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diff --git a/42422-8.txt b/42422-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index f3cb918..0000000 --- a/42422-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4442 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Passing of the Storm and Other Poems, by -Alfred Castner King - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: The Passing of the Storm and Other Poems - -Author: Alfred Castner King - -Release Date: March 28, 2013 [EBook #42422] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PASSING OF THE STORM *** - - - - -Produced by D Alexander, Mary Akers and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - -Transcriber's note: - The original hyphenation, spelling, and use of accented words has - been retained. Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. - - - - - _THE PASSING OF THE STORM - AND OTHER POEMS_ - -[Illustration: - "The mountains lay in calm repose - Slumbering 'neath their robes of white." - - _See page 17._] - - - - - _The Passing of the Storm_ - - _AND OTHER POEMS_ - - BY - - ALFRED CASTNER KING - -[Illustration] - - NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO - Fleming H. Revell Company - LONDON AND EDINBURGH - - - Copyright, 1907, by - FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY - - - New York: 158 Fifth Avenue - Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue - Toronto: 25 Richmond St., W. - London: 21 Paternoster Square - Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street - - - - -DEDICATION - - TO A RAPIDLY DISAPPEARING CLASS, THE PIONEER PROSPECTORS, WHOSE - BRAVERY, INTELLIGENCE AND INDUSTRY BLAZED THE TRAILS IN THE - WESTERN WILDERNESS FOR ADVANCING CIVILIZATION, AND MADE POSSIBLE - THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREAT WEST, THIS VOLUME IS VERY - RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED - - - - -_PREFACE_ - - Oh that my words were now written! - Oh that they were inscribed in a book!--JOB xix, 23. - - -Books have, from time immemorial, been the conservators of human -wisdom, the repositories of information, the mentors of youth and -adolescence, the counsellors of manhood, the comfort and companionship -of age. - -The experience of an individual, school or era, when committed to book -form, becomes the common property of all succeeding time, and the -accumulated knowledge of the past, transmitted from generation to -generation, through the medium of books, may with justice be regarded -as the most valuable of human heritages. - -But they have not always been unmixed blessings; they have both led -and misled; they have elucidated, yet have mystified. - -They have dissipated the shadows of ignorance and superstition, but in -some instances have confused and obscured the searchlight of truth. In -the economy of human affairs, books have been factors of no small -importance. They have proved the most potent expositors of iniquitous -systems, and when properly directed against crying evils have -accomplished speedy reforms. They have precipitated wars, incited -revolts and seditions in the cause of progress, yet have intensified -prejudice, political, religious and racial. With silent eloquence, -they have cried out against the wrongs of those who had none to plead -their cause, while in other cases, their influence has tended to -perpetuate existing abuses. In some instances they have taught men to -be content with servitude, in others have ignited the beacon fires of -liberty. Though they are usually found enlisted under the banners of -justice, yet no cause has ever been so unworthy, and no institution so -unholy, that books have not been written in their defence. In verity, -they have sown both wheat and tares. - -Books have been written on every conceivable subject, under all -conditions, by all sorts of writers, and from an endless variety of -motives. The recompense of those who have written them has been -equally various. Some have been apotheosized and worshipped, others -have been the recipients of orders and decorations of honor at the -hands of kings and potentates, while others have received the ovations -of admiring multitudes. Some have anonymously contributed their mite -toward the enrichment of literature, others have appeared, from whence -we know not, and after placing their offerings upon the altars of -poesy and art have departed unrewarded into the shadows of obscurity, -leaving as footprints innumerable