sharp allows in his airy sort o' way.
+Thar woz a place wor yer hash ye might hev wrestled,
+  Kept by a woman ez chipper ez a jay--
+Warm in her breast all the morning sunshine nestled;
+  Red on her cheeks all the evening's sunshine lay.
+
+SECOND TOURIST
+
+Praise is but breath, O chariot compeller!
+Yet of that hash we would bid you farther say.
+
+YUBA BILL
+
+Thar woz a snipe--like you, a fancy tourist--
+  Kem to that ranch ez if to make a stay,
+Ran off the gal, and ruined jist the purist
+  Critter that lived--
+
+STRANGER (quietly)
+
+                        You're a liar, driver!
+
+YUBA BILL (reaching for his revolver).
+
+                                                Eh!
+Here take my lines, somebody--
+
+CHORUS OF PASSENGERS
+
+                               Hush, boys! listen!
+Inside there's a lady!  Remember!  No affray!
+
+YUBA BILL
+
+Ef that man lives, the fault ain't mine or his'n.
+
+STRANGER
+
+Wait for the sunset that beckons far away,
+  Then--as you will!  But, meantime, friends, believe me,
+Nowhere on earth lives a purer woman; nay,
+  If my perceptions do surely not deceive me,
+She is the lady we have inside to-day.
+  As for the man--you see that blackened pine tree,
+Up which the green vine creeps heavenward away!
+  He was that scarred trunk, and she the vine that sweetly
+Clothed him with life again, and lifted--
+
+SECOND TOURIST
+
+                                           Yes; but pray
+How know you this?
+
+STRANGER
+
+                   She's my wife.
+
+YUBA BILL
+
+                                   The h-ll you say!
+
+
+THOMPSON OF ANGELS
+
+It is the story of Thompson--of Thompson, the hero of Angels.
+Frequently drunk was Thompson, but always polite to the stranger;
+Light and free was the touch of Thompson upon his revolver;
+Great the mortality incident on that lightness and freedom.
+
+Yet not happy or gay was Thompson, the hero of Angels;
+Often spoke to himself in accents of anguish and sorrow,
+"Why do I make the graves of the frivolous youth who in folly
+Thoughtlessly pass my revolver, forgetting its lightness and freedom?
+
+"Why in my daily walks does the surgeon drop his left eyelid,
+The undertaker smile, and the sculptor of gravestone marbles
+Lean on his chisel and gaze?  I care not o'er much for attention;
+Simple am I in my ways, save but for this lightness and freedom."
+
+So spake that pensive man--this Thompson, the hero of Angels,
+Bitterly smiled to himself, as he strode through the chapparal musing.
+"Why, oh, why?" echoed the pines in the dark olive depth far
+   resounding.
+"Why, indeed?" whispered the sage brush that bent 'neath his feet
+   non-elastic.
+
+Pleasant indeed was that morn that dawned o'er the barroom at Angels,
+Where in their manhood's prime was gathered the pride of the hamlet.
+Six "took sugar in theirs," and nine to the barkeeper lightly
+Smiled as they said, "Well, Jim, you can give us our regular fusil."
+
+Suddenly as the gray hawk swoops down on the barnyard, alighting
+Where, pensively picking their corn, the favorite pullets are
+   gathered,
+So in that festive bar-room dropped Thompson, the hero of Angels,
+Grasping his weapon dread with his pristine lightness and freedom.
+
+Never a word he spoke; divesting himself of his garments,
+Danced the war-dance of the playful yet truculent Modoc,
+Uttered a single whoop, and then, in the accents of challenge,
+Spake: "Oh, behold in me a Crested Jay Hawk of the mountain."
+
+Then rose a pallid man--a man sick with fever and ague;
+Small was he, and his step was tremulous, weak, and uncertain;
+Slowly a Derringer drew, and covered the person of Thompson;
+Said in his feeblest pipe, "I'm a Bald-headed Snipe of the Valley."
+
+As on its native plains the kangaroo, startled by hunters,
+Leaps with successive bounds, and hurries away to the thickets,
+So leaped the Crested Hawk, and quietly hopping behind him
+Ran, and occasionally shot, that Bald-headed Snipe of the Valley.
+
+Vain at the festive bar still lingered the people of Angels,
+Hearing afar in the woods the petulant pop of the pistol;
+Never again returned the Crested Jay Hawk of the mountains,
+Never again was seen the Bald-headed Snipe of the Valley.
+
+Yet in the hamlet of Angels, when truculent speeches are uttered,
+When bloodshed and life alone will atone for some trifling
+   misstatement,
+Maidens and men in their prime recall the last hero of Angels,
+Think of and vainly regret the Bald-headed Snipe of the Valley!
+
+
+THE HAWK'S NEST
+
+(SIERRAS)
+
+We checked our pace, the red road sharply rounding;
+  We heard the troubled flow
+Of the dark olive depths of pines resounding
+  A thousand feet below.
+
+Above the tumult of the canyon lifted,
+  The gray hawk breathless hung,
+Or on the hill a winged shadow drifted
+  Where furze and thorn-bush clung;
+
+Or where half-way the mountain side was furrowed
+  With many a seam and scar;
+Or some abandoned tunnel dimly burrowed,--
+  A mole-hill seen so far.
+
+We looked in silence down across the distant
+  Unfathomable reach:
+A silence broken by the guide's consistent
+  And realistic speech.
+
+"Walker of Murphy's blew a hole through Peters
+  For telling him he lied;
+Then up and dusted out of South Hornitos
+  Across the Long Divide.
+
+"We ran him out of Strong's, and up through Eden,
+  And 'cross the ford below,
+And up this canyon (Peters' brother leadin'),
+  And me and Clark and Joe.
+
+"He fou't us game: somehow I disremember
+  Jest how the thing kem round;
+Some say 'twas wadding, some a scattered ember
+  From fires on the ground.
+
+"But in one minute all the hill below him
+  Was just one sheet of flame;
+Guardin' the crest, Sam Clark and I called to him,
+  And,--well, the dog was game!
+
+"He made no sign: the fires of hell were round him,
+  The pit of hell below.
+We sat and waited, but we never found him;
+  And then we turned to go.
+
+"And then--you see that rock that's grown so bristly
+  With chapparal and tan--
+Suthin crep' out: it might hev been a grizzly
+It might hev been a man;
+
+"Suthin that howled, and gnashed its teeth, and shouted
+  In smoke and dust and flame;
+Suthin that sprang into the depths about it,
+  Grizzly or man,--but game!
+
+"That's all!  Well, yes, it does look rather risky,
+  And kinder makes one queer
+And dizzy looking down.  A drop of whiskey
+  Ain't a bad thing right here!"
+
+
+HER LETTER
+
+I'm sitting alone by the fire,
+  Dressed just as I came from the dance,
+In a robe even YOU would admire,--
+  It cost a cool thousand in France;
+I'm be-diamonded out of all reason,
+  My hair is done up in a cue:
+In short, sir, "the belle of the season"
+  Is wasting an hour upon you.
+
+A dozen engagements I've broken;
+  I left in the midst of a set;
+Likewise a proposal, half spoken,
+  That waits--on the stairs--for me yet.
+They say he'll be rich,--when he grows up,--
+  And then he adores me indeed;
+And you, sir, are turning your nose up,
+  Three thousand miles off as you read.
+
+"And how do I like my position?"
+  "And what do I think of New York?"
+"And now, in my higher ambition,
+  With whom do I waltz, flirt, or talk?"
+"And isn't it nice to have riches,
+  And diamonds and silks, and all that?"
+"And aren't they a change to the ditches
+  And tunnels of Poverty Flat?"
+
+Well, yes,--if you saw us out driving
+  Each day in the Park, four-in-hand,
+If you saw poor dear mamma contriving
+  To look supernaturally grand,--
+If you saw papa's picture, as taken
+  By Brady, and tinted at that,
+You'd never suspect he sold bacon
+  And flour at Poverty Flat.
+
+And yet, just this moment, when sitting
+  In the glare of the grand chandelier,--
+In the bustle and glitter befitting
+  The "finest soiree of the year,"--
+In the mists of a gaze de Chambery,
+  And the hum of the smallest of talk,--
+Somehow, Joe, I thought of the "Ferry,"
+  And the dance that we had on "The Fork;"
+
+Of Harrison's barn, with its muster
+  Of flags festooned over the wall;
+Of the candles that shed their soft lustre
+  And tallow on head-dress and shawl;
+Of the steps that we took to one fiddle,
+  Of the dress of my queer vis-a-vis;
+And how I once went down the middle
+  With the man that shot Sandy McGee;
+
+Of the moon that was quietly sleeping
+  On the hill, when the time came to go;
+Of the few baby peaks that were peeping
+  From under their bedclothes of snow;
+Of that ride--that to me was the rarest;
+  Of--the something you said at the gate.
+Ah! Joe, then I wasn't an heiress
+  To "the best-paying lead in the State."
+
+Well, well, it's all past; yet it's funny
+  To think, as I stood in the glare
+Of fashion and beauty and money,
+  That I should be thinking, right there,
+Of some one who breasted high water,
+  And swam the North Fork, and all that,
+Just to dance with old Folinsbee's daughter,
+  The Lily of Poverty Flat.
+
+But goodness! what nonsense I'm writing!
+  (Mamma says my taste still is low),
+Instead of my triumphs reciting,
+  I'm spooning on Joseph,--heigh-ho!
+And I'm to be "finished" by travel,--
+  Whatever's the meaning of that.
+Oh, why did papa strike pay gravel
+  In drifting on Poverty Flat?
+
+Good-night!--here's the end of my paper;
+  Good-night!--if the longitude please,--
+For maybe, while wasting my taper,
+  YOUR sun's climbing over the trees.
+But know, if you haven't got riches,
+  And are poor, dearest Joe, and all that,
+That my heart's somewhere there in the ditches,
+  And you've struck it,--on Poverty Flat.
+
+
+HIS ANSWER TO "HER LETTER"
+
+(REPORTED BY TRUTHFUL JAMES)
+
+Being asked by an intimate party,--
+  Which the same I would term as a friend,--
+Though his health it were vain to call hearty,
+  Since the mind to deceit it might lend;
+For his arm it was broken quite recent,
+  And there's something gone wrong with his lung,--
+Which is why it is proper and decent
+  I should write what he runs off his tongue.
+
+First, he says, Miss, he's read through your letter
+  To the end,--and "the end came too soon;"
+That a "slight illness kept him your debtor,"
+  (Which for weeks he was wild as a loon);
+That "his spirits are buoyant as yours is;"
+  That with you, Miss, he "challenges Fate,"
+(Which the language that invalid uses
+  At times it were vain to relate).
+
+And he says "that the mountains are fairer
+  For once being held in your thought;"
+That each rock "holds a wealth that is rarer
+  Than ever by gold-seeker sought."
+(Which are words he would put in these pages,
+  By a party not given to guile;
+Though the claim not, at date, paying wages,
+  Might produce in the sinful a smile.)
+
+He remembers the ball at the Ferry,
+  And the ride, and the gate, and the vow,
+And the rose that you gave him,--that very
+  Same rose he is "treasuring now."
+(Which his blanket he's kicked on his trunk, Miss,
+  And insists on his legs being free
+And his language to me from his bunk, Miss,
+  Is frequent and painful and free.)
+
+He hopes you are wearing no willows,
+  But are happy and gay all the while;
+That he knows--(which this dodging of pillows
+  Imparts but small ease to the style,
+And the same you will pardon)--he knows, Miss,
+  That, though parted by many a mile,
+Yet, were HE lying under the snows, Miss,
+  They'd melt into tears at your smile."
+
+And "you'll still think of him in your pleasures,
+  In your brief twilight dreams of the past;
+In this green laurel spray that he treasures,--
+  It was plucked where your parting was last;
+In this specimen,--but a small trifle,--
+  It will do for a pin for your shawl."
+(Which, the truth not to wickedly stifle,
+  Was his last week's "clean up,"--and HIS ALL.)
+
+He's asleep, which the same might seem strange, Miss,
+  Were it not that I scorn to deny
+That I raised his last dose, for a change, Miss,
+  In view that his fever was high;
+But he lies there quite peaceful and pensive.
+  And now, my respects, Miss, to you;
+Which my language, although comprehensive,
+  Might seem to be freedom, is true.
+
+For I have a small favor to ask you,
+  As concerns a bull-pup, and the same,--
+If the duty would not overtask you,--
+  You would please to procure for me, GAME;
+And send per express to the Flat, Miss,--
+  For they say York is famed for the breed,
+Which, though words of deceit may be that, Miss,
+  I'll trust to your taste, Miss, indeed.
+
+P.S.--Which this same interfering
+  Into other folks' way I despise;
+Yet if it so be I was hearing
+  That it's just empty pockets as lies
+Betwixt you and Joseph, it follers
+  That, having no family claims,
+Here's my pile, which it's six hundred dollars,
+  As is YOURS, with respects,
+                              TRUTHFUL JAMES.
+
+
+"THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS"
+
+(MUD FLAT, 1860)
+
+So you're back from your travels, old fellow,
+  And you left but a twelvemonth ago;
+You've hobnobbed with Louis Napoleon,
+  Eugenie, and kissed the Pope's toe.
+By Jove, it is perfectly stunning,
+  Astounding,--and all that, you know;
+Yes, things are about as you left them
+  In Mud Flat a twelvemonth ago.
+
+The boys!--they're all right,--Oh! Dick Ashley,
+  He's buried somewhere in the snow;
+He was lost on the Summit last winter,
+  And Bob has a hard row to hoe.
+You know that he's got the consumption?
+  You didn't!  Well, come, that's a go;
+I certainly wrote you at Baden,--
+  Dear me! that was six months ago.
+
+I got all your outlandish letters,
+  All stamped by some foreign P. O.
+I handed myself to Miss Mary
+  That sketch of a famous chateau.
+Tom Saunders is living at 'Frisco,--
+  They say that he cuts quite a show.
+You didn't meet Euchre-deck Billy
+  Anywhere on your road to Cairo?
+
+So you thought of the rusty old cabin,
+  The pines, and the valley below,
+And heard the North Fork of the Yuba
+  As you stood on the banks of the Po?
+'Twas just like your romance, old fellow;
+  But now there is standing a row
+Of stores on the site of the cabin
+  That you lived in a twelvemonth ago.
+
+But it's jolly to see you, old fellow,--
+  To think it's a twelvemonth ago!
+And you have seen Louis Napoleon,
+  And look like a Johnny Crapaud.
+Come in.  You will surely see Mary,--
+  You know we are married.  What, no?
+Oh, ay!  I forgot there was something
+  Between you a twelvemonth ago.
+
+
+FURTHER LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES
+
+(NYE'S FORD, STANISLAUS, 1870)
+
+Do I sleep? do I dream?
+Do I wonder and doubt?
+Are things what they seem?
+Or is visions about?
+Is our civilization a failure?
+Or is the Caucasian played out?
+
+Which expressions are strong;
+Yet would feebly imply
+Some account of a wrong--
+Not to call it a lie--
+As was worked off on William, my pardner,
+And the same being W. Nye.
+
+He came down to the Ford
+On the very same day
+Of that lottery drawed
+By those sharps at the Bay;
+And he says to me, "Truthful, how goes it?"
+I replied, "It is far, far from gay;
+
+"For the camp has gone wild
+On this lottery game,
+And has even beguiled
+'Injin Dick' by the same."
+Then said Nye to me, "Injins is pizen:
+But what is his number, eh, James?"
+
+I replied, "7, 2,
+9, 8, 4, is his hand;"
+When he started, and drew
+Out a list, which he scanned;
+Then he softly went for his revolver
+With language I cannot command.
+
+Then I said, "William Nye!"
+But he turned upon me,
+And the look in his eye
+Was quite painful to see;
+And he says, "You mistake; this poor Injin
+I protects from such sharps as YOU be!"
+
+I was shocked and withdrew;
+But I grieve to relate,
+When he next met my view
+Injin Dick was his mate;
+And the two around town was a-lying
+In a frightfully dissolute state.
+
+Which the war dance they had
+Round a tree at the Bend
+Was a sight that was sad;
+And it seemed that the end
+Would not justify the proceedings,
+As I quiet remarked to a friend.
+
+For that Injin he fled
+The next day to his band;
+And we found William spread
+Very loose on the strand,
+With a peaceful-like smile on his features,
+And a dollar greenback in his hand;
+
+Which the same, when rolled out,
+We observed, with surprise,
+Was what he, no doubt,
+Thought the number and prize--
+Them figures in red in the corner,
+Which the number of notes specifies.
+
+Was it guile, or a dream?
+Is it Nye that I doubt?
+Are things what they seem?
+Or is visions about?
+Is our civilization a failure?
+Or is the Caucasian played out?
+
+
+AFTER THE ACCIDENT
+
+(MOUTH OF THE SHAFT)
+
+What I want is my husband, sir,--
+   And if you're a man, sir,
+You'll give me an answer,--
+   Where is my Joe?
+
+Penrhyn, sir, Joe,--
+   Caernarvonshire.
+Six months ago
+   Since we came here--
+Eh?--Ah, you know!
+
+Well, I am quiet
+   And still,
+But I must stand here,
+   And will!
+Please, I'll be strong,
+   If you'll just let me wait
+   Inside o' that gate
+Till the news comes along.
+
+   "Negligence!"--
+That was the cause!--
+   Butchery!
+Are there no laws,--
+   Laws to protect such as we?
+
+Well, then!
+   I won't raise my voice.
+There, men!
+   I won't make no noise,
+Only you just let me be.
+
+Four, only four--did he say--
+Saved! and the other ones?--Eh?
+   Why do they call?
+   Why are they all
+Looking and coming this way?
+
+What's that?--a message?
+   I'll take it.
+I know his wife, sir,
+   I'll break it.
+   "Foreman!"
+   Ay, ay!
+   "Out by and by,--
+   Just saved his life.
+   Say to his wife
+   Soon he'll be free."
+Will I?--God bless you!
+   It's me!
+
+
+THE GHOST THAT JIM SAW
+
+Why, as to that, said the engineer,
+Ghosts ain't things we are apt to fear;
+Spirits don't fool with levers much,
+And throttle-valves don't take to such;
+    And as for Jim,
+    What happened to him
+Was one half fact, and t'other half whim!
+
+Running one night on the line, he saw
+A house--as plain as the moral law--
+Just by the moonlit bank, and thence
+Came a drunken man with no more sense
+    Than to drop on the rail
+    Flat as a flail,
+As Jim drove by with the midnight mail.
+
+Down went the patents--steam reversed.
+Too late! for there came a "thud."  Jim cursed
+As the fireman, there in the cab with him,
+Kinder stared in the face of Jim,
+    And says, "What now?"
+    Says Jim, "What now!
+I've just run over a man,--that's how!"
+
+The fireman stared at Jim.  They ran
+Back, but they never found house nor man,--
+Nary a shadow within a mile.
+Jim turned pale, but he tried to smile,
+    Then on he tore
+    Ten mile or more,
+In quicker time than he'd made afore.
+
+Would you believe it! the very next night
+Up rose that house in the moonlight white,
+Out comes the chap and drops as before,
+Down goes the brake and the rest encore;
+    And so, in fact,
+    Each night that act
+Occurred, till folks swore Jim was cracked.
+
+Humph! let me see; it's a year now, 'most,
+That I met Jim, East, and says, "How's your ghost?"
+"Gone," says Jim; "and more, it's plain
+That ghost don't trouble me again.
+    I thought I shook
+    That ghost when I took
+A place on an Eastern line,--but look!
+
+"What should I meet, the first trip out,
+But the very house we talked about,
+And the selfsame man!  'Well,' says I, 'I guess
+It's time to stop this 'yer foolishness.'
+    So I crammed on steam,
+    When there came a scream
+From my fireman, that jest broke my dream:
+
+"'You've killed somebody!'  Says I, 'Not much!
+I've been thar often, and thar ain't no such,
+And now I'll prove it!'  Back we ran,
+And--darn my skin!--but thar WAS a man
+    On the rail, dead,
+    Smashed in the head!--
+Now I call that meanness!"  That's all Jim said.
+
+
+"SEVENTY-NINE"
+
+(MR. INTERVIEWER INTERVIEWED)
+
+Know me next time when you see me, won't you, old smarty?
+Oh, I mean YOU, old figger-head,--just the same party!
+Take out your pensivil, d--n you; sharpen it, do!
+Any complaints to make?  Lots of 'em--one of 'em's YOU.
+
+You! who are YOU, anyhow, goin' round in that sneakin' way?
+Never in jail before, was you, old blatherskite, say?
+Look at it; don't it look pooty?  Oh, grin, and be d--d to you, do!
+But if I had you this side o' that gratin,' I'd just make it lively
+   for you.
+
+How did I get in here?  Well what 'ud you give to know?
+'Twasn't by sneakin' round where I hadn't no call to go;
+'Twasn't by hangin' round a-spyin' unfortnet men.
+Grin! but I'll stop your jaw if ever you do that agen.
+
+Why don't you say suthin, blast you?  Speak your mind if you dare.
+Ain't I a bad lot, sonny?  Say it, and call it square.
+Hain't got no tongue, hey, hev ye?  Oh, guard! here's a little swell
+A cussin' and swearin' and yellin', and bribin' me not to tell.
+
+There! I thought that 'ud fetch ye!  And you want to know my name?
+"Seventy-nine" they call me, but that is their little game;
+For I'm werry highly connected, as a gent, sir, can understand,
+And my family hold their heads up with the very furst in the land.