quotations which have become -proverbial. Some, as the bards and minnesingers of old who in -mediæval castles ate their bread by the sufferance of the feudal lords -and barons, have in more recent years been dependent upon the bounty -of some munificent, and usually titled patron, to whom they, as a -matter of policy, dedicated their strains and panegyrics, consequently -wielding mercenary pens. Some who have presumed to write in a manner -displeasing to those who sat in high places have met with -vilification, exile, imprisonment, decapitation, and have not been -strangers to the pillory. Criticism and ridicule are the patent -rewards of incipient authorship, while want, neglect and starvation -have terminated the career of more than one name afterwards great in -the world of letters. - -Aside from motives common to all who with reverent steps humbly strive -to follow where the great lights of poesy have led, the author of -these unpretentious pages has been actuated by a desire to portray, in -his correct light, a very frequently misrepresented character, viz.: -the pioneer prospector. It has long been customary for writers of -western fiction to picture this character as a large-hearted but rough -and untutored individual, expressing himself in a vernacular -consisting of equal parts of slang, profanity and questionable -grammar, possessing no ambitions above the card table or the strong -waters which cause all men to err who drink them. An intimate -acquaintance with this class, extending from the years of infancy to -middle age, convinces the writer that the common description is -manifestly unjust and misleading. - -The men who flocked to the early gold excitements, and who -subsequently prospected the western mountain ranges for their hidden -wealth, were the cream of American and European manhood; men possessed -of more than ordinary endowments of intellect, education and physique, -while their industry, bravery and hardihood have never been -questioned. - -Proof of this exists in the names which have lingered behind them as a -matter of record, for it was the prospector who christened the -mountains, gulches and mining locations of the west. A cursory perusal -of the maps of mineral surveys in any western mining district, will -reveal in abundance such names as Hector, Ajax, Golden Fleece, Atlas, -Pegasus, etc.; indicating that those who applied them were, if not -college graduates, men not unfamiliar with the classics. The use of -such names as Cleopatra, Crusader or Magna Charta, by a prospector -unversed in history, would naturally be unexpected. One without -knowledge of literature would hardly grace his location stakes with -such names as Dante, Hamlet or Mephistopheles, while one entirely -unlettered could not by chance hit upon such names as Pandora, Medusa -or Sesostris. - -Of the pioneer prospectors but few remain; many have fallen asleep, -others tiring of the privation and uncertainty incident to a miner's -life, are pursuing other vocations, while many have become prosperous -ranch and cattle-men and may now be found in almost any western -valley. A few, a very few in comparison with the less fortunate -majority, acquiring a competence, removed to other localities, and in -not a few instances, have become conspicuous figures in the world of -business, politics and finance. - -In the mountainous districts of the west, you may still occasionally -see a veteran prospector of the old school, living the life of a -hermit in his log cabin, situated in some picturesque park or gulch, -near his, sometimes valuable but more frequently worthless, mining -locations. There he lives winter and summer, his only companion a cat -or dog; the ambitions of his youth still unrealized, but at three -score and ten, hopeful and expectant. His bent form, white hair, and -venerable bearing impress you strangely at first, but it is only when -you overcome the reticence peculiar to those who have long dwelt in -solitude, and engage him in conversation, that his mental status -becomes apparent. To your surprise you discover that he can converse -entertainingly on any subject, from the Mosaic dispensation, to the -latest inventions in the world of mechanism. You may find him to be, -not only a Shakspearean scholar, but a deep student of that volume -which, whether considered from a sacred or secular point of view, -stands preeminently forth as the Book of Books. You may find him able -to translate Homer, or Virgil, and that the