+
+For 'twas all, sir, a put-up job on a pore young man like me;
+And the jury was bribed a puppos, and at furst they couldn't agree;
+And I sed to the judge, sez I,--Oh, grin! it's all right, my son!
+But you're a werry lively young pup, and you ain't to be played upon!
+
+Wot's that you got?--tobacco?  I'm cussed but I thought 'twas a tract.
+Thank ye!  A chap t'other day--now, lookee, this is a fact--
+Slings me a tract on the evils o' keepin' bad company,
+As if all the saints was howlin' to stay here along o' we.
+
+No, I hain't no complaints.  Stop, yes; do you see that chap,--
+Him standin' over there, a-hidin' his eyes in his cap?
+Well, that man's stumick is weak, and he can't stand the pris'n fare;
+For the coffee is just half beans, and the sugar it ain't nowhere.
+
+Perhaps it's his bringin' up; but he's sickenin' day by day,
+And he doesn't take no food, and I'm seein' him waste away.
+And it isn't the thing to see; for, whatever he's been and done,
+Starvation isn't the plan as he's to be saved upon.
+
+For he cannot rough it like me; and he hasn't the stamps, I guess,
+To buy him his extry grub outside o' the pris'n mess.
+And perhaps if a gent like you, with whom I've been sorter free,
+Would--thank you!  But, say! look here!  Oh, blast it! don't give it
+   to ME!
+
+Don't you give it to me; now, don't ye, don't ye, DON'T!
+You think it's a put-up job; so I'll thank ye, sir, if you won't.
+But hand him the stamps yourself: why, he isn't even my pal;
+And, if it's a comfort to you, why, I don't intend that he shall.
+
+
+THE STAGE-DRIVER'S STORY
+
+It was the stage-driver's story, as he stood with his back to the
+   wheelers,
+Quietly flecking his whip, and turning his quid of tobacco;
+While on the dusty road, and blent with the rays of the moonlight,
+We saw the long curl of his lash and the juice of tobacco descending.
+
+"Danger!  Sir, I believe you,--indeed, I may say, on that subject,
+You your existence might put to the hazard and turn of a wager.
+I have seen danger?  Oh, no! not me, sir, indeed, I assure you:
+'Twas only the man with the dog that is sitting alone in yon wagon.
+
+"It was the Geiger Grade, a mile and a half from the summit:
+Black as your hat was the night, and never a star in the heavens.
+Thundering down the grade, the gravel and stones we sent flying
+Over the precipice side,--a thousand feet plumb to the bottom.
+
+"Half-way down the grade I felt, sir, a thrilling and creaking,
+Then a lurch to one side, as we hung on the bank of the canyon;
+Then, looking up the road, I saw, in the distance behind me,
+The off hind wheel of the coach, just loosed from its axle, and
+   following.
+
+"One glance alone I gave, then gathered together my ribbons,
+Shouted, and flung them, outspread, on the straining necks of my
+   cattle;
+Screamed at the top of my voice, and lashed the air in my frenzy,
+While down the Geiger Grade, on THREE wheels, the vehicle thundered.
+
+"Speed was our only chance, when again came the ominous rattle:
+Crack, and another wheel slipped away, and was lost in the darkness.
+TWO only now were left; yet such was our fearful momentum,
+Upright, erect, and sustained on TWO wheels, the vehicle thundered.
+
+"As some huge boulder, unloosed from its rocky shelf on the mountain,
+Drives before it the hare and the timorous squirrel, far leaping,
+So down the Geiger Grade rushed the Pioneer coach, and before it
+Leaped the wild horses, and shrieked in advance of the danger
+   impending.
+
+"But to be brief in my tale.  Again, ere we came to the level,
+Slipped from its axle a wheel; so that, to be plain in my statement,
+A matter of twelve hundred yards or more, as the distance may be,
+We traveled upon ONE wheel, until we drove up to the station.
+
+"Then, sir, we sank in a heap; but, picking myself from the ruins,
+I heard a noise up the grade; and looking, I saw in the distance
+The three wheels following still, like moons on the horizon whirling,
+Till, circling, they gracefully sank on the road at the side of the
+   station.
+
+"This is my story, sir; a trifle, indeed, I assure you.
+Much more, perchance, might be said--but I hold him of all men most
+   lightly
+Who swerves from the truth in his tale.  No, thank you-- Well, since
+you ARE pressing,
+Perhaps I don't care if I do: you may give me the same, Jim,--no
+   sugar."
+
+
+A QUESTION OF PRIVILEGE
+
+REPORTED BY TRUTHFUL JAMES
+
+It was Andrew Jackson Sutter who, despising Mr. Cutter for remarks
+   he heard him utter in debate upon the floor,
+Swung him up into the skylight, in the peaceful, pensive twilight,
+   and then keerlessly proceeded, makin' no account what WE did--
+To wipe up with his person casual dust upon the floor.
+
+Now a square fight never frets me, nor unpleasantness upsets me, but
+   the simple thing that gets me--now the job is done and gone,
+And we've come home free and merry from the peaceful cemetery,
+   leavin' Cutter there with Sutter--that mebbee just a stutter
+On the part of Mr. Cutter caused the loss we deeply mourn.
+
+Some bashful hesitation, just like spellin' punctooation--might have
+   worked an aggravation on to Sutter's mournful mind,
+For the witnesses all vary ez to wot was said and nary a galoot will
+   toot his horn except the way he is inclined.
+
+But they all allow that Sutter had begun a kind of mutter, when
+   uprose Mr. Cutter with a sickening kind of ease,
+And proceeded then to wade in to the subject then prevadin': "Is
+   Profanity degradin'?" in words like unto these:
+
+"Onlike the previous speaker, Mr. Sutter of Yreka, he was but a
+   humble seeker--and not like him--a cuss"--
+It was here that Mr. Sutter softly reached for Mr. Cutter, when the
+   latter with a stutter said: "ac-customed to discuss."
+
+Then Sutter he rose grimly, and sorter smilin' dimly bowed onto the
+   Chairman primly--(just like Cutter ez could be!)
+Drawled "he guessed he must fall--back--as--Mr. Cutter owned the
+   pack--as--he just had played the--Jack--as--" (here Cutter's gun
+   went crack! as Mr. Sutter gasped and ended) "every man can see!"
+
+But William Henry Pryor--just in range of Sutter's fire--here
+   evinced a wild desire to do somebody harm,
+And in the general scrimmage no one thought if Sutter's "image" was
+   a misplaced punctooation--like the hole in Pryor's arm.
+
+For we all waltzed in together, never carin' to ask whether it was
+   Sutter or was Cutter we woz tryin' to abate.
+But we couldn't help perceivin', when we took to inkstand heavin',
+   that the process was relievin' to the sharpness of debate,
+
+So we've come home free and merry from the peaceful cemetery, and I
+   make no commentary on these simple childish games;
+Things is various and human--and the man ain't born of woman who is
+   free to intermeddle with his pal's intents and aims.
+
+
+THE THOUGHT-READER OF ANGELS
+
+REPORTED BY TRUTHFUL JAMES
+
+We hev tumbled ez dust
+  Or ez worms of the yearth;
+Wot we looked for hez bust!
+  We are objects of mirth!
+They have played us--old Pards of the river!--they hev played us for
+   all we was worth!
+
+Was it euchre or draw
+  Cut us off in our bloom?
+Was it faro, whose law
+  Is uncertain ez doom?
+Or an innocent "Jack pot" that--opened--was to us ez the jaws of the
+   tomb?
+
+It was nary!  It kem
+  With some sharps from the States.
+Ez folks sez, "All things kem
+  To the fellers ez waits;"
+And we'd waited six months for that suthin'--had me and Bill Nye--in
+   such straits!
+
+And it kem.  It was small;
+  It was dream-like and weak;
+It wore store clothes--that's all
+  That we knew, so to speak;
+But it called itself "Billson, Thought-Reader"--which ain't half a
+   name for its cheek!
+
+He could read wot you thought,
+  And he knew wot you did;
+He could find things untaught,
+  No matter whar hid;
+And he went to it, blindfold and smiling, being led by the hand like
+   a kid!
+
+Then I glanced at Bill Nye,
+  And I sez, without pride,
+"You'll excuse US.  We've nigh
+  On to nothin' to hide;
+But if some gent will lend us a twenty, we'll hide it whar folks
+   shall decide."
+
+It was Billson's own self
+  Who forked over the gold,
+With a smile.  "Thar's the pelf,"
+  He remarked.  "I make bold
+To advance it, and go twenty better that I'll find it without being
+   told."
+
+Then I passed it to Nye,
+  Who repassed it to me.
+And we bandaged each eye
+  Of that Billson--ez we
+Softly dropped that coin in his coat pocket, ez the hull crowd
+   around us could see.
+
+That was all.  He'd one hand
+  Locked in mine.  Then he groped.
+We could not understand
+  Why that minit Nye sloped,
+For we knew we'd the dead thing on Billson--even more than we
+   dreamed of or hoped.
+
+For he stood thar in doubt
+  With his hand to his head;
+Then he turned, and lit out
+  Through the door where Nye fled,
+Draggin' me and the rest of us arter, while we larfed till we
+   thought we was dead,
+
+Till he overtook Nye
+  And went through him.  Words fail
+For what follers!  Kin I
+  Paint our agonized wail
+Ez he drew from Nye's pocket that twenty wot we sworn was in his own
+   coat-tail!
+
+And it WAS!  But, when found,
+  It proved bogus and brass!
+And the question goes round
+  How the thing kem to pass?
+Or, if PASSED, woz it passed thar by William; and I listens, and
+   echoes "Alas!
+
+"For the days when the skill
+  Of the keerds was no blind,
+When no effort of will
+  Could beat four of a kind,
+When the thing wot you held in your hand, Pard, was worth more than
+   the thing in your mind."
+
+
+THE SPELLING BEE AT ANGELS
+
+(REPORTED BY TRUTHFUL JAMES)
+
+Waltz in, waltz in, ye little kids, and gather round my knee,
+And drop them books and first pot-hooks, and hear a yarn from me.
+I kin not sling a fairy tale of Jinnys* fierce and wild,
+For I hold it is unchristian to deceive a simple child;
+But as from school yer driftin' by, I thowt ye'd like to hear
+Of a "Spelling Bee" at Angels that we organized last year.
+
+It warn't made up of gentle kids, of pretty kids, like you,
+But gents ez hed their reg'lar growth, and some enough for two.
+There woz Lanky Jim of Sutter's Fork and Bilson of Lagrange,
+And "Pistol Bob," who wore that day a knife by way of change.
+You start, you little kids, you think these are not pretty names,
+But each had a man behind it, and--my name is Truthful James.
+
+There was Poker Dick from Whisky Flat, and Smith of Shooter's Bend,
+And Brown of Calaveras--which I want no better friend;
+Three-fingered Jack--yes, pretty dears, three fingers--YOU have five.
+Clapp cut off two--it's sing'lar, too, that Clapp ain't now alive.
+'Twas very wrong indeed, my dears, and Clapp was much to blame;
+Likewise was Jack, in after-years, for shootin' of that same.
+
+The nights was kinder lengthenin' out, the rains had jest begun,
+When all the camp came up to Pete's to have their usual fun;
+But we all sot kinder sad-like around the bar-room stove
+Till Smith got up, permiskiss-like, and this remark he hove:
+"Thar's a new game down in Frisco, that ez far ez I can see
+Beats euchre, poker, and van-toon, they calls the 'Spellin' Bee.'"
+
+Then Brown of Calaveras simply hitched his chair and spake,
+"Poker is good enough for me," and Lanky Jim sez, "Shake!"
+And Bob allowed he warn't proud, but he "must say right thar
+That the man who tackled euchre hed his education squar."
+This brought up Lenny Fairchild, the schoolmaster, who said
+He knew the game, and he would give instructions on that head.
+
+"For instance, take some simple word," sez he, "like 'separate:'
+Now who can spell it?"  Dog my skin, ef thar was one in eight.
+This set the boys all wild at once.  The chairs was put in row,
+And at the head was Lanky Jim, and at the foot was Joe,
+And high upon the bar itself the schoolmaster was raised,
+And the bar-keep put his glasses down, and sat and silent gazed.
+
+The first word out was "parallel," and seven let it be,
+Till Joe waltzed in his "double l" betwixt the "a" and "e;"
+For since he drilled them Mexicans in San Jacinto's fight
+Thar warn't no prouder man got up than Pistol Joe that night--
+Till "rhythm" came!  He tried to smile, then said "they had him
+   there,"
+And Lanky Jim, with one long stride, got up and took his chair.
+
+O little kids, my pretty kids, 'twas touchin' to survey
+These bearded men, with weppings on, like schoolboys at their play.
+They'd laugh with glee, and shout to see each other lead the van,
+And Bob sat up as monitor with a cue for a rattan,
+Till the Chair gave out "incinerate," and Brown said he'd be durned
+If any such blamed word as that in school was ever learned.
+
+When "phthisis" came they all sprang up, and vowed the man who rung
+Another blamed Greek word on them be taken out and hung.
+As they sat down again I saw in Bilson's eye a flash,
+And Brown of Calaveras was a-twistin' his mustache,
+And when at last Brown slipped on "gneiss," and Bilson took his chair,
+He dropped some casual words about some folks who dyed their hair.
+
+And then the Chair grew very white, and the Chair said he'd adjourn,
+But Poker Dick remarked that HE would wait and get his turn;
+Then with a tremblin' voice and hand, and with a wanderin' eye,
+The Chair next offered "eider-duck," and Dick began with "I",
+And Bilson smiled--then Bilson shrieked!  Just how the fight begun
+I never knowed, for Bilson dropped, and Dick, he moved up one.
+
+Then certain gents arose and said "they'd business down in camp,"
+And "ez the road was rather dark, and ez the night was damp,
+They'd"--here got up Three-fingered Jack and locked the door and
+   yelled:
+"No, not one mother's son goes out till that thar word is spelled!"
+But while the words were on his lips, he groaned and sank in pain,
+And sank with Webster on his chest and Worcester on his brain.
+
+Below the bar dodged Poker Dick, and tried to look ez he
+Was huntin' up authorities thet no one else could see;
+And Brown got down behind the stove, allowin' he "was cold,"
+Till it upsot and down his legs the cinders freely rolled,
+And several gents called "Order!" till in his simple way
+Poor Smith began with "O-r"--"Or"--and he was dragged away.
+
+O little kids, my pretty kids, down on your knees and pray!
+You've got your eddication in a peaceful sort of way;
+And bear in mind thar may be sharps ez slings their spellin' square,
+But likewise slings their bowie-knives without a thought or care.
+You wants to know the rest, my dears?  Thet's all!  In me you see
+The only gent that lived to tell about the Spellin' Bee!
+
+                            ------
+
+He ceased and passed, that truthful man; the children went their way
+With downcast heads and downcast hearts--but not to sport or play.
+For when at eve the lamps were lit, and supperless to bed
+Each child was sent, with tasks undone and lessons all unsaid,
+No man might know the awful woe that thrilled their youthful frames,
+As they dreamed of Angels Spelling Bee and thought of Truthful James.
+
+
+* Qy. Genii.
+
+
+ARTEMIS IN SIERRA
+
+
+DRAMATIS PERSONAE
+
+Poet.  Philosopher.  Jones of Mariposa.
+
+
+POET
+
+Halt!  Here we are.  Now wheel your mare a trifle
+  Just where you stand; then doff your hat and swear
+Never yet was scene you might cover with your rifle
+  Half as complete or as marvelously fair.
+
+PHILOSOPHER
+
+Dropped from Olympus or lifted out of Tempe,
+  Swung like a censer betwixt the earth and sky!
+He who in Greece sang of flocks and flax and hemp,--he
+  Here might recall them--six thousand feet on high!
+
+POET
+
+Well you may say so.  The clamor of the river,
+  Hum of base toil, and man's ignoble strife,
+Halt far below, where the stifling sunbeams quiver,
+  But never climb to this purer, higher life!
+
+Not to this glade, where Jones of Mariposa,
+  Simple and meek as his flocks we're looking at,
+Tends his soft charge; nor where his daughter Rosa--
+    (A shot.)
+  Hallo!  What's that?
+
+PHILOSOPHER
+
+                        A--something thro' my hat--
+Bullet, I think.  You were speaking of his daughter?
+
+POET
+
+Yes; but--your hat you were moving through the leaves;
+  Likely he thought it some eagle bent on slaughter.
+Lightly he shoots--  (A second shot.)
+
+PHILOSOPHER
+
+                     As one readily perceives.
+ Still, he improves!  This time YOUR hat has got it,
+Quite near the band!  Eh? Oh, just as you please--
+  Stop, or go on.
+
+POET
+
+                  Perhaps we'd better trot it
+Down through the hollow, and up among the trees.
+
+BOTH
+
+Trot, trot, trot, where the bullets cannot follow;
+  Trot down and up again among the laurel trees.
+
+PHILOSOPHER
+
+Thanks, that is better; now of this shot-dispensing
+  Jones and his girl--you were saying--
+
+POET
+
+                                        Well, you see--
+I--hang it all!--Oh! what's the use of fencing!
+  Sir, I confess it!--these shots were meant for ME.
+
+PHILOSOPHER
+
+Are you mad!
+
+POET
+
+              God knows, I shouldn't wonder!
+  I love this coy nymph, who, coldly--as yon peak
+Shines on the river it feeds, yet keeps asunder--
+  Long have I worshiped, but never dared to speak.
+
+Till she, no doubt, her love no longer hiding,
+  Waked by some chance word her father's jealousy;
+Slips her disdain--as an avalanche down gliding
+  Sweeps flocks and kin away--to clear a path for ME.
+
+Hence his attack.
+
+PHILOSOPHER
+
+                   I see.  What I admire
+  Chiefly, I think, in your idyl, so to speak,
+Is the cool modesty that checks your youthful fire,--
+  Absence of self-love and abstinence of cheek!
+
+Still, I might mention, I've met the gentle Rosa,--
+  Danced with her thrice, to her father's jealous dread;
+And, it is possible, she's happened to disclose a--
+  Ahem!  You can fancy why he shoots at ME instead.
+
+POET
+
+YOU?
+
+PHILOSOPHER
+
+     Me.  But kindly take your hand from your revolver,
+  I am not choleric--but accidents may chance.
+And here's the father, who alone can be the solver
+  Of this twin riddle of the hat and the romance.
+
+Enter JONES OF MARIPOSA.
+
+POET
+
+Speak, shepherd--mine!
+
+PHILOSOPHER
+
+                       Hail!  Time-and-cartridge waster,
+  Aimless exploder of theories and skill!
+Whom do you shoot?
+
+JONES OF MARIPOSA
+
+                   Well, shootin' ain't my taste, or
+  EF I shoot anything--I only shoot to kill.
+
+That ain't what's up.  I only kem to tell ye--
+  Sportin' or courtin'--trot homeward for your life!
+Gals will be gals, and p'r'aps it's just ez well ye
+  Larned there was one had no wish to be--a wife.
+
+POET
+
+What?
+
+PHILOSOPHER
+
+      Is this true?
+
+JONES OF MARIPOSA
+
+                     I reckon it looks like it.
+  She saw ye comin'.  My gun was standin' by;
+She made a grab, and 'fore I up could strike it,
+  Blazed at ye both!  The critter is SO shy!
+
+POET
+
+Who?
+
+JONES OF MARIPOSA
+
+      My darter!
+
+PHILOSOPHER
+
+                  Rosa?
+
+JONES OF MARIPOSA
+
+                         Same!  Good-by!
+
+
+JACK OF THE TULES
+
+(SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA)
+
+Shrewdly you question, Senor, and I fancy
+You are no novice.  Confess that to little
+Of my poor gossip of Mission and Pueblo
+     You are a stranger!
+
+Am I not right?  Ah! believe me, that ever
+Since we joined company at the posada
+I've watched you closely, and--pardon an old priest--
+     I've caught you smiling!
+
+Smiling to hear an old fellow like me talk
+Gossip of pillage and robbers, and even
+Air his opinion of law and alcaldes
+     Like any other!
+
+Now!--by that twist of the wrist on the bridle,
+By that straight line from the heel to the shoulder,
+By that curt speech,--nay! nay! no offense, son,--
+     You are a soldier?
+
+No?  Then a man of affairs?  San Sebastian!
+'Twould serve me right if I prattled thus wildly
+To--say a sheriff?  No?--just caballero?
+     Well, more's the pity.
+
+Ah! what we want here's a man of your presence;
+Sano, Secreto,--yes, all the four S's,
+Joined with a boldness and dash, when the time comes,
+     And--may I say it?--
+
+One not TOO hard on the poor country people,
+Peons and silly vaqueros, who, dazzled
+By reckless skill, and, perchance, reckless largesse,
+   Wink at some queer things.
+
+No?  You would crush THEM as well as the robbers,--
+Root them out, scatter them?  Ah you are bitter--
+And yet--quien sabe, perhaps that's the one way
+     To catch their leader.
+
+As to myself, now, I'd share your displeasure;
+For I admit in this Jack of the Tules
+Certain good points.  He still comes to confession--
+     You'd "like to catch him"?
+
+Ah, if you did at such times, you might lead him
+Home by a thread.  Good!  Again you are smiling:
+You have no faith in such shrift, and but little
+     In priest or penitent.