masterpieces of literature -are as familiar to him as his own cabin walls. A glimpse at the -interior of his cabin discloses an ample stock of newspapers and -magazines, while books are not strangers. There is something pathetic -about his loneliness; you leave him with the feeling that society has -been the loser by his voluntary banishment, and are reminded of Gray's -immortal lines: - - "Full many a gem of purest ray serene. - The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear; - Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, - And waste its sweetness on the desert air." - -You speculate upon the story of his life, for you feel that it has a -secret, if not a tragedy, connected with it, into which you may not -probe. You ask yourself the question, "Has not his life been wasted?" -and if he alone is to be considered, there is none but an affirmative -answer. But his life has not been barren of results. He has been a -contributory factor in the upbuilding of an empire, for he is one of -the class who laid the foundations of western prosperity. - -These men came west for various reasons, some actuated by the spirit -of adventure, some to acquire fortunes or to retrieve vanished ones, -others possibly to outlive the stigma of youthful mistakes. In the -lives of many of them are sealed chapters. It is with such that these -pages have to do. - - ALFRED CASTNER KING. - - OURAY, COLO., 1907. - - - - -_CONTENTS_ - - - _The Passing of the Storm_ _Page_ - - _I._ _The Storm_ _17_ - - _II._ _A Chapter from an Old Man's Life_ _28_ - - _III._ _The Prisoner_ _36_ - - _IV._ _A Sequel of the Lost Cause_ _49_ - - _V._ _The Avalanche_ _58_ - - _VI._ _The Rescue_ _65_ - - _VII._ _The Blight of War_ _72_ - - _VIII._ _The Story of an Exile_ _93_ - - _IX._ _Conclusion_ _115_ - - _Dolores_ _120_ - - _Great Shepherd of the Countless Flocks - of Stars_ _122_ - - _The Ruined Cabin_ _123_ - - _An Idyll_ _124_ - - _The Borderland of Sleep_ _125_ - - _Stellar Nocturne_ _126_ - - _Father, at Thy Altar Kneeling_ _127_ - - _Dreams_ _128_ - - _Nocturne_ _129_ - - _The True Faith_ _131_ - - _A Fragment_ _131_ - - _Mortality_ _132_ - - - - -_LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS_ - - - _Facing Page_ - - _"The mountains lay in calm repose - Slumbering 'neath their robes of white."_ _Title._ - - _"As stormy cowls their summits hid."_ _17_ - - _"Exceeding the tremendous height - Of brother peaks, on left and right."_ _26_ - - _"Beseamed with countless scars and rents - From combat with the elements."_ _30_ - - _"He towered with mute and massive form - A challenge to the gathering storm."_ _40_ - - _"With swift and spoliating flow, - Uprooting many a noble tree, - To strew the desert's waste below, - With scattered drift-wood and debris."_ _50_ - - _"Arrayed in Nature's pristine dress - This was, indeed, a wilderness."_ _62_ - - _"We grew as two twin pines might grow, - Upon some isolated edge, - Of some lone precipice or ledge."_ _70_ - - _"The noble spruce and stately fir - Stood draped in feathery garniture."_ _114_ - - _"From the mountain peaks crested with snow."_ _120_ - - _"High up on the cliffs in their dwellings - Which were apertures walled up with rocks, - Lived this people, sequestered and happy; - Their dwellings now serve the wild fox."_ _126_ - - _"As it fearlessly leaps o'er the rocky wall - From the mountain peaks stern and hoary."_ _130_ - - _"I love the lake in the mountain's lap."_ _134_ - - -[Illustration: - "As stormy cowls their summits hid." - - _See page 19._] - - - - -_The Passing of the Storm_ - - -I. THE STORM - - Reflecting, in their crystal snows, - The glittering jewels of the night, - The mountains lay in calm repose - Slumbering 'neath their robes of white. - - The stars grew dim,--a film instead, - The twinkling heavens overspread, - Through which their eyes essayed to peer, - Each moment less distinct and clear, - Till, when the stellar beacons failed, - A darkness unrelieved, prevailed. - - Out of the ambient depths of gloom, - Bereft of its accustomed bloom, - Came day-break, comfortless and gray. - Sped the nocturnal shades away, - Unveiling, with their winged retreat, - A twilight sad and incomplete. - Reluctantly, as dawn aspired, - The shadows lingered, then retired - As vanquished armies often yield - Upon a well-contested field, - And sullenly retrace their course - Before an overwhelming force. - - Within the east no purple light - Proclaimed the passing of the night; - No crimson