+
+Bueno!  We take no offense, sir; whatever
+It please you to say, it becomes us, for Church sake,
+To bear in peace.  Yet, if you were kinder--
+     And less suspicious--
+
+I might still prove to you, Jack of the Tules
+Shames not our teaching; nay, even might show you,
+Hard by this spot, his old comrade, who, wounded,
+     Lives on his bounty.
+
+If--ah, you listen!--I see I can trust you;
+Then, on your word as a gentleman--follow.
+Under that sycamore stands the old cabin;
+     There sits his comrade.
+
+Eh!--are you mad?  You would try to ARREST him?
+You, with a warrant?  Oh, well, take the rest of them:
+Pedro, Bill, Murray, Pat Doolan.  Hey!--all of you,
+     Tumble out, d--n it!
+
+There!--that'll do, boys!  Stand back!  Ease his elbows;
+Take the gag from his mouth.  Good!  Now scatter like devils
+After his posse--four straggling, four drunken--
+     At the posada.
+
+You--help me off with these togs, and then vamos!
+Now, ole Jeff Dobbs!--Sheriff, Scout, and Detective!
+You're so derned 'cute!  Kinder sick, ain't ye, bluffing
+     Jack of the Tules!
+
+
+
+IV.  MISCELLANEOUS
+
+
+A GREYPORT LEGEND
+
+(1797)
+
+They ran through the streets of the seaport town,
+They peered from the decks of the ships that lay;
+The cold sea-fog that came whitening down
+Was never as cold or white as they.
+  "Ho, Starbuck and Pinckney and Tenterden!
+  Run for your shallops, gather your men,
+    Scatter your boats on the lower bay."
+
+Good cause for fear!  In the thick mid-day
+The hulk that lay by the rotting pier,
+Filled with the children in happy play,
+Parted its moorings and drifted clear,
+  Drifted clear beyond reach or call,--
+  Thirteen children they were in all,--
+    All adrift in the lower bay!
+
+Said a hard-faced skipper, "God help us all!
+She will not float till the turning tide!"
+Said his wife, "My darling will hear MY call,
+Whether in sea or heaven she bide;"
+  And she lifted a quavering voice and high,
+  Wild and strange as a sea-bird's cry,
+    Till they shuddered and wondered at her side.
+
+The fog drove down on each laboring crew,
+Veiled each from each and the sky and shore:
+There was not a sound but the breath they drew,
+And the lap of water and creak of oar;
+  And they felt the breath of the downs, fresh blown
+  O'er leagues of clover and cold gray stone,
+    But not from the lips that had gone before.
+
+They came no more.  But they tell the tale
+That, when fogs are thick on the harbor reef,
+The mackerel fishers shorten sail--
+For the signal they know will bring relief;
+  For the voices of children, still at play
+  In a phantom hulk that drifts alway
+    Through channels whose waters never fail.
+
+It is but a foolish shipman's tale,
+A theme for a poet's idle page;
+But still, when the mists of Doubt prevail,
+And we lie becalmed by the shores of Age,
+  We hear from the misty troubled shore
+  The voice of the children gone before,
+    Drawing the soul to its anchorage.
+
+
+A NEWPORT ROMANCE
+
+They say that she died of a broken heart
+  (I tell the tale as 'twas told to me);
+But her spirit lives, and her soul is part
+  Of this sad old house by the sea.
+
+Her lover was fickle and fine and French:
+  It was nearly a hundred years ago
+When he sailed away from her arms--poor wench!--
+  With the Admiral Rochambeau.
+
+I marvel much what periwigged phrase
+  Won the heart of this sentimental Quaker,
+At what gold-laced speech of those modish days
+  She listened--the mischief take her!
+
+But she kept the posies of mignonette
+  That he gave; and ever as their bloom failed
+And faded (though with her tears still wet)
+  Her youth with their own exhaled.
+
+Till one night, when the sea-fog wrapped a shroud
+  Round spar and spire and tarn and tree,
+Her soul went up on that lifted cloud
+  From this sad old house by the sea.
+
+And ever since then, when the clock strikes two,
+  She walks unbidden from room to room,
+And the air is filled that she passes through
+  With a subtle, sad perfume.
+
+The delicate odor of mignonette,
+  The ghost of a dead-and-gone bouquet,
+Is all that tells of her story; yet
+  Could she think of a sweeter way?
+
+
+I sit in the sad old house to-night,--
+  Myself a ghost from a farther sea;
+And I trust that this Quaker woman might,
+  In courtesy, visit me.
+
+For the laugh is fled from porch and lawn,
+  And the bugle died from the fort on the hill,
+And the twitter of girls on the stairs is gone,
+  And the grand piano is still.
+
+Somewhere in the darkness a clock strikes two:
+  And there is no sound in the sad old house,
+But the long veranda dripping with dew,
+  And in the wainscot a mouse.
+
+The light of my study-lamp streams out
+  From the library door, but has gone astray
+In the depths of the darkened hall. Small doubt
+  But the Quakeress knows the way.
+
+Was it the trick of a sense o'erwrought
+  With outward watching and inward fret?
+But I swear that the air just now was fraught
+  With the odor of mignonette!
+
+I open the window, and seem almost--
+  So still lies the ocean--to hear the beat
+Of its Great Gulf artery off the coast,
+  And to bask in its tropic heat.
+
+In my neighbor's windows the gas-lights flare,
+  As the dancers swing in a waltz of Strauss;
+And I wonder now could I fit that air
+  To the song of this sad old house.
+
+And no odor of mignonette there is,
+  But the breath of morn on the dewy lawn;
+And mayhap from causes as slight as this
+  The quaint old legend is born.
+
+But the soul of that subtle, sad perfume,
+  As the spiced embalmings, they say, outlast
+The mummy laid in his rocky tomb,
+  Awakens my buried past.
+
+And I think of the passion that shook my youth,
+  Of its aimless loves and its idle pains,
+And am thankful now for the certain truth
+  That only the sweet remains.
+
+And I hear no rustle of stiff brocade,
+  And I see no face at my library door;
+For now that the ghosts of my heart are laid,
+  She is viewless for evermore.
+
+But whether she came as a faint perfume,
+  Or whether a spirit in stole of white,
+I feel, as I pass from the darkened room,
+  She has been with my soul to-night!
+
+
+SAN FRANCISCO
+
+(FROM THE SEA)
+
+Serene, indifferent of Fate,
+Thou sittest at the Western Gate;
+
+Upon thy height, so lately won,
+Still slant the banners of the sun;
+
+Thou seest the white seas strike their tents,
+O Warder of two continents!
+
+And, scornful of the peace that flies
+Thy angry winds and sullen skies,
+
+Thou drawest all things, small, or great,
+To thee, beside the Western Gate.
+
+O lion's whelp, that hidest fast
+In jungle growth of spire and mast!
+
+I know thy cunning and thy greed,
+Thy hard high lust and willful deed,
+
+And all thy glory loves to tell
+Of specious gifts material.
+
+Drop down, O Fleecy Fog, and hide
+Her skeptic sneer and all her pride!
+
+Wrap her, O Fog, in gown and hood
+Of her Franciscan Brotherhood.
+
+Hide me her faults, her sin and blame;
+With thy gray mantle cloak her shame!
+
+So shall she, cowled, sit and pray
+Till morning bears her sins away.
+
+Then rise, O Fleecy Fog, and raise
+The glory of her coming days;
+
+Be as the cloud that flecks the seas
+Above her smoky argosies;
+
+When forms familiar shall give place
+To stranger speech and newer face;
+
+When all her throes and anxious fears
+Lie hushed in the repose of years;
+
+When Art shall raise and Culture lift
+The sensual joys and meaner thrift,
+
+And all fulfilled the vision we
+Who watch and wait shall never see;
+
+Who, in the morning of her race,
+Toiled fair or meanly in our place,
+
+But, yielding to the common lot,
+Lie unrecorded and forgot.
+
+
+THE MOUNTAIN HEART'S-EASE
+
+By scattered rocks and turbid waters shifting,
+    By furrowed glade and dell,
+To feverish men thy calm, sweet face uplifting,
+    Thou stayest them to tell
+
+The delicate thought that cannot find expression,
+    For ruder speech too fair,
+That, like thy petals, trembles in possession,
+    And scatters on the air.
+
+The miner pauses in his rugged labor,
+    And, leaning on his spade,
+Laughingly calls unto his comrade-neighbor
+    To see thy charms displayed.
+
+But in his eyes a mist unwonted rises,
+    And for a moment clear
+Some sweet home face his foolish thought surprises,
+    And passes in a tear,--
+
+Some boyish vision of his Eastern village,
+    Of uneventful toil,
+Where golden harvests followed quiet tillage
+    Above a peaceful soil.
+
+One moment only; for the pick, uplifting,
+    Through root and fibre cleaves,
+And on the muddy current slowly drifting
+    Are swept by bruised leaves.
+
+And yet, O poet, in thy homely fashion,
+    Thy work thou dost fulfill,
+For on the turbid current of his passion
+    Thy face is shining still!
+
+
+GRIZZLY.
+
+Coward,--of heroic size,
+In whose lazy muscles lies
+Strength we fear and yet despise;
+Savage,--whose relentless tusks
+Are content with acorn husks;
+Robber,--whose exploits ne'er soared
+O'er the bee's or squirrel's hoard;
+Whiskered chin and feeble nose,
+Claws of steel on baby toes,--
+Here, in solitude and shade,
+Shambling, shuffling plantigrade,
+Be thy courses undismayed!
+
+Here, where Nature makes thy bed,
+Let thy rude, half-human tread
+  Point to hidden Indian springs,
+Lost in ferns and fragrant grasses,
+  Hovered o'er by timid wings,
+Where the wood-duck lightly passes,
+Where the wild bee holds her sweets,--
+Epicurean retreats,
+Fit for thee, and better than
+Fearful spoils of dangerous man.
+In thy fat-jowled deviltry
+Friar Tuck shall live in thee;
+Thou mayst levy tithe and dole;
+  Thou shalt spread the woodland cheer,
+From the pilgrim taking toll;
+  Match thy cunning with his fear;
+Eat, and drink, and have thy fill;
+Yet remain an outlaw still!
+
+
+MADRONO
+
+Captain of the Western wood,
+Thou that apest Robin Hood!
+Green above thy scarlet hose,
+How thy velvet mantle shows!
+Never tree like thee arrayed,
+O thou gallant of the glade!
+
+When the fervid August sun
+Scorches all it looks upon,
+And the balsam of the pine
+Drips from stem to needle fine,
+Round thy compact shade arranged,
+Not a leaf of thee is changed!
+
+When the yellow autumn sun
+Saddens all it looks upon,
+Spreads its sackcloth on the hills,
+Strews its ashes in the rills,
+Thou thy scarlet hose dost doff,
+And in limbs of purest buff
+Challengest the sombre glade
+For a sylvan masquerade.
+
+Where, oh, where, shall he begin
+Who would paint thee, Harlequin?
+With thy waxen burnished leaf,
+With thy branches' red relief,
+With thy polytinted fruit,--
+In thy spring or autumn suit,--
+Where begin, and oh, where end,
+Thou whose charms all art transcend?
+
+
+COYOTE
+
+Blown out of the prairie in twilight and dew,
+Half bold and half timid, yet lazy all through;
+Loath ever to leave, and yet fearful to stay,
+He limps in the clearing, an outcast in gray.
+
+A shade on the stubble, a ghost by the wall,
+Now leaping, now limping, now risking a fall,
+Lop-eared and large-jointed, but ever alway
+A thoroughly vagabond outcast in gray.
+
+Here, Carlo, old fellow,--he's one of your kind,--
+Go, seek him, and bring him in out of the wind.
+What! snarling, my Carlo!  So even dogs may
+Deny their own kin in the outcast in gray.
+
+Well, take what you will,--though it be on the sly,
+Marauding or begging,--I shall not ask why,
+But will call it a dole, just to help on his way
+A four-footed friar in orders of gray!
+
+
+TO A SEA-BIRD
+
+(SANTA CRUZ, 1869)
+
+Sauntering hither on listless wings,
+  Careless vagabond of the sea,
+Little thou heedest the surf that sings,
+The bar that thunders, the shale that rings,--
+  Give me to keep thy company.
+
+Little thou hast, old friend, that's new;
+  Storms and wrecks are old things to thee;
+Sick am I of these changes, too;
+Little to care for, little to rue,--
+  I on the shore, and thou on the sea.
+
+All of thy wanderings, far and near,
+  Bring thee at last to shore and me;
+All of my journeyings end them here:
+This our tether must be our cheer,--
+  I on the shore, and thou on the sea.
+
+Lazily rocking on ocean's breast,
+  Something in common, old friend, have we:
+Thou on the shingle seek'st thy nest,
+I to the waters look for rest,--
+  I on the shore, and thou on the sea.
+
+
+WHAT THE CHIMNEY SANG
+
+Over the chimney the night-wind sang
+  And chanted a melody no one knew;
+And the Woman stopped, as her babe she tossed,
+  And thought of the one she had long since lost,
+And said, as her teardrops back she forced,
+  "I hate the wind in the chimney."
+
+Over the chimney the night-wind sang
+  And chanted a melody no one knew;
+And the Children said, as they closer drew,
+  "'Tis some witch that is cleaving the black night through,
+'Tis a fairy trumpet that just then blew,
+  And we fear the wind in the chimney."
+
+Over the chimney the night-wind sang
+  And chanted a melody no one knew;
+And the Man, as he sat on his hearth below,
+  Said to himself, "It will surely snow,
+And fuel is dear and wages low,
+  And I'll stop the leak in the chimney."
+
+Over the chimney the night-wind sang
+  And chanted a melody no one knew;
+But the Poet listened and smiled, for he
+  Was Man and Woman and Child, all three,
+And said, "It is God's own harmony,
+  This wind we hear in the chimney."
+
+
+DICKENS IN CAMP
+
+Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting,
+    The river sang below;
+The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting
+    Their minarets of snow.
+
+The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted
+    The ruddy tints of health
+On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted
+    In the fierce race for wealth;
+
+Till one arose, and from his pack's scant treasure
+    A hoarded volume drew,
+And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure
+    To hear the tale anew.
+
+And then, while round them shadows gathered faster,
+    And as the firelight fell,
+He read aloud the book wherein the Master
+    Had writ of "Little Nell."
+
+Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy,--for the reader
+    Was youngest of them all,--
+But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar
+    A silence seemed to fall;
+
+The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows,
+    Listened in every spray,
+While the whole camp with "Nell" on English meadows
+    Wandered and lost their way.
+
+And so in mountain solitudes--o'ertaken
+    As by some spell divine--
+Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken
+    From out the gusty pine.
+
+Lost is that camp and wasted all its fire;
+    And he who wrought that spell?
+Ah! towering pine and stately Kentish spire,
+    Ye have one tale to tell!
+
+Lost is that camp, but let its fragrant story
+    Blend with the breath that thrills
+With hop-vine's incense all the pensive glory
+    That fills the Kentish hills.
+
+And on that grave where English oak and holly
+    And laurel wreaths entwine,
+Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly,
+    This spray of Western pine!
+
+July, 1870.
+
+
+"TWENTY YEARS"
+
+Beg your pardon, old fellow!  I think
+I was dreaming just now when you spoke.
+The fact is, the musical clink
+Of the ice on your wine-goblet's brink
+A chord of my memory woke.
+
+And I stood in the pasture-field where
+Twenty summers ago I had stood;
+And I heard in that sound, I declare,
+The clinking of bells in the air,
+Of the cows coming home from the wood.
+
+Then the apple-bloom shook on the hill;
+And the mullein-stalks tilted each lance;
+And the sun behind Rapalye's mill
+Was my uttermost West, and could thrill
+Like some fanciful land of romance.
+
+Then my friend was a hero, and then
+My girl was an angel.  In fine,
+I drank buttermilk; for at ten
+Faith asks less to aid her than when
+At thirty we doubt over wine.
+
+Ah, well, it DOES seem that I must
+Have been dreaming just now when you spoke,
+Or lost, very like, in the dust
+Of the years that slow fashioned the crust
+On that bottle whose seal you last broke.
+
+Twenty years was its age, did you say?
+Twenty years?  Ah, my friend, it is true!
+All the dreams that have flown since that day,
+All the hopes in that time passed away,
+Old friend, I've been drinking with you!
+
+
+FATE
+
+"The sky is clouded, the rocks are bare,
+The spray of the tempest is white in air;
+The winds are out with the waves at play,
+And I shall not tempt the sea to-day.
+
+"The trail is narrow, the wood is dim,
+The panther clings to the arching limb;
+And the lion's whelps are abroad at play,
+And I shall not join in the chase to-day."
+
+But the ship sailed safely over the sea,
+And the hunters came from the chase in glee;
+And the town that was builded upon a rock
+Was swallowed up in the earthquake shock.
+
+
+GRANDMOTHER TENTERDEN
+
+(MASSACHUSETTS SHORE, 1800)
+
+  I mind it was but yesterday:
+The sun was dim, the air was chill;
+Below the town, below the hill,
+The sails of my son's ship did fill,--
+  My Jacob, who was cast away.
+
+  He said, "God keep you, mother dear,"
+But did not turn to kiss his wife;
+They had some foolish, idle strife;
+Her tongue was like a two-edged knife,
+  And he was proud as any peer.
+
+  Howbeit that night I took no note
+Of sea nor sky, for all was drear;
+I marked not that the hills looked near,
+Nor that the moon, though curved and clear,
+  Through curd-like scud did drive and float.
+
+  For with my darling went the joy
+Of autumn woods and meadows brown;
+I came to hate the little town;
+It seemed as if the sun went down
+  With him, my only darling boy.
+
+  It was the middle of the night:
+The wind, it shifted west-by-south,--
+It piled high up the harbor mouth;
+The marshes, black with summer drouth,
+  Were all abroad with sea-foam white.
+
+  It was the middle of the night:
+The sea upon the garden leapt,
+And my son's wife in quiet slept,
+And I, his mother, waked and wept,
+  When lo! there came a sudden light.
+
+  And there he stood!  His seaman's dress
+All wet and dripping seemed to be;
+The pale blue fires of the sea
+Dripped from his garments constantly,--
+  I could not speak through cowardness.
+
+  "I come through night and storm," he said.
+"Through storm and night and death," said he,
+"To kiss my wife, if it so be
+That strife still holds 'twixt her and me,
+  For all beyond is peace," he said.
+
+  "The sea is His, and He who sent
+The wind and wave can soothe their strife
+And brief and foolish is our life."
+He stooped and kissed his sleeping wife,
+  Then sighed, and like a dream he went.
+
+  Now, when my darling kissed not me,
+But her--his wife--who did not wake,
+My heart within me seemed to break;
+I swore a vow, nor thenceforth spake
+  Of what my clearer eyes did see.
+
+  And when the slow weeks brought him not,
+Somehow we spake of aught beside:
+For she--her hope upheld her pride;
+And I--in me all hope had died,
+  And my son passed as if forgot.
+
+  It was about the next springtide:
+She pined and faded where she stood,
+Yet spake no word of ill or good;
+She had the hard, cold Edwards' blood
+  In all her veins--and so she died.
+
+  One time I thought, before she passed,
+To give her peace; but ere I spake
+Methought, "HE will be first to break
+The news in heaven," and for his sake
+  I held mine back until the last.
+
+  And here I sit, nor care to roam;
+I only wait to hear his call.
+I doubt not that this day next fall
+Shall see me safe in port, where all
+  And every ship at last comes home.
+
+  And you have sailed the Spanish Main,
+And knew my Jacob? . . . Eh!  Mercy!
+Ah! God of wisdom! hath the sea
+Yielded its dead to humble me?
+  My boy! . . . My Jacob! . . . Turn again!
+
+
+GUILD'S SIGNAL
+
+
+[William Guild was engineer of the train which on the 19th of April,
+1813, plunged into Meadow Brook, on the line of the Stonington and
+Providence Railroad.  It was his custom, as often as he passed his
+home, to whistle an "All's well" to his wife.  He was found, after
+the disaster, dead, with his hand on the throttle-valve of his
+engine.]
+
+
+Two low whistles, quaint and clear:
+  That was the signal the engineer--
+That was the signal that Guild, 'tis said--
+Gave to his wife at Providence,
+As through the sleeping town, and thence,
+        Out in the night,
+        On to the light,
+  Down past the farms, lying white, he sped!
+
+As a husband's greeting, scant, no doubt,
+Yet to the woman looking out,
+  Watching and waiting, no serenade,
+Love-song, or midnight roundelay
+Said what that whistle seemed to say:
+        "To my trust true,
+        So, love, to you!
+  Working or waiting, good-night!" it said.
+
+Brisk young bagmen, tourists fine,
+Old commuters along the line,
+  Brakemen and porters glanced ahead,
+Smiled as the signal, sharp, intense,
+Pierced through the shadows of Providence:
+        "Nothing amiss--
+        Nothing!--it is
+  Only Guild calling his wife," they said.
+
+Summer and winter the old refrain
+Rang o'er the billows of ripening grain,
+  Pierced through the budding boughs o'erhead,
+Flew down the track when the red leaves burned
+Like living coals from the engine spurned;
+        Sang as it flew,
+        "To our trust true,
+  First of all, duty.  Good-night!" it said.
+
+And then, one night, it was heard no more
+From Stonington over Rhode Island shore,
+  And the folk in Providence smiled and said
+As they turned in their beds, "The engineer
+Has once forgotten his midnight cheer."
+        ONE only knew,
+        To his trust true,
+  Guild lay under his engine, dead.