blush appeared to warn - The landscape of returning morn. - Discarding all the gorgeous dyes, - Wherewith the sunset tints the skies, - And mingling with the azure blue, - The warp and woof of sober hue; - The fairies of the air, I wist, - Had spun a silvery web of mist, - Whose texture, ominous and gray, - Obscured the glories of the day. - - Such was the dreary winter's day, - Which dawned with dull and leaden sky; - No cheerful penetrating ray - Flashed from the sun's resplendent eye. - In vain, through rift and orifice, - He strove with radiant beam to kiss - Each mountain peak and dizzy height, - Apparelled in their garbs of white, - And crown each brow, so bleak and cold, - With burnished diadem of gold. - - Ascending in aërial flight, - The wheel of fire did not appear, - To dissipate the fogs of night - And clarify the atmosphere. - Seeking with fervent ray and fierce, - The canopy of cloud to pierce, - The orb of day, stripped of his flame, - A circle, ill-defined, became, - As through the ever-thickening haze, - His feeble outline met the gaze. - This faded till his glowing face - Left no suggestive spot or trace, - No corollary on the pall - Which settled and pervaded all. - - As stormy cowls their summits hid, - In turret, tower and pyramid, - Of stately and majestic mien, - Was nature's architecture seen. - From yawning chasm and abyss, - Rose minaret and precipice, - Carved by the tireless hand of time, - In forms fantastic, yet sublime, - While spires impregnable and high, - Were profiled on the lowering sky. - - Exceeding the tremendous height - Of brother peaks, on left and right, - In his commanding station placed, - The giant of the rocky waste - With awe-inspiring aspect stood, - The sentry of the solitude, - Guarding the mountainous expanse - With his imposing battlements. - In rock-ribbed armor panoplied, - With rugged walls on every side, - Beseamed with countless scars and rents, - From combat with the elements, - He towered with mute and massive form, - A challenge to the gathering storm. - - This overshadowing mountain peak - In solemn silence seemed to speak - A prophecy of arctic doom; - As in his frigid splendor dressed, - He reared aloft his frozen crest, - Surmounted by a snowy plume. - His wrinkled and forbidding brow - A sombre shadow seemed to throw - O'er other crags as wild and stern, - Which frowned defiance in return. - - The wind, lugubrious and sad, - In doleful accents, soft and low, - Mourned through the dismal forests, clad - In weird habiliments of snow, - As if, forsooth, the sylvan ghosts - Had mobilized in pallid hosts, - To haunt their rugged solitudes, - The spectres of departed woods. - And with uninterrupted flow - The streamlet, underneath the snow, - Answered the wind's despondent moan - With plaint of gurgling monotone; - Or, locked in winter's stern embrace, - No longer trickled in its bed, - But found a frigid resting place - In stationary ice, instead. - The crystal snowflakes gently fell, - Enrobing mountain, plain and dell, - In mantle spotless and complete, - As nature in her winding sheet. - Layer upon layer fell fast and deep - Till every cliff, abrupt and steep, - Was crowned with coronal of white. - Capricious gusts, which whirl and sift, - Built comb and overhanging drift, - From feathery flakes so soft and light. - - More thickly flew the snow and fast; - The wind developed and the blast - Soon churned the tempest, till the air - Seemed but a white and whirling glare, - Through which the penetrating eye - No shape nor contour might descry. - - The poor belated traveller, - Who braved the rigor of that day, - Might thank his bright protecting star,-- - If orbs of pure celestial ray, - Far in the scintillating skies, - Preside o'er human destinies,-- - That he, bewildered and distressed, - Had warded off exhaustion's rest, - And in that maze of pine and fir - Escaped an icy sepulchre. - - When driving snows accumulate, - They yield to the tremendous weight. - And down the mountain's rugged sides - The mass with great momentum slides, - Cleaving the fragile spruce and pine, - Which stand in its ill-fated line, - As bearded grain, mature and lithe, - Goes down before the reaper's scythe. - Or, when the cyclone's baleful force, - In flood of atmospheric wrath, - Pursues its devastating course, - Leaving but ruin in its path; - Despoiling in a moment's span - The most exalted works of man; - Or waters, suddenly set free, - When some black thunder cloud is