+
+
+ASPIRING MISS DE LAINE
+
+(A CHEMICAL NARRATIVE)
+
+Certain facts which serve to explain
+The physical charms of Miss Addie De Laine,
+Who, as the common reports obtain,
+Surpassed in complexion the lily and rose;
+With a very sweet mouth and a retrousse nose;
+A figure like Hebe's, or that which revolves
+In a milliner's window, and partially solves
+That question which mentor and moralist pains,
+If grace may exist minus feeling or brains.
+
+Of course the young lady had beaux by the score,
+All that she wanted,--what girl could ask more?
+Lovers that sighed and lovers that swore,
+Lovers that danced and lovers that played,
+Men of profession, of leisure, and trade;
+But one, who was destined to take the high part
+Of holding that mythical treasure, her heart,--
+This lover, the wonder and envy of town,
+Was a practicing chemist, a fellow called Brown.
+
+I might here remark that 'twas doubted by many,
+In regard to the heart, if Miss Addie had any;
+But no one could look in that eloquent face,
+With its exquisite outline and features of grace,
+And mark, through the transparent skin, how the tide
+Ebbed and flowed at the impulse of passion or pride,--
+None could look, who believed in the blood's circulation
+As argued by Harvey, but saw confirmation
+That here, at least, Nature had triumphed o'er art,
+And as far as complexion went she had a heart.
+
+But this par parenthesis.  Brown was the man
+Preferred of all others to carry her fan,
+Hook her glove, drape her shawl, and do all that a belle
+May demand of the lover she wants to treat well.
+Folks wondered and stared that a fellow called Brown--
+Abstracted and solemn, in manner a clown,
+Ill dressed, with a lingering smell of the shop--
+Should appear as her escort at party or hop.
+Some swore he had cooked up some villainous charm,
+Or love philter, not in the regular Pharm-
+Acopoeia, and thus, from pure malice prepense,
+Had bewitched and bamboozled the young lady's sense;
+Others thought, with more reason, the secret to lie
+In a magical wash or indelible dye;
+While Society, with its censorious eye
+And judgment impartial, stood ready to damn
+What wasn't improper as being a sham.
+
+For a fortnight the townfolk had all been agog
+With a party, the finest the season had seen,
+To be given in honor of Miss Pollywog,
+Who was just coming out as a belle of sixteen.
+The guests were invited; but one night before
+A carriage drew up at the modest back door
+Of Brown's lab'ratory, and, full in the glare
+Of a big purple bottle, some closely veiled fair
+Alighted and entered: to make matters plain,
+Spite of veils and disguises, 'twas Addie De Laine.
+
+As a bower for true love, 'twas hardly the one
+That a lady would choose to be wooed in or won:
+No odor of rose or sweet jessamine's sigh
+Breathed a fragrance to hallow their pledge of troth by,
+Nor the balm that exhales from the odorous thyme;
+But the gaseous effusions of chloride of lime,
+And salts, which your chemist delights to explain
+As the base of the smell of the rose and the drain.
+Think of this, O ye lovers of sweetness! and know
+What you smell when you snuff up Lubin or Pinaud.
+
+I pass by the greetings, the transports and bliss,
+Which of course duly followed a meeting like this,
+And come down to business,--for such the intent
+Of the lady who now o'er the crucible leant,
+In the glow of a furnace of carbon and lime,
+Like a fairy called up in the new pantomime,--
+And give but her words, as she coyly looked down
+In reply to the questioning glances of Brown:
+"I am taking the drops, and am using the paste,
+And the little white powders that had a sweet taste,
+Which you told me would brighten the glance of my eye,
+And the depilatory, and also the dye,
+And I'm charmed with the trial; and now, my dear Brown,
+I have one other favor,--now, ducky, don't frown,--
+Only one, for a chemist and genius like you
+But a trifle, and one you can easily do.
+Now listen: to-morrow, you know, is the night
+Of the birthday soiree of that Pollywog fright;
+And I'm to be there, and the dress I shall wear
+Is TOO lovely; but"--  "But what then, ma chere?"
+Said Brown, as the lady came to a full stop,
+And glanced round the shelves of the little back shop.
+"Well, I want--I want something to fill out the skirt
+To the proper dimensions, without being girt
+In a stiff crinoline, or caged in a hoop
+That shows through one's skirt like the bars of a coop;
+Something light, that a lady may waltz in, or polk,
+With a freedom that none but you masculine folk
+Ever know.  For, however poor woman aspires,
+She's always bound down to the earth by these wires.
+Are you listening?  Nonsense! don't stare like a spoon,
+Idiotic; some light thing, and spacious, and soon--
+Something like--well, in fact--something like a balloon!"
+
+Here she paused; and here Brown, overcome by surprise,
+Gave a doubting assent with still wondering eyes,
+And the lady departed.  But just at the door
+Something happened,--'tis true, it had happened before
+In this sanctum of science,--a sibilant sound,
+Like some element just from its trammels unbound,
+Or two substances that their affinities found.
+
+The night of the anxiously looked for soiree
+Had come, with its fair ones in gorgeous array;
+With the rattle of wheels and the tinkle of bells,
+And the "How do ye do's" and the "Hope you are well's;"
+And the crush in the passage, and last lingering look
+You give as you hang your best hat on the hook;
+The rush of hot air as the door opens wide;
+And your entry,--that blending of self-possessed pride
+And humility shown in your perfect-bred stare
+At the folk, as if wondering how they got there;
+With other tricks worthy of Vanity Fair.
+Meanwhile, the safe topic, the beat of the room,
+Already was losing its freshness and bloom;
+Young people were yawning, and wondering when
+The dance would come off; and why didn't it then:
+When a vague expectation was thrilling the crowd,
+Lo! the door swung its hinges with utterance proud!
+And Pompey announced, with a trumpet-like strain,
+The entrance of Brown and Miss Addie De Laine.
+
+She entered; but oh! how imperfect the verb
+To express to the senses her movement superb!
+To say that she "sailed in" more clearly might tell
+Her grace in its buoyant and billowy swell.
+Her robe was a vague circumambient space,
+With shadowy boundaries made of point-lace;
+The rest was but guesswork, and well might defy
+The power of critical feminine eye
+To define or describe: 'twere as futile to try
+The gossamer web of the cirrus to trace,
+Floating far in the blue of a warm summer sky.
+
+'Midst the humming of praises and glances of beaux
+That greet our fair maiden wherever she goes,
+Brown slipped like a shadow, grim, silent, and black,
+With a look of anxiety, close in her track.
+Once he whispered aside in her delicate ear
+A sentence of warning,--it might be of fear:
+"Don't stand in a draught, if you value your life."
+(Nothing more,--such advice might be given your wife
+Or your sweetheart, in times of bronchitis and cough,
+Without mystery, romance, or frivolous scoff.)
+But hark to the music; the dance has begun.
+The closely draped windows wide open are flung;
+The notes of the piccolo, joyous and light,
+Like bubbles burst forth on the warm summer night.
+Round about go the dancers; in circles they fly;
+Trip, trip, go their feet as their skirts eddy by;
+And swifter and lighter, but somewhat too plain,
+Whisks the fair circumvolving Miss Addie De Laine.
+Taglioni and Cerito well might have pined
+For the vigor and ease that her movements combined;
+E'en Rigelboche never flung higher her robe
+In the naughtiest city that's known on the globe.
+'Twas amazing, 'twas scandalous; lost in surprise,
+Some opened their mouths, and a few shut their eyes.
+
+But hark!  At the moment Miss Addie De Laine,
+Circling round at the outer edge of an ellipse
+Which brought her fair form to the window again,
+From the arms of her partner incautiously slips!
+And a shriek fills the air, and the music is still,
+And the crowd gather round where her partner forlorn
+Still frenziedly points from the wide window-sill
+Into space and the night; for Miss Addie was gone!
+Gone like the bubble that bursts in the sun;
+Gone like the grain when the reaper is done;
+Gone like the dew on the fresh morning grass;
+Gone without parting farewell; and alas!
+Gone with a flavor of hydrogen gas!
+
+When the weather is pleasant, you frequently meet
+A white-headed man slowly pacing the street;
+His trembling hand shading his lack-lustre eye,
+Half blind with continually scanning the sky.
+Rumor points him as some astronomical sage,
+Re-perusing by day the celestial page;
+But the reader, sagacious, will recognize Brown,
+Trying vainly to conjure his lost sweetheart down,
+And learn the stern moral this story must teach,
+That Genius may lift its love out of its reach.
+
+
+A LEGEND OF COLOGNE
+
+        Above the bones
+        St. Ursula owns,
+And those of the virgins she chaperons;
+        Above the boats,
+        And the bridge that floats,
+And the Rhine and the steamers' smoky throats;
+    Above the chimneys and quaint-tiled roofs,
+    Above the clatter of wheels and hoofs;
+    Above Newmarket's open space,
+    Above that consecrated place
+Where the genuine bones of the Magi seen are,
+And the dozen shops of the real Farina;
+    Higher than even old Hohestrasse,
+    Whose houses threaten the timid passer,--
+        Above them all,
+        Through scaffolds tall,
+And spires like delicate limbs in splinters,
+        The great Cologne's
+        Cathedral stones
+Climb through the storms of eight hundred winters.
+
+        Unfinished there,
+        In high mid-air
+    The towers halt like a broken prayer;
+        Through years belated,
+        Unconsummated,
+    The hope of its architect quite frustrated.
+        Its very youth
+        They say, forsooth,
+    With a quite improper purpose mated;
+        And every stone
+        With a curse of its own
+    Instead of that sermon Shakespeare stated,
+        Since the day its choir,
+        Which all admire,
+    By Cologne's Archbishop was consecrated.
+
+        Ah! THAT was a day,
+        One well might say,
+To be marked with the largest, whitest stone
+To be found in the towers of all Cologne!
+        Along the Rhine,
+        From old Rheinstein,
+The people flowed like their own good wine.
+        From Rudesheim,
+        And Geisenheim,
+And every spot that is known to rhyme;
+From the famed Cat's Castle of St. Goarshausen,
+To the pictured roofs of Assmannshausen,
+        And down the track,
+        From quaint Schwalbach
+    To the clustering tiles of Bacharach;
+        From Bingen, hence
+        To old Coblentz:
+From every castellated crag,
+Where the robber chieftains kept their "swag,"
+The folk flowed in, and Ober-Cassel
+Shone with the pomp of knight and vassal;
+    And pouring in from near and far,
+    As the Rhine to its bosom draws the Ahr,
+    Or takes the arm of the sober Mosel,
+    So in Cologne, knight, squire, and losel,
+    Choked up the city's gates with men
+    From old St. Stephen to Zint Marjen.
+
+    What had they come to see?  Ah me!
+    I fear no glitter of pageantry,
+        Nor sacred zeal
+        For Church's weal,
+Nor faith in the virgins' bones to heal;
+    Nor childlike trust in frank confession
+    Drew these, who, dyed in deep transgression,
+        Still in each nest
+        On every crest
+Kept stolen goods in their possession;
+        But only their gout
+        For something new,
+More rare than the "roast" of a wandering Jew;
+        Or--to be exact--
+        To see--in fact--
+    A Christian soul, in the very act
+    Of being damned, secundum artem,
+    By the devil, before a soul could part 'em.
+
+        For a rumor had flown
+        Throughout Cologne
+That the church, in fact, was the devil's own;
+        That its architect
+        (Being long "suspect")
+Had confessed to the Bishop that he had wrecked
+    Not only his OWN soul, but had lost
+    The VERY FIRST CHRISTIAN SOUL that crossed
+    The sacred threshold: and all, in fine,
+    For that very beautiful design
+        Of the wonderful choir
+        They were pleased to admire.
+    And really, he must be allowed to say--
+    To speak in a purely business way--
+    That, taking the ruling market prices
+    Of souls and churches, in such a crisis
+        It would be shown--
+        And his Grace must own--
+    It was really a BARGAIN for Cologne!
+
+        Such was the tale
+        That turned cheeks pale
+With the thought that the enemy might prevail,
+        And the church doors snap
+        With a thunderclap
+On a Christian soul in that devil's trap.
+        But a wiser few,
+        Who thought that they knew
+Cologne's Archbishop, replied, "Pooh, pooh!
+        Just watch him and wait,
+        And as sure as fate,
+You'll find that the Bishop will give checkmate."
+
+        One here might note
+        How the popular vote,
+As shown in all legends and anecdote,
+        Declares that a breach
+        Of trust to o'erreach
+The devil is something quite proper for each.
+        And, really, if you
+        Give the devil his due
+In spite of the proverb--it's something you'll rue.
+        But to lie and deceive him,
+        To use and to leave him,
+From Job up to Faust is the way to receive him,
+        Though no one has heard
+        It ever averred
+That the "Father of Lies" ever yet broke HIS word,
+        But has left this position,
+        In every tradition,
+To be taken alone by the "truth-loving" Christian!
+        Bom! from the tower!
+        It is the hour!
+The host pours in, in its pomp and power
+        Of banners and pyx,
+        And high crucifix,
+And crosiers and other processional sticks,
+        And no end of Marys
+        In quaint reliquaries,
+To gladden the souls of all true antiquaries;
+        And an Osculum Pacis
+        (A myth to the masses
+Who trusted their bones more to mail and cuirasses)--
+        All borne by the throng
+        Who are marching along
+To the square of the Dom with processional song,
+        With the flaring of dips,
+        And bending of hips,
+And the chanting of hundred perfunctory lips;
+        And some good little boys
+        Who had come up from Neuss
+And the Quirinuskirche to show off their voice:
+        All march to the square
+        Of the great Dom, and there
+File right and left, leaving alone and quite bare
+        A covered sedan,
+        Containing--so ran
+The rumor--the victim to take off the ban.
+
+        They have left it alone,
+        They have sprinkled each stone
+Of the porch with a sanctified Eau de Cologne,
+        Guaranteed in this case
+        To disguise every trace
+Of a sulphurous presence in that sacred place.
+        Two Carmelites stand
+        On the right and left hand
+Of the covered sedan chair, to wait the command
+        Of the prelate to throw
+        Up the cover and show
+The form of the victim in terror below.
+        There's a pause and a prayer,
+        Then the signal, and there--
+Is a WOMAN!--by all that is good and is fair!
+
+        A woman! and known
+        To them all--one must own
+TOO WELL KNOWN to the many, to-day to be shown
+        As a martyr, or e'en
+        As a Christian!  A queen
+Of pleasance and revel, of glitter and sheen;
+        So bad that the worst
+        Of Cologne spake up first,
+And declared 'twas an outrage to suffer one curst,
+        And already a fief
+        Of the Satanic chief,
+To martyr herself for the Church's relief.
+        But in vain fell their sneer
+        On the mob, who I fear
+On the whole felt a strong disposition to cheer.
+
+        A woman! and there
+        She stands in the glare
+Of the pitiless sun and their pitying stare,--
+        A woman still young,
+        With garments that clung
+To a figure, though wasted with passion and wrung
+        With remorse and despair,
+        Yet still passing fair,
+With jewels and gold in her dark shining hair,
+        And cheeks that are faint
+        'Neath her dyes and her paint.
+A woman most surely--but hardly a saint!
+
+        She moves.  She has gone
+        From their pity and scorn;
+        She has mounted alone
+        The first step of stone,
+And the high swinging doors she wide open has thrown,
+        Then pauses and turns,
+        As the altar blaze burns
+On her cheeks, and with one sudden gesture she spurns
+        Archbishop and Prior,
+        Knight, ladye, and friar,
+And her voice rings out high from the vault of the choir.
+
+        "O men of Cologne!
+        What I WAS ye have known;
+What I AM, as I stand here, One knoweth alone.
+        If it be but His will
+        I shall pass from Him still,
+Lost, curst, and degraded, I reckon no ill;
+        If still by that sign
+        Of His anger divine
+One soul shall he saved, He hath blessed more than mine.
+        O men of Cologne!
+        Stand forth, if ye own
+A faith like to this, or more fit to atone,
+        And take ye my place,
+        And God give you grace
+To stand and confront Him, like me, face to face!"
+
+        She paused.  Yet aloof
+        They all stand.  No reproof
+Breaks the silence that fills the celestial roof.
+        One instant--no more--
+        She halts at the door,
+Then enters! . . . A flood from the roof to the floor
+        Fills the church rosy red.
+        She is gone!
+                      But instead,
+Who is this leaning forward with glorified head
+        And hands stretched to save?
+        Sure this is no slave
+Of the Powers of Darkness, with aspect so brave!
+
+        They press to the door,
+        But too late!  All is o'er.
+Naught remains but a woman's form prone on the floor;
+        But they still see a trace
+        Of that glow in her face
+That they saw in the light of the altar's high blaze
+        On the image that stands
+        With the babe in its hands
+Enshrined in the churches of all Christian lands.
+
+        A Te Deum sung,
+        A censer high swung,
+With praise, benediction, and incense wide-flung,
+        Proclaim that the CURSE
+        IS REMOVED--and no worse
+Is the Dom for the trial--in fact, the REVERSE;
+        For instead of their losing
+        A soul in abusing
+The Evil One's faith, they gained one of his choosing.
+
+        Thus the legend is told:
+        You will find in the old
+Vaulted aisles of the Dom, stiff in marble or cold
+        In iron and brass,
+        In gown and cuirass,
+The knights, priests, and bishops who came to that Mass;
+        And high o'er the rest,
+        With her babe at her breast,
+The image of Mary Madonna the blest.
+        But you look round in vain,
+        On each high pictured pane,
+For the woman most worthy to walk in her train.
+
+        Yet, standing to-day
+        O'er the dust and the clay,
+'Midst the ghosts of a life that has long passed away,
+        With the slow-sinking sun
+        Looking softly upon
+That stained-glass procession, I scarce miss the one
+        That it does not reveal,
+        For I know and I feel
+That these are but shadows--the woman was real!
+
+
+THE TALE OF A PONY
+
+Name of my heroine, simply "Rose;"
+Surname, tolerable only in prose;
+Habitat, Paris,--that is where
+She resided for change of air;
+Aetat twenty; complexion fair;
+Rich, good looking, and debonnaire;
+Smarter than Jersey lightning.  There!
+That's her photograph, done with care.
+
+In Paris, whatever they do besides,
+EVERY LADY IN FULL DRESS RIDES!
+Moire antiques you never meet
+Sweeping the filth of a dirty street
+But every woman's claim to ton
+    Depends upon
+The team she drives, whether phaeton,
+Landau, or britzka.  Hence it's plain
+That Rose, who was of her toilet vain,
+Should have a team that ought to be
+Equal to any in all Paris!
+
+"Bring forth the horse!"  The commissaire
+Bowed, and brought Miss Rose a pair
+Leading an equipage rich and rare.
+Why doth that lovely lady stare?
+Why?  The tail of the off gray mare
+Is bobbed, by all that's good and fair!
+Like the shaving-brushes that soldiers wear,
+Scarcely showing as much back hair
+As Tam O'Shanter's "Meg,"--and there,
+Lord knows, she'd little enough to spare.
+
+That stare and frown the Frenchman knew,
+But did as well-bred Frenchmen do:
+Raised his shoulders above his crown,
+Joined his thumbs with the fingers down,
+And said, "Ah, Heaven!"--then, "Mademoiselle,
+Delay one minute, and all is well!"
+He went--returned; by what good chance
+These things are managed so well in France
+I cannot say, but he made the sale,
+And the bob-tailed mare had a flowing tail.
+
+All that is false in this world below
+Betrays itself in a love of show;
+Indignant Nature hides her lash
+In the purple-black of a dyed mustache;
+The shallowest fop will trip in French,
+The would-be critic will misquote Trench;
+In short, you're always sure to detect
+A sham in the things folks most affect;
+Bean-pods are noisiest when dry,
+And you always wink with your weakest eye:
+And that's the reason the old gray mare
+Forever had her tail in the air,
+With flourishes beyond compare,
+    Though every whisk
+    Incurred the risk
+Of leaving that sensitive region bare.
+She did some things that you couldn't but feel
+She wouldn't have done had her tail been real.
+
+Champs Elysees: time, past five.
+There go the carriages,--look alive!
+Everything that man can drive,
+Or his inventive skill contrive,--
+Yankee buggy or English "chay,"
+Dog-cart, droschky, and smart coupe,
+A desobligeante quite bulky
+(French idea of a Yankee sulky);
+Band in the distance playing a march,
+Footman standing stiff as starch;
+Savans, lorettes, deputies, Arch-
+Bishops, and there together range
+Sous-lieutenants and cent-gardes (strange
+Way these soldier-chaps make change),
+Mixed with black-eyed Polish dames,
+With unpronounceable awful names;
+Laces tremble and ribbons flout,
+Coachmen wrangle and gendarmes shout--
+Bless us! what is the row about?
+Ah! here comes Rosy's new turnout!
+Smart!  You bet your life 'twas that!
+Nifty! (short for magnificat).
+Mulberry panels,--heraldic spread,--
+Ebony wheels picked out with red,
+And two gray mares that were thoroughbred:
+No wonder that every dandy's head
+Was turned by the turnout,--and 'twas said
+That Caskowhisky (friend of the Czar),
+A very good whip (as Russians are),
+Was tied to Rosy's triumphal car,
+Entranced, the reader will understand,
+By "ribbons" that graced her head and hand.
+
+Alas! the hour you think would crown
+Your highest wishes should let you down!
+Or Fate should turn, by your own mischance,
+Your victor's car to an ambulance,
+From cloudless heavens her lightnings glance!
+(And these things happen, even in France.)
+And so Miss Rose, as she trotted by,
+The cynosure of every eye,
+Saw to her horror the off mare shy,
+Flourish her tail so exceedingly high
+That, disregarding the closest tie,
+And without giving a reason why,
+She flung that tail so free and frisky
+Off in the face of Caskowhisky.
+
+  Excuses, blushes, smiles: in fine,
+  End of the pony's tail, and mine!
+
+
+ON A CONE OF THE BIG TREES
+
+(SEQUOIA GIGANTEA)
+
+Brown foundling of the Western wood,
+  Babe of primeval wildernesses!
+Long on my table thou hast stood
+  Encounters strange and rude caresses;
+Perchance contented with thy lot,
+  Surroundings new, and curious faces,
+As though ten centuries were not
+  Imprisoned in thy shining cases.
+
+Thou bring'st me back the halcyon days
+  Of grateful rest, the week of leisure,
+The journey lapped in autumn haze,
+  The sweet fatigue that seemed a pleasure,
+The morning ride, the noonday halt,
+  The blazing slopes, the red dust rising,
+And then the dim, brown, columned vault,
+  With its cool, damp, sepulchral spicing.
+
+Once more I see the rocking masts
+  That scrape the sky, their only tenant
+The jay-bird, that in frolic casts
+  From some high yard his broad blue pennant.
+I see the Indian files that keep
+  Their places in the dusty heather,
+Their red trunks standing ankle-deep
+  In moccasins of rusty leather.
+
+I see all this, and marvel much
+  That thou, sweet woodland waif, art able
+To keep the company of such
+  As throng thy friend's--the poet's--table:
+The latest spawn the press hath cast,--
+  The "modern popes," "the later Byrons,"--
+Why, e'en the best may not outlast
+  Thy poor relation--Sempervirens.
+
+Thy sire saw the light that shone
+  On Mohammed's uplifted crescent,
+On many a royal gilded throne
+  And deed forgotten in the present;
+He saw the age of sacred trees
+  And Druid groves and mystic larches;
+And saw from forest domes like these
+  The builder bring his Gothic arches.
+
+And must thou, foundling, still forego
+  Thy heritage and high ambition,
+To lie full lowly and full low,
+  Adjusted to thy new condition?
+Not hidden in the drifted snows,
+  But under ink-drops idly spattered,
+And leaves ephemeral as those
+  That on thy woodland tomb were scattered?
+
+Yet lie thou there, O friend! and speak
+  The moral of thy simple story:
+Though life is all that thou dost seek,
+  And age alone thy crown of glory,
+Not thine the only germs that fail
+  The purpose of their high creation,
+If their poor tenements avail
+  For worldly show and ostentation.
+
+
+LONE MOUNTAIN
+
+(CEMETERY, SAN FRANCISCO)
+
+This is that hill of awe
+That Persian Sindbad saw,--
+    The mount magnetic;
+And on its seaward face,
+Scattered along its base,
+    The wrecks prophetic.
+
+Here come the argosies
+Blown by each idle breeze,
+    To and fro shifting;
+Yet to the hill of Fate
+All drawing, soon or late,--
+    Day by day drifting;
+
+Drifting forever here
+Barks that for many a year
+    Braved wind and weather;
+Shallops but yesterday
+Launched on yon shining bay,--
+    Drawn all together.
+
+This is the end of all:
+Sun thyself by the wall,
+    O poorer Hindbad!
+Envy not Sindbad's fame:
+Here come alike the same
+    Hindbad and Sindbad.
+
+
+ALNASCHAR
+
+Here's yer toy balloons!  All sizes!
+Twenty cents for that.  It rises
+Jest as quick as that 'ere, Miss,
+Twice as big.  Ye see it is
+Some more fancy.  Make it square
+Fifty for 'em both.  That's fair.
+
+That's the sixth I've sold since noon.
+Trade's reviving.  Just as soon
+As this lot's worked off, I'll take
+Wholesale figgers.  Make or break,--
+That's my motto!  Then I'll buy
+In some first-class lottery
+One half ticket, numbered right--
+As I dreamed about last night.
+
+That'll fetch it.  Don't tell me!
+When a man's in luck, you see,
+All things help him.  Every chance
+Hits him like an avalanche.
+Here's your toy balloons, Miss.  Eh?
+You won't turn your face this way?
+Mebbe you'll be glad some day.
+With that clear ten thousand prize
+This 'yer trade I'll drop, and rise
+Into wholesale.  No!  I'll take
+Stocks in Wall Street.  Make or break,--
+That's my motto!  With my luck,
+Where's the chance of being stuck?
+Call it sixty thousand, clear,
+Made in Wall Street in one year.
+
+Sixty thousand!  Umph!  Let's see!
+Bond and mortgage'll do for me.
+Good!  That gal that passed me by
+Scornful like--why, mebbe I
+Some day'll hold in pawn--why not?--
+All her father's prop.  She'll spot
+What's my little game, and see
+What I'm after's HER.  He! he!
+
+He! he!  When she comes to sue--
+Let's see!  What's the thing to do?
+Kick her?  No!  There's the perliss!
+Sorter throw her off like this.
+Hello!  Stop!  Help!  Murder!  Hey!
+There's my whole stock got away,
+Kiting on the house-tops!  Lost!
+All a poor man's fortin!  Cost?
+Twenty dollars!  Eh!  What's this?
+Fifty cents!  God bless ye, Miss!
+
+
+THE TWO SHIPS
+
+As I stand by the cross on the lone mountain's crest,
+    Looking over the ultimate sea,
+In the gloom of the mountain a ship lies at rest,
+    And one sails away from the lea:
+One spreads its white wings on a far-reaching track,
+    With pennant and sheet flowing free;
+One hides in the shadow with sails laid aback,--
+    The ship that is waiting for me!
+
+But lo! in the distance the clouds break away,
+    The Gate's glowing portals I see;
+And I hear from the outgoing ship in the bay
+    The song of the sailors in glee.
+So I think of the luminous footprints that bore
+    The comfort o'er dark Galilee,
+And wait for the signal to go to the shore,
+    To the ship that is waiting for me.
+
+
+ADDRESS
+
+(OPENING OF THE CALIFORNIA THEATRE, SAN FRANCISCO, JANUARY 19, 1870)
+
+Brief words, when actions wait, are well:
+The prompter's hand is on his bell;
+The coming heroes, lovers, kings,
+Are idly lounging at the wings;
+Behind the curtain's mystic fold
+The glowing future lies unrolled;
+And yet, one moment for the Past,
+One retrospect,--the first and last.
+
+"The world's a stage," the Master said.
+To-night a mightier truth is read:
+Not in the shifting canvas screen,
+The flash of gas or tinsel sheen;
+Not in the skill whose signal calls
+From empty boards baronial halls;
+But, fronting sea and curving bay,
+Behold the players and the play.
+
+Ah, friends! beneath your real skies
+The actor's short-lived triumph dies:
+On that broad stage of empire won,
+Whose footlights were the setting sun,
+Whose flats a distant background rose
+In trackless peaks of endless snows;
+Here genius bows, and talent waits
+To copy that but One creates.
+
+Your shifting scenes: the league of sand,
+An avenue by ocean spanned;
+The narrow beach of straggling tents,
+A mile of stately monuments;
+Your standard, lo! a flag unfurled,
+Whose clinging folds clasp half the world,--
+This is your drama, built on facts,
+With "twenty years between the acts."
+
+One moment more: if here we raise
+The oft-sung hymn of local praise,
+Before the curtain facts must sway;
+HERE waits the moral of your play.
+Glassed in the poet's thought, you view
+What money can, yet cannot do;
+The faith that soars, the deeds that shine,
+Above the gold that builds the shrine.
+
+And oh! when others take our place,
+And Earth's green curtain hides our face,
+Ere on the stage, so silent now,
+The last new hero makes his bow:
+So may our deeds, recalled once more
+In Memory's sweet but brief encore,
+Down all the circling ages run,
+With the world's plaudit of "Well done!"
+
+
+DOLLY VARDEN
+
+Dear Dolly! who does not recall
+The thrilling page that pictured all
+Those charms that held our sense in thrall
+  Just as the artist caught her,--
+As down that English lane she tripped,
+In bowered chintz, hat sideways tipped,
+Trim-bodiced, bright-eyed, roguish-lipped,--
+  The locksmith's pretty daughter?
+
+Sweet fragment of the Master's art!
+O simple faith!  O rustic heart!
+O maid that hath no counterpart
+  In life's dry, dog-eared pages!
+Where shall we find thy like?  Ah, stay!
+Methinks I saw her yesterday
+In chintz that flowered, as one might say,
+  Perennial for ages.
+
+Her father's modest cot was stone,
+Five stories high; in style and tone
+Composite, and, I frankly own,
+  Within its walls revealing
+Some certain novel, strange ideas:
+A Gothic door with Roman piers,
+And floors removed some thousand years,
+  From their Pompeian ceiling.
+
+The small salon where she received
+Was Louis Quatorze, and relieved
+By Chinese cabinets, conceived
+  Grotesquely by the heathen;
+The sofas were a classic sight,--
+The Roman bench (sedilia hight);
+The chairs were French in gold and white,
+  And one Elizabethan.
+
+And she, the goddess of that shrine,
+Two ringed fingers placed in mine,--
+The stones were many carats fine,
+  And of the purest water,--
+Then dropped a curtsy, far enough
+To fairly fill her cretonne puff
+And show the petticoat's rich stuff
+  That her fond parent bought her.
+
+Her speech was simple as her dress,--
+Not French the more, but English less,
+She loved; yet sometimes, I confess,
+  I scarce could comprehend her.
+Her manners were quite far from shy.
+There was a quiet in her eye
+Appalling to the Hugh who'd try
+  With rudeness to offend her.
+
+"But whence," I cried, "this masquerade?
+Some figure for to-night's charade,
+A Watteau shepherdess or maid?"
+  She smiled and begged my pardon:
+"Why, surely you must know the name,--
+That woman who was Shakespeare's flame
+Or Byron's,--well, it's all the same:
+  Why, Lord! I'm Dolly Varden!"
+
+
+TELEMACHUS VERSUS MENTOR
+
+Don't mind me, I beg you, old fellow,--I'll do very well here alone;
+You must not be kept from your "German" because I've dropped in like
+   a stone.
+Leave all ceremony behind you, leave all thought of aught but
+   yourself;
+And leave, if you like, the Madeira, and a dozen cigars on the shelf.
+
+As for me, you will say to your hostess--well, I scarcely need give
+   you a cue.
+Chant my praise!  All will list to Apollo, though Mercury pipe to a
+   few.
+Say just what you please, my dear boy; there's more eloquence lies
+   in youth's rash
+Outspoken heart-impulse than ever growled under this grizzling
+   mustache.
+
+Go, don the dress coat of our tyrant,--youth's panoplied armor for
+   fight,--
+And tie the white neckcloth that rumples, like pleasure, and lasts
+   but a night;
+And pray the Nine Gods to avert you what time the Three Sisters
+   shall frown,
+And you'll lose your high-comedy figure, and sit more at ease in
+   your gown.
+
+He's off!  There's his foot on the staircase.  By Jove, what a bound!
+   Really now
+Did I ever leap like this springald, with Love's chaplet green on my
+   brow?
+Was I such an ass?  No, I fancy.  Indeed, I remember quite plain
+A gravity mixed with my transports, a cheerfulness softened my pain.
+
+He's gone!  There's the slam of his cab door, there's the clatter
+   of hoofs and the wheels;
+And while he the light toe is tripping, in this armchair I'll tilt
+   up my heels.
+He's gone, and for what?  For a tremor from a waist like a teetotum
+   spun;
+For a rosebud that's crumpled by many before it is gathered by one.
+
+Is there naught in the halo of youth but the glow of a passionate
+race--'Midst the cheers and applause of a crowd--to the goal of a
+   beautiful face?
+A race that is not to the swift, a prize that no merits enforce,
+But is won by some faineant youth, who shall simply walk over the
+   course?
+
+Poor boy! shall I shock his conceit?  When he talks of her cheek's
+   loveliness,
+Shall I say 'twas the air of the room, and was due to carbonic excess?
+That when waltzing she drooped on his breast, and the veins of her
+   eyelids grew dim,
+'Twas oxygen's absence she felt, but never the presence of him?
+
+Shall I tell him first love is a fraud, a weakling that's strangled
+   in birth,
+Recalled with perfunctory tears, but lost in unsanctified mirth?
+Or shall I go bid him believe in all womankind's charm, and forget
+In the light ringing laugh of the world the rattlesnake's gay
+   castanet?
+
+Shall I tear out a leaf from my heart, from that book that forever
+   is shut
+On the past?  Shall I speak of my first love--Augusta--my Lalage?
+   But
+I forget.  Was it really Augusta?  No. 'Twas Lucy!  No.  Mary!
+   No.  Di!
+Never mind! they were all first and faithless, and yet--I've forgotten
+   just why.
+
+No, no!  Let him dream on and ever.  Alas! he will waken too soon;
+And it doesn't look well for October to always be preaching at June.
+Poor boy!  All his fond foolish trophies pinned yonder--a bow from
+   HER hair,
+A few billets-doux, invitations, and--what's this?  My name, I
+   declare!
+
+Humph!  "You'll come, for I've got you a prize, with beauty and money
+   no end:
+You know her, I think; 'twas on dit she once was engaged to your
+   friend;
+But she says that's all over."  Ah, is it?  Sweet Ethel! incomparable
+   maid!
+Or--what if the thing were a trick?--this letter so freely displayed!--
+
+My opportune presence!  No! nonsense!  Will nobody answer the bell?
+Call a cab!  Half past ten.  Not too late yet.  Oh, Ethel!  Why don't
+   you go?  Well?
+"Master said you would wait"--  Hang your master!  "Have I ever a
+   message to send?"
+Yes, tell him I've gone to the German to dance with the friend of
+   his friend.
+
+
+WHAT THE WOLF REALLY SAID TO LITTLE RED RIDING-HOOD
+
+Wondering maiden, so puzzled and fair,
+Why dost thou murmur and ponder and stare?
+"Why are my eyelids so open and wild?"
+Only the better to see with, my child!
+Only the better and clearer to view
+Cheeks that are rosy and eyes that are blue.
+
+Dost thou still wonder, and ask why these arms
+Fill thy soft bosom with tender alarms,
+Swaying so wickedly?  Are they misplaced
+Clasping or shielding some delicate waist?
+Hands whose coarse sinews may fill you with fear
+Only the better protect you, my dear!
+
+Little Red Riding-Hood, when in the street,
+Why do I press your small hand when we meet?
+Why, when you timidly offered your cheek,
+Why did I sigh, and why didn't I speak?
+Why, well: you see--if the truth must appear--
+I'm not your grandmother, Riding-Hood, dear!
+
+
+HALF AN HOUR BEFORE SUPPER
+
+"So she's here, your unknown Dulcinea, the lady you met on the train,
+And you really believe she would know you if you were to meet her
+   again?"
+
+"Of course," he replied, "she would know me; there never was
+   womankind yet
+Forgot the effect she inspired.  She excuses, but does not forget."
+
+"Then you told her your love?" asked the elder.  The younger looked
+   up with a smile:
+"I sat by her side half an hour--what else was I doing the while?
+
+"What, sit by the side of a woman as fair as the sun in the sky,
+And look somewhere else lest the dazzle flash back from your own to
+   her eye?
+
+"No, I hold that the speech of the tongue be as frank and as bold as
+   the look,
+And I held up herself to herself,--that was more than she got from
+   her book."
+
+"Young blood!" laughed the elder; "no doubt you are voicing the mode
+   of To-Day:
+But then we old fogies at least gave the lady some chance for delay.
+
+"There's my wife (you must know),--we first met on the journey from
+   Florence to Rome:
+It took me three weeks to discover who was she and where was her home;
+
+"Three more to be duly presented; three more ere I saw her again;
+And a year ere my romance BEGAN where yours ended that day on the
+   train."
+
+"Oh, that was the style of the stage-coach; we travel to-day by
+   express;
+Forty miles to the hour," he answered, "won't admit of a passion
+   that's less."
+
+"But what if you make a mistake?" quoth the elder.  The younger half
+   sighed.
+"What happens when signals are wrong or switches misplaced?" he
+   replied.
+
+"Very well, I must bow to your wisdom," the elder returned, "but
+   submit
+Your chances of winning this woman your boldness has bettered no whit.
+
+"Why, you do not at best know her name.  And what if I try your ideal
+With something, if not quite so fair, at least more en regle and real?
+
+"Let me find you a partner.  Nay, come, I insist--you shall follow--
+   this way.
+My dear, will you not add your grace to entreat Mr. Rapid to stay?
+
+"My wife, Mr. Rapid--  Eh, what!  Why, he's gone--yet he said he
+   would come.
+How rude!  I don't wonder, my dear, you are properly crimson and
+   dumb!"
+
+
+WHAT THE BULLET SANG
+
+O joy of creation
+      To be!
+O rapture to fly
+      And be free!
+Be the battle lost or won,
+Though its smoke shall hide the sun,
+I shall find my love,--the one
+      Born for me!
+
+I shall know him where he stands,
+      All alone,
+With the power in his hands
+      Not o'erthrown;
+I shall know him by his face,
+By his godlike front and grace;
+I shall hold him for a space,
+      All my own!
+
+It is he--O my love!
+      So bold!
+It is I--all thy love
+      Foretold!
+It is I.  O love! what bliss!
+Dost thou answer to my kiss?
+O sweetheart! what is this
+      Lieth there so cold?
+
+
+THE OLD CAMP-FIRE
+
+Now shift the blanket pad before your saddle back you fling,
+And draw your cinch up tighter till the sweat drops from the ring:
+We've a dozen miles to cover ere we reach the next divide.
+Our limbs are stiffer now than when we first set out to ride,
+And worse, the horses know it, and feel the leg-grip tire,
+Since in the days when, long ago, we sought the old camp-fire.
+
+Yes, twenty years!  Lord! how we'd scent its incense down the trail,
+Through balm of bay and spice of spruce, when eye and ear would fail,
+And worn and faint from useless quest we crept, like this, to rest,
+Or, flushed with luck and youthful hope, we rode, like this, abreast.
+Ay! straighten up, old friend, and let the mustang think he's nigher,
+Through looser rein and stirrup strain, the welcome old camp-fire.
+
+You know the shout that would ring out before us down the glade,
+And start the blue jays like a flight of arrows through the shade,
+And sift the thin pine needles down like slanting, shining rain,
+And send the squirrels scampering back to their holes again,
+Until we saw, blue-veiled and dim, or leaping like desire,
+That flame of twenty years ago, which lit the old camp-fire.
+
+And then that rest on Nature's breast, when talk had dropped, and slow
+The night wind went from tree to tree with challenge soft and low!
+We lay on lazy elbows propped, or stood to stir the flame,
+Till up the soaring redwood's shaft our shadows danced and came,
+As if to draw us with the sparks, high o'er its unseen spire,
+To the five stars that kept their ward above the old camp-fire,--
+
+Those picket stars whose tranquil watch half soothed, half shamed
+   our sleep.
+What recked we then what beasts or men around might lurk or creep?
+We lay and heard with listless ears the far-off panther's cry,
+The near coyote's snarling snap, the grizzly's deep-drawn sigh,
+The brown bear's blundering human tread, the gray wolves' yelping
+   choir
+Beyond the magic circle drawn around the old camp-fire.
+
+And then that morn!  Was ever morn so filled with all things new?
+The light that fell through long brown aisles from out the kindling
+   blue,
+The creak and yawn of stretching boughs, the jay-bird's early call,
+The rat-tat-tat of woodpecker that waked the woodland hall,
+The fainter stir of lower life in fern and brake and brier,
+Till flashing leaped the torch of Day from last night's old camp-fire!
+
+Well, well! we'll see it once again; we should be near it now;
+It's scarce a mile to where the trail strikes off to skirt the slough,
+And then the dip to Indian Spring, the wooded rise, and--strange!
+Yet here should stand the blasted pine that marked our farther range;
+And here--what's this?  A ragged swab of ruts and stumps and mire!
+Sure this is not the sacred grove that hid the old camp-fire!
+
+Yet here's the "blaze" I cut myself, and there's the stumbling ledge,
+With quartz "outcrop" that lay atop, now leveled to its edge,
+And mounds of moss-grown stumps beside the woodman's rotting chips,
+And gashes in the hillside, that gape with dumb red lips.
+And yet above the shattered wreck and ruin, curling higher--
+Ah yes!--still lifts the smoke that marked the welcome old camp-fire!
+
+Perhaps some friend of twenty years still lingers there to raise
+To weary hearts and tired eyes that beacon of old days.
+Perhaps but stay; 'tis gone! and yet once more it lifts as though
+To meet our tardy blundering steps, and seems to MOVE, and lo!
+Whirls by us in a rush of sound,--the vanished funeral pyre
+Of hopes and fears that twenty years burned in the old camp-fire!
+
+For see, beyond the prospect spreads, with chimney, spire, and roof,--
+Two iron bands across the trail clank to our mustang's hoof;
+Above them leap two blackened threads from limb-lopped tree to tree,
+To where the whitewashed station speeds its message to the sea.
+Rein in!  Rein in!  The quest is o'er.  The goal of our desire
+Is but the train whose track has lain across the old camp-fire!