rent, - Rush down a wild declivity - With irresistible descent, - Depositing on every hand - A layer of sediment and sand; - With swift and spoliating flow, - Uprooting many a noble tree, - To strew the desert wastes below - With scattered drift-wood and debris; - Such is the dreadful avalanche, - Which rends the forest, root and branch. - - From dangers in such varied form, - And the discomforts of the storm, - Small wonder 'twas the mountaineer - Left not his fireside's ruddy cheer; - But from behind the bolted door - Discerned the tempest's strident roar, - Or heard the pendent icicle, - Which, from the eaves, in fragments fell, - As some more formidable blast - In paroxysmal fury passed. - It shook with intermittent throes, - Of boisterous, spasmodic power, - A most substantial hut, which rose, - As summer breeze sways grass or flower - And e'en the dull immobile ground - Trembled in sympathy profound. - - Such was the fury of the storm, - As if the crystal flakes had met - With militating hosts, to swarm - In siege about its parapet. - - When every rampant onslaught failed, - The blast in wanton frenzy wailed. - As if with unspent rage the wind - Felt much disgruntled and chagrined, - And though of nugatory force, - Could vent its spleen with accents hoarse. - As some beleaguered tower of old - Besieged by warriors stern and bold, - Who dashed against its walls of stone, - Which were not swayed nor overthrown; - As vicious strokes delivered well, - Innocuous and futile fell. - Then watched the walls withstand the strain, - And cursed and gnashed their teeth in vain. - - Beneath a massive pinnacle, - Whose weird, forbidding shadows fell, - And gulch and forest overcast - With mantle ominous and vast, - Nestling amid the spruce and pine, - Which fringe the edge of timberline, - This miner's cabin, quaint and rude, - From the surrounding forest hewed, - With primitive, yet stable form, - Withstood the onslaught of the storm, - And at the entrance of a dell - Stood as a rustic sentinel. - - Beneath a pine's protecting skirt, - It reared its modest roof of poles, - Laid close, then overlaid with dirt, - To cover up the cracks and holes; - The intervals between the logs - Were daubed with mud from mountain bogs. - The ground did service as a floor - In this, as many huts before; - So beaten down beneath the tread, - It more resembled tile instead. - - The plastic clay, compressed and sleek, - Was level and as hard as brick. - Protruding boulders, smooth and bare, - Exposed their faces here and there; - And with their surfaces displayed, - A primitive mosaic made. - And, terminating in a stack, - Some feet above the cabin's roof, - The fireplace, comfortless and black, - Arose the dingy form uncouth. - This object of depressing gloom, - Built in the corner of the room, - When filled with lurid tongues of flame, - A cheerful cynosure became. - - The furnishings within were crude; - A table fastened to the wall - Had been with some exertion hewed - From aspen timbers straight and tall, - And was, in lieu of table legs, - Supported by protruding pegs. - A cracker box, with shelves inside, - The leading corner occupied, - And made an ample cupboard there, - Where tin supplanted chinaware. - A frying pan, which from a nail - Suspended, dripped a greasy trail. - Framed from the hemlock's poles and boughs, - The rustic bunks within the house - Were not elaborate affairs; - While boxes filled the place of chairs. - - Tacked on the unpretentious wall - Were advertisements, great and small, - While lithograph and crayon scenes, - Clipped from the standard magazines, - Comprised a mimic gallery, - Which broke the wall's monotony. - No carpets were upon that floor, - But at the bottom of the door - The rug, against its yawning crack, - Consisted of a gunny-sack. - Nor was there lock upon that door, - The guardian of sordid pelf; - The traveller, distressed and sore, - Might enter there and help himself. - - Within this weather-beaten hut - Of logs, by many a tempest tried, - With doors and windows closely shut, - To keep the genial warmth inside; - A group of hardy mountaineers, - Blockaded by the winter's snow, - Sat by the fireside's ruddy glow. - Some old, and old beyond their years, - As disappointments, toil and strife, - Which constitute the miner's life, - Must operate with process sure, - Toward age, unduly premature; - [Blank Page] - For years, in stern privation spent, - Are traced in seam and lineament, - Which gives the