+
+
+THE STATION-MASTER OF LONE PRAIRIE
+
+An empty bench, a sky of grayest etching,
+A bare, bleak shed in blackest silhouette,
+Twelve years of platform, and before them stretching
+Twelve miles of prairie glimmering through the wet.
+
+North, south, east, west,--the same dull gray persistence,
+The tattered vapors of a vanished train,
+The narrowing rails that meet to pierce the distance,
+Or break the columns of the far-off rain.
+
+Naught but myself; nor form nor figure breaking
+The long hushed level and stark shining waste;
+Nothing that moves to fill the vision aching,
+When the last shadow fled in sullen haste.
+
+Nothing beyond.  Ah yes!  From out the station
+A stiff, gaunt figure thrown against the sky,
+Beckoning me with some wooden salutation
+Caught from his signals as the train flashed by;
+
+Yielding me place beside him with dumb gesture
+Born of that reticence of sky and air.
+We sit apart, yet wrapped in that one vesture
+Of silence, sadness, and unspoken care:
+
+Each following his own thought,--around us darkening
+The rain-washed boundaries and stretching track,--
+Each following those dim parallels and hearkening
+For long-lost voices that will not come back.
+
+Until, unasked,--I knew not why or wherefore,--
+He yielded, bit by bit, his dreary past,
+Like gathered clouds that seemed to thicken there for
+Some dull down-dropping of their care at last.
+
+Long had he lived there.  As a boy had started
+From the stacked corn the Indian's painted face;
+Heard the wolves' howl the wearying waste that parted
+His father's hut from the last camping-place.
+
+Nature had mocked him: thrice had claimed the reaping,
+With scythe of fire, of lands she once had sown;
+Sent the tornado, round his hearthstone heaping
+Rafters, dead faces that were like his own.
+
+Then came the War Time.  When its shadow beckoned
+He had walked dumbly where the flag had led
+Through swamp and fen,--unknown, unpraised, unreckoned,--
+To famine, fever, and a prison bed.
+
+Till the storm passed, and the slow tide returning
+Cast him, a wreck, beneath his native sky;
+Here, at his watch, gave him the chance of earning
+Scant means to live--who won the right to die.
+
+All this I heard--or seemed to hear--half blending
+With the low murmur of the coming breeze,
+The call of some lost bird, and the unending
+And tireless sobbing of those grassy seas.
+
+Until at last the spell of desolation
+Broke with a trembling star and far-off cry.
+The coming train!  I glanced around the station,
+All was as empty as the upper sky!
+
+Naught but myself; nor form nor figure waking
+The long hushed level and stark shining waste;
+Naught but myself, that cry, and the dull shaking
+Of wheel and axle, stopped in breathless haste!
+
+"Now, then--look sharp!  Eh, what?  The Station-Master?
+THAR'S NONE!  We stopped here of our own accord.
+The man got killed in that down-train disaster
+This time last evening.  Right there!  All aboard!"
+
+
+THE MISSION BELLS OF MONTEREY
+
+O bells that rang, O bells that sang
+Above the martyrs' wilderness,
+Till from that reddened coast-line sprang
+The Gospel seed to cheer and bless,
+What are your garnered sheaves to-day?
+O Mission bells!  Eleison bells!
+O Mission bells of Monterey!
+
+O bells that crash, O bells that clash
+Above the chimney-crowded plain,
+On wall and tower your voices dash,
+But never with the old refrain;
+In mart and temple gone astray!
+Ye dangle bells!  Ye jangle bells!
+Ye wrangle bells of Monterey!
+
+O bells that die, so far, so nigh,
+Come back once more across the sea;
+Not with the zealot's furious cry,
+Not with the creed's austerity;
+Come with His love alone to stay,
+O Mission bells!  Eleison bells!
+O Mission bells of Monterey!
+
+
+NOTE.  This poem was set to music by Monsieur Charles Gounod.
+
+
+"CROTALUS"
+
+(RATTLESNAKE BAR, SIERRAS)
+
+No life in earth, or air, or sky;
+The sunbeams, broken silently,
+On the bared rocks around me lie,--
+
+Cold rocks with half-warmed lichens scarred,
+And scales of moss; and scarce a yard
+Away, one long strip, yellow-barred.
+
+Lost in a cleft!  'Tis but a stride
+To reach it, thrust its roots aside,
+And lift it on thy stick astride!
+
+Yet stay!  That moment is thy grace!
+For round thee, thrilling air and space,
+A chattering terror fills the place!
+
+A sound as of dry bones that stir
+In the dead Valley!  By yon fir
+The locust stops its noonday whir!
+
+The wild bird hears; smote with the sound,
+As if by bullet brought to ground,
+On broken wing, dips, wheeling round!
+
+The hare, transfixed, with trembling lip,
+Halts, breathless, on pulsating hip,
+And palsied tread, and heels that slip.
+
+Enough, old friend!--'tis thou.  Forget
+My heedless foot, nor longer fret
+The peace with thy grim castanet!
+
+I know thee!  Yes!  Thou mayst forego
+That lifted crest; the measured blow
+Beyond which thy pride scorns to go,
+
+Or yet retract!  For me no spell
+Lights those slit orbs, where, some think, dwell
+Machicolated fires of hell!
+
+I only know thee humble, bold,
+Haughty, with miseries untold,
+And the old Curse that left thee cold,
+
+And drove thee ever to the sun,
+On blistering rocks; nor made thee shun
+Our cabin's hearth, when day was done,
+
+And the spent ashes warmed thee best;
+We knew thee,--silent, joyless guest
+Of our rude ingle.  E'en thy quest
+
+Of the rare milk-bowl seemed to be
+Naught but a brother's poverty,
+And Spartan taste that kept thee free
+
+From lust and rapine.  Thou! whose fame
+Searchest the grass with tongue of flame,
+Making all creatures seem thy game;
+
+When the whole woods before thee run,
+Asked but--when all was said and done--
+To lie, untrodden, in the sun!
+
+
+ON WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT
+
+DEAD AT PITTSFIELD, MASS., 1876
+
+O poor Romancer--thou whose printed page,
+Filled with rude speech and ruder forms of strife,
+Was given to heroes in whose vulgar rage
+No trace appears of gentler ways and life!--
+
+Thou who wast wont of commoner clay to build
+Some rough Achilles or some Ajax tall;
+Thou whose free brush too oft was wont to gild
+Some single virtue till it dazzled all;--
+
+What right hast thou beside this laureled bier
+Whereon all manhood lies--whereon the wreath
+Of Harvard rests, the civic crown, and here
+The starry flag, and sword and jeweled sheath?
+
+Seest thou these hatchments?  Knowest thou this blood
+Nourished the heroes of Colonial days--
+Sent to the dim and savage-haunted wood
+Those sad-eyed Puritans with hymns of praise?
+
+Look round thee!  Everywhere is classic ground.
+There Greylock rears.  Beside yon silver "Bowl"
+Great Hawthorne dwelt, and in its mirror found
+Those quaint, strange shapes that filled his poet's soul.
+
+Still silent, Stranger?  Thou who now and then
+Touched the too credulous ear with pathos, canst not speak?
+Hast lost thy ready skill of tongue and pen?
+What, Jester!  Tears upon that painted cheek?
+
+Pardon, good friends!  I am not here to mar
+His laureled wreaths with this poor tinseled crown--
+This man who taught me how 'twas better far
+To be the poem than to write it down.
+
+I bring no lesson.  Well have others preached
+This sword that dealt full many a gallant blow;
+I come once more to touch the hand that reached
+Its knightly gauntlet to the vanquished foe.
+
+O pale Aristocrat, that liest there,
+So cold, so silent!  Couldst thou not in grace
+Have borne with us still longer, and so spare
+The scorn we see in that proud, placid face?
+
+"Hail and farewell!"  So the proud Roman cried
+O'er his dead hero.  "Hail," but not "farewell."
+With each high thought thou walkest side by side;
+We feel thee, touch thee, know who wrought the spell!
+
+
+THE BIRDS OF CIRENCESTER
+
+Did I ever tell you, my dears, the way
+That the birds of Cisseter--"Cisseter!" eh?
+Well "Ciren-cester"--one OUGHT to say,
+From "Castra," or "Caster,"
+As your Latin master
+Will further explain to you some day;
+Though even the wisest err,
+And Shakespeare writes "Ci-cester,"
+While every visitor
+Who doesn't say "Cissiter"
+Is in "Ciren-cester" considered astray.
+
+A hundred miles from London town--
+Where the river goes curving and broadening down
+From tree-top to spire, and spire to mast,
+Till it tumbles outright in the Channel at last--
+A hundred miles from that flat foreshore
+That the Danes and the Northmen haunt no more--
+There's a little cup in the Cotswold hills
+Which a spring in a meadow bubbles and fills,
+Spanned by a heron's wing--crossed by a stride--
+Calm and untroubled by dreams of pride,
+Guiltless of Fame or ambition's aims,
+That is the source of the lordly Thames!
+Remark here again that custom contemns
+Both "Tames" and Thames--you must SAY "Tems!"
+But WHY? no matter!--from them you can see
+Cirencester's tall spires loom up o'er the lea.
+
+A. D. Five Hundred and Fifty-two,
+The Saxon invaders--a terrible crew--
+Had forced the lines of the Britons through;
+And Cirencester, half mud and thatch,
+Dry and crisp as a tinder match,
+Was fiercely beleaguered by foes, who'd catch
+At any device that could harry and rout
+The folk that so boldly were holding out.
+
+For the streets of the town--as you'll see to-day--
+Were twisted and curved in a curious way
+That kept the invaders still at bay;
+And the longest bolt that a Saxon drew
+Was stopped ere a dozen of yards it flew,
+By a turn in the street, and a law so true
+That even these robbers--of all laws scorners!--
+Knew you couldn't shoot arrows AROUND street corners.
+
+So they sat them down on a little knoll,
+And each man scratched his Saxon poll,
+And stared at the sky, where, clear and high,
+The birds of that summer went singing by,
+As if, in his glee, each motley jester
+Were mocking the foes of Cirencester,
+Till the jeering crow and the saucy linnet
+Seemed all to be saying: "Ah! you're not in it!"
+
+High o'er their heads the mavis flew,
+And the "ouzel-cock so black of hue;"
+And the "throstle," with his "note so true"
+(You remember what Shakespeare says--HE knew);
+And the soaring lark, that kept dropping through
+Like a bucket spilling in wells of blue;
+And the merlin--seen on heraldic panes--
+With legs as vague as the Queen of Spain's;
+
+And the dashing swift that would ricochet
+From the tufts of grasses before them, yet--
+Like bold Antaeus--would each time bring
+New life from the earth, barely touched by his wing;
+And the swallow and martlet that always knew
+The straightest way home.  Here a Saxon churl drew
+His breath--tapped his forehead--an idea had got through!
+
+So they brought them some nets, which straightway they filled
+With the swallows and martlets--the sweet birds who build
+In the houses of man--all that innocent guild
+Who sing at their labor on eaves and in thatch--
+And they stuck on their feathers a rude lighted match
+Made of resin and tow.  Then they let them all go
+To be free!  As a child-like diversion?  Ah, no!
+To work Cirencester's red ruin and woe.
+
+For straight to each nest they flew, in wild quest
+Of their homes and their fledgelings--that they loved the best;
+And straighter than arrow of Saxon e'er sped
+They shot o'er the curving streets, high overhead,
+Bringing fire and terror to roof tree and bed,
+Till the town broke in flame, wherever they came,
+To the Briton's red ruin--the Saxon's red shame!
+
+Yet they're all gone together!  To-day you'll dig up
+From "mound" or from "barrow" some arrow or cup.
+Their fame is forgotten--their story is ended--
+'Neath the feet of the race they have mixed with and blended.
+But the birds are unchanged--the ouzel-cock sings,
+Still gold on his crest and still black on his wings;
+And the lark chants on high, as he mounts to the sky,
+Still brown in his coat and still dim in his eye;
+While the swallow or martlet is still a free nester
+In the eaves and the roofs of thrice-built Cirencester.
+
+
+LINES TO A PORTRAIT, BY A SUPERIOR PERSON
+
+When I bought you for a song,
+Years ago--Lord knows how long!--
+I was struck--I may be wrong--
+    By your features,
+And--a something in your air
+That I couldn't quite compare
+To my other plain or fair
+    Fellow creatures.
+
+In your simple, oval frame
+You were not well known to fame,
+But to me--'twas all the same--
+    Whoe'er drew you;
+For your face I can't forget,
+Though I oftentimes regret
+That, somehow, I never yet
+    Saw quite through you.
+
+Yet each morning, when I rise,
+I go first to greet your eyes;
+And, in turn, YOU scrutinize
+    My presentment.
+And when shades of evening fall,
+As you hang upon my wall,
+You're the last thing I recall
+    With contentment.
+
+It is weakness, yet I know
+That I never turned to go
+Anywhere, for weal or woe,
+    But I lingered
+For one parting, thrilling flash
+From your eyes, to give that dash
+To the curl of my mustache,
+    That I fingered.
+
+If to some you may seem plain,
+And when people glance again
+Where you hang, their lips refrain.
+    From confession;
+Yet they turn in stealth aside,
+And I note, they try to hide
+How much they are satisfied
+    In expression.
+
+Other faces I have seen;
+Other forms have come between;
+Other things I have, I ween,
+    Done and dared for!
+But OUR ties they cannot sever,
+And, though I should say it never,
+You're the only one I ever
+    Really cared for!
+
+And you'll still be hanging there
+When we're both the worse for wear,
+And the silver's on my hair
+    And off your backing;
+Yet my faith shall never pass
+In my dear old shaving-glass,
+Till my face and yours, alas!
+    Both are lacking!
+
+
+HER LAST LETTER
+
+BEING A REPLY TO "HIS ANSWER"
+
+June 4th!  Do you know what that date means?
+  June 4th!  By this air and these pines!
+Well,--only you know how I hate scenes,--
+  These might be my very last lines!
+For perhaps, sir, you'll kindly remember--
+  If some OTHER things you've forgot--
+That you last wrote the 4th of DECEMBER,--
+  Just six months ago I--from this spot;
+
+From this spot, that you said was "the fairest
+  For once being held in my thought."
+Now, really I call that the barest
+  Of--well, I won't say what I ought!
+For here I am back from my "riches,"
+  My "triumphs," my "tours," and all that;
+And YOU'RE not to be found in the ditches
+  Or temples of Poverty Flat!
+
+From Paris we went for the season
+  To London, when pa wired, "Stop."
+Mama says "his HEALTH" was the reason.
+  (I've heard that some things took a "drop.")
+But she said if my patience I'd summon
+  I could go back with him to the Flat--
+Perhaps I was thinking of some one
+  Who of me--well--was not thinking THAT!
+
+Of course you will SAY that I "never
+  Replied to the letter you wrote."
+That is just like a man!  But, however,
+  I read it--or how could I quote?
+And as to the stories you've heard (No,
+  Don't tell me you haven't--I know!),
+You'll not believe one blessed word, Joe;
+  But just whence they came, let them go!
+
+And they came from Sade Lotski of Yolo,
+  Whose father sold clothes on the Bar--
+You called him Job-lotski, you know, Joe,
+  And the boys said HER value was par.
+Well, we met her in Paris--just flaring
+  With diamonds, and lost in a hat
+And she asked me "how Joseph was faring
+  In his love-suit on Poverty Flat!"
+
+She thought it would shame me!  I met her
+  With a look, Joe, that made her eyes drop;
+And I said that your "love-suit fared better
+  Than any suit out of THEIR shop!"
+And I didn't blush THEN--as I'm doing
+  To find myself here, all alone,
+And left, Joe, to do all the "sueing"
+  To a lover that's certainly flown.
+
+In this brand-new hotel, called "The Lily"
+  (I wonder who gave it that name?)
+I really am feeling quite silly,
+  To think I was once called the same;
+And I stare from its windows, and fancy
+  I'm labeled to each passer-by.
+Ah! gone is the old necromancy,
+  For nothing seems right to my eye.
+
+On that hill there are stores that I knew not;
+  There's a street--where I once lost my way;
+And the copse where you once tied my shoe-knot
+  Is shamelessly open as day!
+And that bank by the spring--I once drank there,
+  And you called the place Eden, you know;
+Now I'm banished like Eve--though the bank there
+  Is belonging to "Adams and Co."
+
+There's the rustle of silk on the sidewalk;
+  Just now there passed by a tall hat;
+But there's gloom in this "boom" and this wild talk
+  Of the "future" of Poverty Flat.
+There's a decorous chill in the air, Joe,
+  Where once we were simple and free;
+And I hear they've been making a mayor, Joe,
+  Of the man who shot Sandy McGee.
+
+But there's still the "lap, lap" of the river;
+  There's the song of the pines, deep and low.
+(How my longing for them made me quiver
+  In the park that they call Fontainebleau!)
+There's the snow-peak that looked on our dances,
+  And blushed when the morning said, "Go!"
+There's a lot that remains which one fancies--
+  But somehow there's never a Joe!
+
+Perhaps, on the whole, it is better,
+  For you might have been changed like the rest;
+Though it's strange that I'm trusting this letter
+  To papa, just to have it addressed.
+He thinks he may find you, and really
+  Seems kinder now I'm all alone.
+You might have been here, Joe, if merely
+  To LOOK what I'm willing to OWN.
+
+Well, well! that's all past; so good-night, Joe;
+  Good-night to the river and Flat;
+Good-night to what's wrong and what's right, Joe;
+  Good-night to the past, and all that--
+To Harrison's barn, and its dancers;
+  To the moon, and the white peak of snow;
+And good-night to the canyon that answers
+  My "Joe!" with its echo of "No!"
+
+P. S.
+
+I've just got your note.  You deceiver!
+  How dared you--how COULD you?  Oh, Joe!
+To think I've been kept a believer
+  In things that were six months ago!
+And it's YOU'VE built this house, and the bank, too,
+  And the mills, and the stores, and all that!
+And for everything changed I must thank YOU,
+  Who have "struck it" on Poverty Flat!
+
+How dared you get rich--you great stupid!--
+  Like papa, and some men that I know,
+Instead of just trusting to Cupid
+  And to me for your money?  Ah, Joe!
+Just to think you sent never a word, dear,
+  Till you wrote to papa for consent!
+Now I know why they had me transferred here,
+  And "the health of papa"--what THAT meant!
+
+Now I know why they call this "The Lily;"
+  Why the man who shot Sandy McGee
+You made mayor!  'Twas because--oh, you silly!--
+  He once "went down the middle" with me!
+I've been fooled to the top of my bent here,
+  So come, and ask pardon--you know
+That you've still got to get MY consent, dear!
+  And just think what that echo said--Joe!
+
+
+
+V. PARODIES
+
+
+BEFORE THE CURTAIN
+
+Behind the footlights hangs the rusty baize,
+A trifle shabby in the upturned blaze
+Of flaring gas and curious eyes that gaze.
+
+The stage, methinks, perhaps is none too wide,
+And hardly fit for royal Richard's stride,
+Or Falstaff's bulk, or Denmark's youthful pride.
+
+Ah, well! no passion walks its humble boards;
+O'er it no king nor valiant Hector lords:
+The simplest skill is all its space affords.
+
+The song and jest, the dance and trifling play,
+The local hit at follies of the day,
+The trick to pass an idle hour away,--
+
+For these no trumpets that announce the Moor,
+No blast that makes the hero's welcome sure,--
+A single fiddle in the overture!
+
+
+TO THE PLIOCENE SKULL*
+
+(A GEOLOGICAL ADDRESS)
+
+"Speak, O man, less recent!  Fragmentary fossil!
+Primal pioneer of pliocene formation,
+Hid in lowest drifts below the earliest stratum
+    Of volcanic tufa!
+
+"Older than the beasts, the oldest Palaeotherium;
+Older than the trees, the oldest Cryptogami;
+Older than the hills, those infantile eruptions
+    Of earth's epidermis!
+
+"Eo--Mio--Plio--whatsoe'er the 'cene' was
+That those vacant sockets filled with awe and wonder,--
+Whether shores Devonian or Silurian beaches,--
+    Tell us thy strange story!
+
+"Or has the professor slightly antedated
+By some thousand years thy advent on this planet,
+Giving thee an air that's somewhat better fitted
+    For cold-blooded creatures?
+
+"Wert thou true spectator of that mighty forest
+When above thy head the stately Sigillaria
+Reared its columned trunks in that remote and distant
+    Carboniferous epoch?
+
+"Tell us of that scene,--the dim and watery woodland,
+Songless, silent, hushed, with never bird or insect,
+Veiled with spreading fronds and screened with tall club mosses,
+    Lycopodiacea,--
+
+"When beside thee walked the solemn Plesiosaurus,
+And around thee crept the festive Ichthyosaurus,
+While from time to time above thee flew and circled
+    Cheerful Pterodactyls.
+
+"Tell us of thy food,--those half-marine refections,
+Crinoids on the shell and Brachipods au naturel,--
+Cuttlefish to which the pieuvre of Victor Hugo
+    Seems a periwinkle.
+
+"Speak, thou awful vestige of the earth's creation,
+Solitary fragment of remains organic!
+Tell the wondrous secret of thy past existence,--
+    Speak! thou oldest primate!"
+
+Even as I gazed, a thrill of the maxilla,
+And a lateral movement of the condyloid process,
+With post-pliocene sounds of healthy mastication,
+    Ground the teeth together.
+
+And from that imperfect dental exhibition,
+Stained with express juices of the weed nicotian,
+Came these hollow accents, blent with softer murmurs
+    Of expectoration:
+
+"Which my name is Bowers, and my crust was busted
+Falling down a shaft in Calaveras County;
+But I'd take it kindly if you'd send the pieces
+    Home to old Missouri!"
+
+
+* See notes at end.
+
+
+THE BALLAD OF MR. COOKE
+
+LEGEND OF THE CLIFF HOUSE, SAN FRANCISCO)
+
+Where the sturdy ocean breeze
+Drives the spray of roaring seas,
+That the Cliff House balconies
+     Overlook:
+There, in spite of rain that balked,
+With his sandals duly chalked,
+Once upon a tight-rope walked
+     Mr. Cooke.
+
+But the jester's lightsome mien,
+And his spangles and his sheen,
+All had vanished when the scene
+     He forsook.
+Yet in some delusive hope,
+In some vague desire to cope,
+ONE still came to view the rope
+     Walked by Cooke.
+
+Amid Beauty's bright array,
+On that strange eventful day,
+Partly hidden from the spray,
+     In a nook,
+Stood Florinda Vere de Vere;
+Who, with wind-disheveled hair,
+And a rapt, distracted air,
+     Gazed on Cooke.
+
+Then she turned, and quickly cried
+To her lover at her side,
+While her form with love and pride
+    Wildly shook:
+"Clifford Snook! oh, hear me now!
+Here I break each plighted vow;
+There's but one to whom I bow,
+     And that's Cooke!"
+
+Haughtily that young man spoke:
+"I descend from noble folk;
+'Seven Oaks,' and then 'Se'nnoak,'
+     Lastly 'Snook,'
+Is the way my name I trace.
+Shall a youth of noble race
+In affairs of love give place
+     To a Cooke?"
+
+"Clifford Snook, I know thy claim
+To that lineage and name,
+And I think I've read the same
+     In Horne Tooke;
+But I swear, by all divine,
+Never, never, to be thine,
+Till thou canst upon yon line
+     Walk like Cooke."
+
+Though to that gymnastic feat
+He no closer might compete
+Than to strike a BALANCE-sheet
+     In a book;
+Yet thenceforward from that day
+He his figure would display
+In some wild athletic way,
+     After Cooke.
+
+On some household eminence,
+On a clothes-line or a fence,
+Over ditches, drains, and thence
+     O'er a brook,
+He, by high ambition led,
+Ever walked and balanced,
+Till the people, wondering, said,
+     "How like Cooke!"
+
+Step by step did he proceed,
+Nerved by valor, not by greed,
+And at last the crowning deed
+     Undertook.
+Misty was the midnight air,
+And the cliff was bleak and bare,
+When he came to do and dare,
+     Just like Cooke.
+
+Through the darkness, o'er the flow,
+Stretched the line where he should go,
+Straight across as flies the crow
+     Or the rook.
+One wild glance around he cast;
+Then he faced the ocean blast,
+And he strode the cable last
+     Touched by Cooke.
+
+Vainly roared the angry seas,
+Vainly blew the ocean breeze;
+But, alas! the walker's knees
+     Had a crook;
+And before he reached the rock
+Did they both together knock,
+And he stumbled with a shock--
+     Unlike Cooke!
+
+Downward dropping in the dark,
+Like an arrow to its mark,
+Or a fish-pole when a shark
+     Bites the hook,
+Dropped the pole he could not save,
+Dropped the walker, and the wave
+Swift engulfed the rival brave
+     Of J. Cooke!
+
+Came a roar across the sea
+Of sea-lions in their glee,
+In a tongue remarkably
+     Like Chinook;
+And the maddened sea-gull seemed
+Still to utter, as he screamed,
+"Perish thus the wretch who deemed
+     Himself Cooke!"
+
+But on misty moonlit nights
+Comes a skeleton in tights,
+Walks once more the giddy heights
+     He mistook;
+And unseen to mortal eyes,
+Purged of grosser earthly ties,
+Now at last in spirit guise
+     Outdoes Cooke.
+
+Still the sturdy ocean breeze
+Sweeps the spray of roaring seas,
+Where the Cliff House balconies
+     Overlook;
+And the maidens in their prime,
+Reading of this mournful rhyme,
+Weep where, in the olden time,
+     Walked J. Cooke.
+
+
+THE BALLAD OF THE EMEU
+
+Oh, say, have you seen at the Willows so green--
+  So charming and rurally true--
+A singular bird, with a manner absurd,
+  Which they call the Australian Emeu?
+      Have you
+  Ever seen this Australian Emeu?
+
+It trots all around with its head on the ground,
+  Or erects it quite out of your view;
+And the ladies all cry, when its figure they spy,
+  "Oh! what a sweet pretty Emeu!
+      Oh! do
+  Just look at that lovely Emeu!"
+
+One day to this spot, when the weather was hot,
+  Came Matilda Hortense Fortescue;
+And beside her there came a youth of high name,--
+  Augustus Florell Montague:
+      The two
+  Both loved that wild, foreign Emeu.
+
+With two loaves of bread then they fed it, instead
+  Of the flesh of the white Cockatoo,
+Which once was its food in that wild neighborhood
+  Where ranges the sweet Kangaroo,
+      That too
+  Is game for the famous Emeu!
+
+Old saws and gimlets but its appetite whets,
+  Like the world-famous bark of Peru;
+There's nothing so hard that the bird will discard,
+  And nothing its taste will eschew
+      That you
+  Can give that long-legged Emeu!
+
+The time slipped away in this innocent play,
+  When up jumped the bold Montague:
+"Where's that specimen pin that I gayly did win
+  In raffle, and gave unto you,
+      Fortescue?"
+  No word spoke the guilty Emeu!
+
+"Quick! tell me his name whom thou gavest that same,
+  Ere these hands in thy blood I imbrue!"
+"Nay, dearest," she cried, as she clung to his side,
+  "I'm innocent as that Emeu!"
+      "Adieu!"
+  He replied, "Miss M. H. Fortescue!"
+
+Down she dropped at his feet, all as white as a sheet,
+  As wildly he fled from her view;
+He thought 'twas her sin,--for he knew not the pin
+  Had been gobbled up by the Emeu;
+     All through
+  The voracity of that Emeu!
+
+
+MRS. JUDGE JENKINS
+
+(BEING THE ONLY GENUINE SEQUEL TO "MAUD MULLER"
+
+Maud Muller all that summer day
+Raked the meadow sweet with hay;
+
+Yet, looking down the distant lane,
+She hoped the Judge would come again.
+
+But when he came, with smile and bow,
+Maud only blushed, and stammered, "Ha-ow?"
+
+And spoke of her "pa," and wondered whether
+He'd give consent they should wed together.
+
+Old Muller burst in tears, and then
+Begged that the Judge would lend him "ten;"
+
+For trade was dull, and wages low,
+And the "craps," this year, were somewhat slow.
+
+And ere the languid summer died,
+Sweet Maud became the Judge's bride.
+
+But on the day that they were mated,
+Maud's brother Bob was intoxicated;
+
+And Maud's relations, twelve in all,
+Were very drunk at the Judge's hall.
+
+And when the summer came again,
+The young bride bore him babies twain;
+
+And the Judge was blest, but thought it strange
+That bearing children made such a change;
+
+For Maud grew broad and red and stout,
+And the waist that his arm once clasped about
+
+Was more than he now could span; and he
+Sighed as he pondered, ruefully,
+
+How that which in Maud was native grace
+In Mrs. Jenkins was out of place;
+
+And thought of the twins, and wished that they
+Looked less like the men who raked the hay
+
+On Muller's farm, and dreamed with pain
+Of the day he wandered down the lane.
+
+And looking down that dreary track,
+He half regretted that he came back;
+
+For, had he waited, he might have wed
+Some maiden fair and thoroughbred;
+
+For there be women fair as she,
+Whose verbs and nouns do more agree.
+
+Alas for maiden! alas for judge!
+And the sentimental,--that's one-half "fudge;"
+
+For Maud soon thought the Judge a bore,
+With all his learning and all his lore;
+
+And the Judge would have bartered Maud's fair face
+For more refinement and social grace.
+
+If, of all words of tongue and pen,
+The saddest are, "It might have been,"
+
+More sad are these we daily see:
+"It is, but hadn't ought to be."
+
+
+A GEOLOGICAL MADRIGAL
+
+I have found out a gift for my fair;
+  I know where the fossils abound,
+Where the footprints of Aves declare
+  The birds that once walked on the ground.
+Oh, come, and--in technical speech--
+  We'll walk this Devonian shore,
+Or on some Silurian beach
+  We'll wander, my love, evermore.
+
+I will show thee the sinuous track
+  By the slow-moving Annelid made,
+Or the Trilobite that, farther back,
+  In the old Potsdam sandstone was laid;
+Thou shalt see, in his Jurassic tomb,
+  The Plesiosaurus embalmed;
+In his Oolitic prime and his bloom,
+  Iguanodon safe and unharmed.
+
+You wished--I remember it well,
+  And I loved you the more for that wish--
+For a perfect cystedian shell
+  And a WHOLE holocephalic fish.
+And oh, if Earth's strata contains
+  In its lowest Silurian drift,
+Or palaeozoic remains
+  The same, 'tis your lover's free gift!
+
+Then come, love, and never say nay,
+  But calm all your maidenly fears;
+We'll note, love, in one summer's day
+  The record of millions of years;
+And though the Darwinian plan
+  Your sensitive feelings may shock,
+We'll find the beginning of man,
+  Our fossil ancestors, in rock!
+
+
+AVITOR
+
+(AN AERIAL RETROSPECT)
+
+What was it filled my youthful dreams,
+In place of Greek or Latin themes,
+Or beauty's wild, bewildering beams?
+     Avitor!
+
+What visions and celestial scenes
+I filled with aerial machines,
+Montgolfier's and Mr. Green's!
+     Avitor!
+
+What fairy tales seemed things of course!
+The roc that brought Sindbad across,
+The Calendar's own winged horse!
+     Avitor!
+
+How many things I took for facts,--
+Icarus and his conduct lax,
+And how he sealed his fate with wax!
+     Avitor!
+
+The first balloons I sought to sail,
+Soap-bubbles fair, but all too frail,
+Or kites,--but thereby hangs a tail.
+     Avitor!
+
+What made me launch from attic tall
+A kitten and a parasol,
+And watch their bitter, frightful fall?
+     Avitor!
+
+What youthful dreams of high renown
+Bade me inflate the parson's gown,
+That went not up, nor yet came down?
+     Avitor!
+
+My first ascent I may not tell;
+Enough to know that in that well
+My first high aspirations fell.
+     Avitor!
+
+My other failures let me pass:
+The dire explosions, and, alas!
+The friends I choked with noxious gas.
+     Avitor!
+
+For lo! I see perfected rise
+The vision of my boyish eyes,
+The messenger of upper skies.
+     Avitor!
+
+
+THE WILLOWS
+
+(AFTER EDGAR ALLAN POE)
+
+The skies they were ashen and sober,
+  The streets they were dirty and drear;
+It was night in the month of October,
+  Of my most immemorial year.
+Like the skies, I was perfectly sober,
+  As I stopped at the mansion of Shear,--
+At the Nightingale,--perfectly sober,
+  And the willowy woodland down here.
+
+Here, once in an alley Titanic
+  Of Ten-pins, I roamed with my soul,--
+  Of Ten-pins, with Mary, my soul;
+They were days when my heart was volcanic,
+  And impelled me to frequently roll,
+  And made me resistlessly roll,
+Till my ten-strikes created a panic
+  In the realms of the Boreal pole,--
+Till my ten-strikes created a panic
+  With the monkey atop of his pole.
+
+I repeat, I was perfectly sober,
+  But my thoughts they were palsied and sear,--
+  My thoughts were decidedly queer;
+For I knew not the month was October,
+  And I marked not the night of the year;
+I forgot that sweet morceau of Auber
+  That the band oft performed down here,
+And I mixed the sweet music of Auber
+  With the Nightingale's music by Shear.
+
+And now as the night was senescent,
+  And star-dials pointed to morn,
+  And car-drivers hinted of morn,
+At the end of the path a liquescent
+  And bibulous lustre was born;
+'Twas made by the bar-keeper present,
+  Who mixed a duplicate horn,--
+His two hands describing a crescent
+  Distinct with a duplicate horn.
+
+And I said: "This looks perfectly regal,
+  For it's warm, and I know I feel dry,--
+  I am confident that I feel dry.
+We have come past the emeu and eagle,
+  And watched the gay monkey on high;
+Let us drink to the emeu and eagle,
+  To the swan and the monkey on high,--
+  To the eagle and monkey on high;
+For this bar-keeper will not inveigle,
+  Bully boy with the vitreous eye,--
+He surely would never inveigle,
+  Sweet youth with the crystalline eye."
+
+But Mary, uplifting her finger,
+  Said: "Sadly this bar I mistrust,--
+  I fear that this bar does not trust.
+Oh, hasten! oh, let us not linger!
+  Oh, fly,--let us fly,--are we must!"
+In terror she cried, letting sink her
+  Parasol till it trailed in the dust;
+In agony sobbed, letting sink her
+  Parasol till it trailed in the dust,--
+  Till it sorrowfully trailed in the dust.
+
+Then I pacified Mary and kissed her,
+  And tempted her into the room,
+  And conquered her scruples and gloom;
+And we passed to the end of the vista,
+  But were stopped by the warning of doom,--
+  By some words that were warning of doom.
+And I said, "What is written, sweet sister,
+  At the opposite end of the room?"
+She sobbed, as she answered, "All liquors
+  Must be paid for ere leaving the room."
+
+Then my heart it grew ashen and sober,
+  As the streets were deserted and drear,
+  For my pockets were empty and drear;
+And I cried: "It was surely October,
+  On this very night of last year,
+  That I journeyed, I journeyed down here,--
+  That I brought a fair maiden down here,
+  On this night of all nights in the year!
+  Ah! to me that inscription is clear;
+Well I know now, I'm perfectly sober,
+  Why no longer they credit me here,--
+Well I know now that music of Auber,
+  And this Nightingale, kept by one Shear."
+
+
+NORTH BEACH
+
+(AFTER SPENSER)
+
+Lo! where the castle of bold Pfeiffer throws
+Its sullen shadow on the rolling tide,--
+No more the home where joy and wealth repose,
+But now where wassailers in cells abide;
+See yon long quay that stretches far and wide,
+Well known to citizens as wharf of Meiggs:
+There each sweet Sabbath walks in maiden pride
+The pensive Margaret, and brave Pat, whose legs
+Encased in broadcloth oft keep time with Peg's.
+
+Here cometh oft the tender nursery-maid,
+While in her ear her love his tale doth pour;
+Meantime her infant doth her charge evade,
+And rambleth sagely on the sandy shore,
+Till the sly sea-crab, low in ambush laid,
+Seizeth his leg and biteth him full sore.
+Ah me! what sounds the shuddering echoes bore
+When his small treble mixed with Ocean's roar!
+
+Hard by there stands an ancient hostelrie,
+And at its side a garden, where the bear,
+The stealthy catamount, and coon agree
+To work deceit on all who gather there;
+And when Augusta--that unconscious fair--
+With nuts and apples plieth Bruin free,
+Lo! the green parrot claweth her back hair,
+And the gray monkey grabbeth fruits that she
+On her gay bonnet wears, and laugheth loud in glee!
+
+
+THE LOST TAILS OF MILETUS
+
+High on the Thracian hills, half hid in the billows of clover,
+Thyme, and the asphodel blooms, and lulled by Pactolian streamlet,
+She of Miletus lay, and beside her an aged satyr
+Scratched his ear with his hoof, and playfully mumbled his chestnuts.
+
+Vainly the Maenid and the Bassarid gamboled about her,
+The free-eyed Bacchante sang, and Pan--the renowned, the
+accomplished--Executed his difficult solo.  In vain were their
+   gambols and dances;
+High o'er the Thracian hills rose the voice of the shepherdess,
+   wailing:
+
+"Ai! for the fleecy flocks, the meek-nosed, the passionless faces;
+Ai! for the tallow-scented, the straight-tailed, the high-stepping;
+Ai! for the timid glance, which is that which the rustic, sagacious,
+Applies to him who loves but may not declare his passion!"
+
+Her then Zeus answered slow: "O daughter of song and sorrow,
+Hapless tender of sheep, arise from thy long lamentation!
+Since thou canst not trust fate, nor behave as becomes a Greek maiden,
+Look and behold thy sheep."  And lo! they returned to her tailless!
+
+
+THE RITUALIST
+
+(BY A COMMUNICANT OF "ST. JAMES'S")
+
+He wore, I think, a chasuble, the day when first we met;
+A stole and snowy alb likewise,--I recollect it yet.
+He called me "daughter," as he raised his jeweled hand to bless;
+And then, in thrilling undertones, he asked, "Would I confess?"
+
+O mother dear! blame not your child, if then on bended knees
+I dropped, and thought of Abelard, and also Eloise;
+Or when, beside the altar high, he bowed before the pyx,
+I envied that seraphic kiss he gave the crucifix.
+
+The cruel world may think it wrong, perhaps may deem me weak,
+And, speaking of that sainted man, may call his conduct "cheek;"
+And, like that wicked barrister whom Cousin Harry quotes,
+May term his mixed chalice "grog," his vestments "petticoats;"
+
+But, whatsoe'er they do or say, I'll build a Christian's hope
+On incense and on altar-lights, on chasuble and cope.
+Let others prove, by precedent, the faith that they profess:
+"His can't be wrong" that's symbolized by such becoming dress.
+
+
+A MORAL VINDICATOR
+
+If Mr. Jones, Lycurgus B.,
+Had one peculiar quality,
+'Twas his severe advocacy
+Of conjugal fidelity.
+
+His views of heaven were very free;
+His views of life were painfully
+Ridiculous; but fervently
+He dwelt on marriage sanctity.
+
+He frequently went on a spree;
+But in his wildest revelry,
+On this especial subject he
+Betrayed no ambiguity.
+
+And though at times Lycurgus B.
+Did lay his hands not lovingly
+Upon his wife, the sanctity
+Of wedlock was his guaranty.
+
+But Mrs. Jones declined to see
+Affairs in the same light as he,
+And quietly got a decree
+Divorcing her from that L. B.
+
+And what did Jones, Lycurgus B.,
+With his known idiosyncrasy?
+He smiled,--a bitter smile to see,--
+And drew the weapon of Bowie.
+
+He did what Sickles did to Key,--
+What Cole on Hiscock wrought, did he;
+In fact, on persons twenty-three
+He proved the marriage sanctity.
+
+The counselor who took the fee,
+The witnesses and referee,
+The judge who granted the decree,
+Died in that wholesale butchery.
+
+And then when Jones, Lycurgus B.,
+Had wiped the weapon of Bowie,
+Twelve jurymen did instantly
+Acquit and set Lycurgus free.
+
+
+CALIFORNIA MADRIGAL
+
+(ON THE APPROACH OF SPRING)
+
+Oh, come, my beloved, from thy winter abode,
+From thy home on the Yuba, thy ranch overflowed;
+For the waters have fallen, the winter has fled,
+And the river once more has returned to its bed.
+
+Oh, mark how the spring in its beauty is near!
+How the fences and tules once more reappear!
+How soft lies the mud on the banks of yon slough
+By the hole in the levee the waters broke through!
+
+All nature, dear Chloris, is blooming to greet
+The glance of your eye and the tread of your feet;
+For the trails are all open, the roads are all free,
+And the highwayman's whistle is heard on the lea.
+
+Again swings the lash on the high mountain trail,
+And the pipe of the packer is scenting the gale;
+The oath and the jest ringing high o'er the plain,
+Where the smut is not always confined to the grain.
+
+Once more glares the sunlight on awning and roof,
+Once more the red clay's pulverized by the hoof,
+Once more the dust powders the "outsides" with red,
+Once more at the station the whiskey is spread.
+
+Then fly with me, love, ere the summer's begun,
+And the mercury mounts to one hundred and one;
+Ere the grass now so green shall be withered and sear,
+In the spring that obtains but one month in the year.
+
+
+WHAT THE ENGINES SAID
+
+(OPENING OF THE PACIFIC RAILROAD)
+
+What was it the Engines said,
+Pilots touching,--head to head
+Facing on the single track,
+Half a world behind each back?
+This is what the Engines said,
+Unreported and unread.
+
+With a prefatory screech,
+In a florid Western speech,
+Said the Engine from the WEST:
+"I am from Sierra's crest;
+And if altitude's a test,
+Why, I reckon, it's confessed
+That I've done my level best."
+
+Said the Engine from the EAST:
+"They who work best talk the least.
+S'pose you whistle down your brakes;
+What you've done is no great shakes,
+Pretty fair,--but let our meeting
+Be a different kind of greeting.
+Let these folks with champagne stuffing,
+Not their Engines, do the PUFFING.
+
+"Listen!  Where Atlantic beats
+Shores of snow and summer heats;
+Where the Indian autumn skies
+Paint the woods with wampum dyes,--
+I have chased the flying sun,
+Seeing all he looked upon,
+Blessing all that he has blessed,
+Nursing in my iron breast
+All his vivifying heat,
+All his clouds about my crest;
+And before my flying feet
+Every shadow must retreat."
+
+Said the Western Engine, "Phew!"
+And a long, low whistle blew.
+"Come, now, really that's the oddest
+Talk for one so very modest.
+You brag of your East!  YOU do?
+Why, I bring the East to YOU!
+All the Orient, all Cathay,
+Find through me the shortest way;
+And the sun you follow here
+Rises in my hemisphere.
+Really,--if one must be rude,--
+Length, my friend, ain't longitude."
+
+Said the Union: "Don't reflect, or
+I'll run over some Director."
+Said the Central: "I'm Pacific;
+But, when riled, I'm quite terrific.
+Yet to-day we shall not quarrel,
+Just to show these folks this moral,
+How two Engines--in their vision--
+Once have met without collision."
+
+That is what the Engines said,
+Unreported and unread;
+Spoken slightly through the nose,
+With a whistle at the close.
+
+
+THE LEGENDS OF THE RHINE
+
+Beetling walls with ivy grown,
+Frowning heights of mossy stone;
+Turret, with its flaunting flag
+Flung from battlemented crag;
+Dungeon-keep and fortalice
+Looking down a precipice
+O'er the darkly glancing wave
+By the Lurline-haunted cave;
+Robber haunt and maiden bower,
+Home of Love and Crime and Power,--
+That's the scenery, in fine,
+Of the Legends of the Rhine.
+
+One bold baron, double-dyed
+Bigamist and parricide,
+And, as most the stories run,
+Partner of the Evil One;
+Injured innocence in white,
+Fair but idiotic quite,
+Wringing of her lily hands;
+Valor fresh from Paynim lands,
+Abbot ruddy, hermit pale,
+Minstrel fraught with many a tale,--
+Are the actors that combine
+In the Legends of the Rhine.
+
+Bell-mouthed flagons round a board;
+Suits of armor, shield, and sword;
+Kerchief with its bloody stain;
+Ghosts of the untimely slain;
+Thunder-clap and clanking chain;
+Headsman's block and shining axe;
+Thumb-screw, crucifixes, racks;
+Midnight-tolling chapel bell,
+Heard across the gloomy fell,--
+These and other pleasant facts
+Are the properties that shine
+In the Legends of the Rhine.
+
+Maledictions, whispered vows
+Underneath the linden boughs;
+Murder, bigamy, and theft;
+Travelers of goods bereft;
+Rapine, pillage, arson, spoil,--
+Everything but honest toil,
+Are the deeds that best define
+Every Legend of the Rhine.
+
+That Virtue always meets reward,
+But quicker when it wears a sword;
+That Providence has special care
+Of gallant knight and lady fair;
+That villains, as a thing of course,
+Are always haunted by remorse,--
+Is the moral, I opine,
+Of the Legends of the Rhine.
+
+
+SONGS WITHOUT SENSE
+
+
+FOR THE PARLOR AND PIANO
+
+
+I.  THE PERSONIFIED SENTIMENTAL
+
+Affection's charm no longer gilds
+  The idol of the shrine;
+But cold Oblivion seeks to fill
+  Regret's ambrosial wine.
+Though Friendship's offering buried lies
+  'Neath cold Aversion's snow,
+Regard and Faith will ever bloom
+  Perpetually below.
+
+I see thee whirl in marble halls,
+  In Pleasure's giddy train;
+Remorse is never on that brow,
+  Nor Sorrow's mark of pain.
+Deceit has marked thee for her own;
+  Inconstancy the same;
+And Ruin wildly sheds its gleam
+  Athwart thy path of shame.
+
+II.  THE HOMELY PATHETIC
+
+The dews are heavy on my brow;
+  My breath comes hard and low;
+Yet, mother dear, grant one request,
+  Before your boy must go.
+Oh! lift me ere my spirit sinks,
+  And ere my senses fail,
+Place me once more, O mother dear,
+  Astride the old fence-rail.
+
+The old fence-rail, the old fence-rail!
+  How oft these youthful legs,
+With Alice' and Ben Bolt's, were hung
+  Across those wooden pegs!
+'Twas there the nauseating smoke
+  Of my first pipe arose:
+O mother dear, these agonies
+  Are far less keen than those.
+
+I know where lies the hazel dell,
+  Where simple Nellie sleeps;
+I know the cot of Nettie Moore,
+  And where the willow weeps.
+I know the brookside and the mill,
+  But all their pathos fails
+Beside the days when once I sat
+  Astride the old fence-rails.
+
+III.  SWISS AIR
+
+I'm a gay tra, la, la,
+With my fal, lal, la, la,
+And my bright--
+And my light--
+    Tra, la, le.       [Repeat.]
+
+Then laugh, ha, ha, ha,
+And ring, ting, ling, ling,
+And sing fal, la, la,
+    La, la, le.        [Repeat.]
+
+
+
+VI.  LITTLE POSTERITY
+
+
+MASTER JOHNNY'S NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR
+
+It was spring the first time that I saw her, for her papa and mamma
+   moved in
+Next door, just as skating was over, and marbles about to begin;
+For the fence in our back yard was broken, and I saw, as I peeped
+   through the slat,
+There were "Johnny-jump-ups" all around her, and I knew it was
+   spring just by that.
+
+I never knew whether she saw me, for she didn't say nothing to me,
+But "Ma! here's a slat in the fence broke, and the boy that is next
+   door can see."
+But the next day I climbed on our wood-shed, as you know Mamma says
+   I've a right,
+And she calls out, "Well, peekin' is manners!" and I answered her,
+   "Sass is perlite!"
+
+But I wasn't a bit mad, no, Papa, and to prove it, the very next day,
+When she ran past our fence in the morning I happened to get in her
+   way,--
+For you know I am "chunked" and clumsy, as she says are all boys of
+   my size,--
+And she nearly upset me, she did, Pa, and laughed till tears came in
+   her eyes.
+
+And then we were friends from that moment, for I knew that she told
+   Kitty Sage,--
+And she wasn't a girl that would flatter--"that she thought I was
+   tall for my age."
+And I gave her four apples that evening, and took her to ride on my
+   sled,
+And--  "What am I telling you this for?"  Why, Papa, my neighbor is
+   DEAD!
+
+You don't hear one half I am saying,--I really do think it's too bad!
+Why, you might have seen crape on her door-knob, and noticed to-day
+   I've been sad.
+And they've got her a coffin of rosewood, and they say they have
+   dressed her in white,
+And I've never once looked through the fence, Pa, since she died--at
+   eleven last night.
+
+And Ma says it's decent and proper, as I was her neighbor and friend,
+That I should go there to the funeral, and she thinks that YOU ought
+   to attend;
+But I am so clumsy and awkward, I know I shall be in the way,
+And suppose they should speak to me, Papa, I wouldn't know just what
+   to say.
+
+So I think I will get up quite early,--I know I sleep late, but I know
+I'll be sure to wake up if our Bridget pulls the string that I'll tie
+   to my toe;
+And I'll crawl through the fence, and I'll gather the "Johnny-jump-ups"
+   as they grew
+Round her feet the first day that I saw her, and, Papa, I'll give
+   them to you.
+
+For you're a big man, and, you know, Pa, can come and go just where
+   you choose,
+And you'll take the flowers in to her, and surely they'll never
+   refuse;
+But, Papa, don't SAY they're from Johnny; THEY won't understand,
+   don't you see?
+But just lay them down on her bosom, and, Papa, SHE'LL know they're
+   from Me.
+
+
+MISS EDITH'S MODEST REQUEST
+
+My Papa knows you, and he says you're a man who makes reading for
+   books;
+But I never read nothing you wrote, nor did Papa,--I know by his
+   looks.
+So I guess you're like me when I talk, and I talk, and I talk all
+   the day,
+And they only say, "Do stop that child!" or, "Nurse, take Miss Edith
+   away."
+
+But Papa said if I was good I could ask you--alone by myself--
+If you wouldn't write me a book like that little one up on the shelf.
+I don't mean the pictures, of course, for to make THEM you've got to
+   be smart
+But the reading that runs all around them, you know,--just the
+   easiest part.
+
+You needn't mind what it's about, for no one will see it but me,
+And Jane,--that's my nurse,--and John,--he's the coachman,--just
+   only us three.
+You're to write of a bad little girl, that was wicked and bold and
+   all that;
+And then you're to write, if you please, something good--very good--
+   of a cat!
+
+This cat, she was virtuous and meek, and kind to her parents, and
+   mild,
+And careful and neat in her ways, though her mistress was such a bad
+   child;
+And hours she would sit and would gaze when her mistress--that's me--
+   was so bad,
+And blink, just as if she would say, "Oh, Edith! you make my heart
+   sad."
+
+And yet, you would scarcely believe it, that beautiful, angelic cat
+Was blamed by the servants for stealing whatever, they said, she'd
+   get at.
+And when John drank my milk,--don't you tell me!  I know just the
+   way it was done,--
+They said 'twas the cat,--and she sitting and washing her face in
+   the sun!
+
+And then there was Dick, my canary.  When I left its cage open one
+   day,
+They all made believe that she ate it, though I know that the bird
+   flew away.
+And why?  Just because she was playing with a feather she found on
+   the floor.
+As if cats couldn't play with a feather without people thinking
+   'twas more!
+
+Why, once we were romping together, when I knocked down a vase from
+   the shelf,
+That cat was as grieved and distressed as if she had done it herself;
+And she walked away sadly and hid herself, and never came out until
+   tea,--
+So they say, for they sent ME to bed, and she never came even to me.
+
+No matter whatever happened, it was laid at the door of that cat.
+Why, once when I tore my apron,--she was wrapped in it, and I called
+   "Rat!"--
+Why, they blamed that on HER.  I shall never--no, not to my dying
+   day--
+Forget the pained look that she gave me when they slapped ME and
+   took me away.
+
+Of course, you know just what comes next, when a child is as lovely
+   as that:
+She wasted quite slowly away; it was goodness was killing that cat.
+I know it was nothing she ate, for her taste was exceedingly nice;
+But they said she stole Bobby's ice cream, and caught a bad cold
+   from the ice.
+
+And you'll promise to make me a book like that little one up on the
+   shelf,
+And you'll call her "Naomi," because it's a name that she just gave
+   herself;
+For she'd scratch at my door in the morning, and whenever I'd call
+   out, "Who's there?"
+She would answer, "Naomi! Naomi!" like a Christian, I vow and declare.
+
+And you'll put me and her in a book.  And mind, you're to say I was
+   bad;
+And I might have been badder than that but for the example I had.
+And you'll say that she was a Maltese, and--what's that you asked?
+   "Is she dead?"
+Why, please, sir, THERE AIN'T ANY CAT!  You're to make one up out of
+   your head!
+
+
+MISS EDITH MAKES IT PLEASANT FOR BROTHER JACK
+
+"Crying!"  Of course I am crying, and I guess you would be crying,
+   too,
+If people were telling such stories as they tell about me, about YOU.
+Oh yes, you can laugh if you want to, and smoke as you didn't care
+   how,
+And get your brains softened like uncle's.  Dr. Jones says you're
+   gettin' it now.
+
+Why don't you say "Stop!" to Miss Ilsey?  She cries twice as much as
+   I do,
+And she's older and cries just from meanness,--for a ribbon or
+   anything new.
+Ma says it's her "sensitive nature."  Oh my!  No, I sha'n't stop my
+   talk!
+And I don't want no apples nor candy, and I don't want to go take a
+   walk!
+
+I know why you're mad!  Yes, I do, now!  You think that Miss Ilsey
+   likes YOU,
+And I've heard her REPEATEDLY call you the bold-facest boy that she
+   knew;
+And she'd "like to know where you learnt manners."  Oh yes!  Kick
+   the table,--that's right!
+Spill the ink on my dress, and go then round telling Ma that I look
+   like a fright!
+
+What stories?  Pretend you don't know that they're saying I broke
+   off the match
+Twixt old Money-grubber and Mary, by saying she called him
+   "Crosspatch,"
+When the only allusion I made him about sister Mary was, she
+Cared more for his cash than his temper, and you know, Jack, you
+   said that to me.
+
+And it's true!  But it's ME, and I'm scolded, and Pa says if I keep
+   on I might
+By and by get my name in the papers!  Who cares?  Why, 'twas only
+   last night
+I was reading how Pa and the sheriff were selling some lots, and
+   it's plain
+If it's awful to be in the papers, why, Papa would go and complain.
+
+You think it ain't true about Ilsey?  Well, I guess I know girls,
+   and I say
+There's nothing I see about Ilsey to show she likes you, anyway!
+I know what it means when a girl who has called her cat after one
+   boy
+Goes and changes its name to another's.  And she's done it--and I
+   wish you joy!
+
+
+MISS EDITH MAKES ANOTHER FRIEND
+
+Oh, you're the girl lives on the corner?  Come in--if you want to--
+   come quick!
+There's no one but me in the house, and the cook--but she's only a
+   stick.
+Don't try the front way, but come over the fence--through the
+   window--that's how.
+Don't mind the big dog--he won't bite you--just see him obey me!
+   there, now!
+
+What's your name?  Mary Ellen?  How funny!  Mine's Edith--it's
+   nicer, you see;
+But yours does for you, for you're plainer, though maybe you're
+   gooder than me;
+For Jack says I'm sometimes a devil, but Jack, of all folks, needn't
+   talk,
+For I don't call the seamstress an angel till Ma says the poor thing
+   must "walk."
+
+Come in!  It's quite dark in the parlor, for sister will keep the
+   blinds down,
+For you know her complexion is sallow like yours, but she isn't as
+   brown;
+Though Jack says that isn't the reason she likes to sit here with
+   Jim Moore.
+Do you think that he meant that she kissed him?  Would you--if your
+   lips wasn't sore?
+
+If you like, you can try our piano.  'Tain't ours.  A man left it
+   here
+To rent by the month, although Ma says he hasn't been paid for a
+   year.
+Sister plays--oh, such fine variations!--why, I once heard a
+   gentleman say
+That she didn't mind THAT for the music--in fact, it was just in her
+   way!
+
+Ain't I funny?  And yet it's the queerest of all that, whatever I
+   say,
+One half of the folks die a-laughing, and the rest, they all look
+   t'other way.
+And some say, "That child!"  Do they ever say that to such people as
+   you?
+Though maybe you're naturally silly, and that makes your eyes so
+   askew.
+
+Now stop--don't you dare to be crying!  Just as sure as you live, if
+   you do,
+I'll call in my big dog to bite you, and I'll make my Papa kill you,
+   too!
+And then where'll you be?  So play pretty.  There's my doll, and a
+   nice piece of cake.
+You don't want it--you think it is poison!  Then I'LL eat it, dear,
+   just for your sake!
+
+
+WHAT MISS EDITH SAW FROM HER WINDOW
+
+Our window's not much, though it fronts on the street;
+    There's a fly in the pane that gets nothin' to eat;
+    But it's curious how people think it's a treat
+        For ME to look out of the window!
+
+Why, when company comes, and they're all speaking low,
+    With their chairs drawn together, then some one says, "Oh!
+    Edith dear!--that's a good child--now run, love, and go
+        And amuse yourself there at the window!"
+
+Or Bob--that's my brother--comes in with his chum,
+    And they whisper and chuckle, the same words will come.
+    And it's "Edith, look here!  Oh, I say! what a rum
+        Lot of things you can see from that window!"
+
+And yet, as I told you, there's only that fly
+    Buzzing round in the pane, and a bit of blue sky,
+    And the girl in the opposite window, that I
+        Look at when SHE looks from HER window.
+
+And yet, I've been thinking I'd so like to see
+    If what goes on behind HER, goes on behind ME!
+    And then, goodness gracious! what fun it would be
+        For us BOTH as we sit by our window!
+
+How we'd know when the parcels were hid in a drawer,
+    Or things taken out that one never sees more;
+    What people come in and go out of the door,
+        That we never see from the window!
+
+And that night when the stranger came home with our Jane
+    I might SEE what I HEARD then, that sounded so plain--
+    Like when my wet fingers I rub on the pane
+        (Which they won't let ME do on my window).
+
+And I'd know why papa shut the door with a slam,
+    And said something funny that sounded like "jam,"
+    And then "Edith--where are you?"  I said, "Here I am."
+        "Ah, that's right, dear, look out of the window!"
+
+They say when I'm grown up these things will appear
+    More plain than they do when I look at them here,
+    But I think I see some things uncommonly clear,
+        As I sit and look down from the window.
+
+What things?  Oh, the things that I make up, you know,
+    Out of stories I've read--and they all pass below.
+    Ali Baba, the Forty Thieves, all in a row,
+        Go by, as I look from my window.
+
+That's only at church time; other days there's no crowd.
+    Don't laugh!  See that big man who looked up and bowed?
+    That's our butcher--I call him the Sultan Mahoud
+        When he nods to me here at the window!
+
+And THAT man--he's our neighbor--just gone for a ride
+    Has three wives in the churchyard that lie side by side.
+    So I call him "Bluebeard" in search of his bride,
+        While I'm Sister Anne at the window.
+
+And what do I call you?  Well, here's what I DO:
+    When my sister expects you, she puts me here, too;
+    But I wait till you enter, to see if it's you,
+        And then--I just OPEN the window!
+
+"Dear child!"  Yes, that's me!  Oh, you ask what that's for?
+    Well, Papa says you're "Poverty's self," and what's more,
+    I open the window, when YOU'RE at the door,
+        To see Love fly out of the window!"
+
+
+ON THE LANDING
+
+(AN IDYL OF THE BALUSTERS)
+
+
+BOBBY, aetat. 3 1/2.  JOHNNY, aetat. 4 1/2.
+
+
+BOBBY
+
+Do you know why they've put us in that back room,
+Up in the attic, close against the sky,
+And made believe our nursery's a cloak-room?
+    Do you know why?
+
+JOHNNY
+
+No more I don't, nor why that Sammy's mother,
+What Ma thinks horrid, 'cause he bunged my eye,
+Eats an ice cream, down there, like any other!
+    No more don't I!
+
+BOBBY
+
+Do you know why Nurse says it isn't manners
+For you and me to ask folks twice for pie,
+And no one hits that man with two bananas?
+    Do you know why?
+
+JOHNNY
+
+No more I don't, nor why that girl, whose dress is
+Off of her shoulders, don't catch cold and die,
+When you and me gets croup when WE undresses!
+    No more don't I!
+
+BOBBY
+
+Perhaps she ain't as good as you and I is,
+And God don't want her up there in the sky,
+And lets her live--to come in just when pie is--
+    Perhaps that's why!
+
+JOHNNY
+
+Do you know why that man that's got a cropped head
+Rubbed it just now as if he felt a fly?
+Could it be, Bobby, something that I dropded?
+    And is that why?
+
+BOBBY
+
+Good boys behaves, and so they don't get scolded,
+Nor drop hot milk on folks as they pass by.
+
+JOHNNY (piously)
+
+Marbles would bounce on Mr. Jones' bald head--
+    But I sha'n't try!
+
+BOBBY
+
+Do you know why Aunt Jane is always snarling
+At you and me because we tells a lie,
+And she don't slap that man that called her darling?
+    Do you know why?
+
+JOHNNY
+
+No more I don't, nor why that man with Mamma
+Just kissed her hand.
+
+BOBBY
+
+                       She hurt it--and that's why;
+He made it well, the very way that Mamma
+    Does do to I.
+
+JOHNNY
+
+I feel so sleepy. . . . Was that Papa kissed us?
+What made him sigh, and look up to the sky?
+
+BOBBY
+
+We weren't downstairs, and he and God had missed us,
+And that was why!
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+THE LOST GALLEON.  As the custom on which the central incident of
+this legend is based may not be familiar to all readers, I will
+repeat here that it is the habit of navigators to drop a day from
+their calendar in crossing westerly the 180th degree of longitude of
+Greenwich, adding a day in coming east; and that the idea of the
+lost galleon had an origin as prosaic as the log of the first China
+Mail Steamer from San Francisco.  The explanation of the custom and
+its astronomical relations belongs rather to the usual text-books
+than to poetical narration.  If any reader thinks I have overdrawn
+the credulous superstitions of the ancient navigators, I refer him
+to the veracious statements of Maldonado, De Fonte, the later
+voyages of La Perouse and Anson, and the charts of 1640.  In the
+charts of that day Spanish navigators reckoned longitude E. 360
+degrees from the meridian of the Isle of Ferro.  For the sake of
+perspicuity before a modern audience, the more recent meridian of
+Madrid was substituted.  The custom of dropping a day at some
+arbitrary point in crossing the Pacific westerly, I need not say,
+remains unaffected by any change of meridian.  I know not if any
+galleon was ever really missing.  For two hundred and fifty years an
+annual trip was made between Acapulco and Manila.  It may be some
+satisfaction to the more severely practical of my readers to know
+that, according to the best statistics of insurance, the loss during
+that period would be exactly three vessels and six hundredths of a
+vessel, which would certainly justify me in this summary disposition
+of ONE.
+
+THE PLIOCENE SKULL.  This extraordinary fossil is in the possession
+of Prof. Josiah D. Whitney, of the State Geological Survey of
+California.  The poem was based on the following paragraph from the
+daily press of 1868: "A human skull has been found in California, in
+the pliocene formation.  This skull is the remnant not only of the
+earliest pioneer of this State, but the oldest known human being. . . .
+The skull was found in a shaft 150 feet deep, two miles from Angels
+in Calaveras County, by a miner named James Watson, who gave it to
+Mr. Scribner, a merchant, who gave it to Dr. Jones, who sent it to
+the State Geological Survey. . . .  The published volume of the
+State Survey of the Geology of California states that man existed
+here contemporaneously with the mastodon, but this fossil proves
+that he was here before the mastodon was known to exist."
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg etext of Complete Poetical Works
+by Bret Harte.
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