patriarchal face - Its rugged dignity and grace. - -[Illustration: - "Exceeding the tremendous height - Of brother peaks, on left and right." - - _See page 19._] - - Although by fond illusions led, - Through phantasies of empty air, - Which mark an ultimate despair, - The miner still sees hope ahead. - The prospector could never cope - With dangers and realities, - But for the visionary hope - Which both deceives and mollifies, - Alluring him with siren song - Her vague uncertain paths along. - - Yet some, this stalwart group among, - Were adolescent,--even young. - For hearts, which youthful breasts conceal, - Oft burn with energetic zeal, - To ope, with labor's patient key, - The mountain's hidden treasury. - - Most furiously it blew and snowed, - Most cheerily the firelight glowed, - And as the forkèd tongues of flame, - In fierce combustion, writhed and burned, - Nor moment's space remained the same, - The conversation swayed and turned. - - For tales were told of avalanche, - Of army scenes, of mine and ranch, - Of wily politician's snares, - Of gold excitements, smallpox scares, - Of England's debt and grizzly bears. - - When all but three their stories told - Of tropic heat, or arctic cold, - The conversation dragged at length, - An interim for future strength. - Outspoke a voice: "Let Uncle Jim - Some past experience relate, - For Fate has kindly granted him, - At least, diversity of fate." - - -II. A CHAPTER FROM AN OLD MAN'S LIFE - - As ample wreaths of curling smoke - From his time-honored meerschaum broke, - A kindly-faced, gray-bearded man - Rose up and sadly thus began,-- - "You ask a tale,--well, I'll express - The reason why in manhood's prime - I left a more congenial clime - And sought this rugged wilderness." - But, gentle reader, don't expect - A tale in mongrel dialect, - For "Uncle Jim," or James T. Hale, - Who lived as anchorite or monk, - Once led the senior class at Yale, - And had his sheepskin in his trunk. - There, while the crackling flames leaped high, - And serpentine gyrations played - Around the logs of hemlock, dry, - And with the tempest seethed and swayed, - As curled the drowsy wreaths of smoke - Above his pipe, the old man spoke: - - "'Twas on a day about like this, - When, fresh from youthful haunts and scenes, - I first beheld yon precipice, - And sought these gulches and ravines, - To pan, despite the frost and cold, - For shining particles of gold; - And hewed the rocker and the sluice - From out the native pine and spruce. - Arrayed in nature's pristine dress - This was indeed a wilderness. - Nor eye of eagle ever viewed - A more forbidding solitude, - Nor prospect more completely drear - Confronted hardy pioneer. - - Why came I here? My simple tale - Goes back to a New England vale. - It is, though simple tale it be, - A life's unwritten tragedy: - A story, with few incidents, - But many years of penitence. - As one, for some foul crime pursued, - Doth flee, in frenzy rash and blind - To wilderness or solitude, - I fled, to leave my past behind. - - I loved a maid, both fair and true, - Just where, it matters not, nor who. - For forty years, with silent tread, - Have silvered many a raven head, - Since on her wealth of auburn hair - The moonlight shimmered, soft and fair, - As where the pine and hemlock stood - And sighed in answer to the breeze, - With but the stars as witnesses, - Our troth was plighted in the wood; - A simple rustic tale in truth, - Of love and sentimental youth. - -[Illustration: - "Beseamed with countless scars and rents - From combat with the elements." - - _See page 20._] - - Love is the subtle mystery, - The charm, the esoteric spell, - Which lures the seraph from on High. - To leave the Throne of Light,--for Hell,-- - And with resistless shackles binds, - In viewless thrall, the captive minds. - For who can fathom love's caprice, - Supplant her fervid wars with peace, - And passion's ardent flame command? - Or who presume to understand - And read with cabalistic art - The hieroglyphics of the heart? - [Blank Page] - Nor eye of regent, skilled to rule, - Nor sage from earth's profoundest school, - Nor erudite philosophy - On wisdom's heights, pretend to see - The fervent secrets of the breast, - Which rankle mute and unexpressed. - Nor the angelic hosts above - In their exuberance of love, - Nor demons from the pit can span - The depths of woman's love for man. - And men, of love's sweet flame bereft, - Have but the brutal instincts left. - - She, too, my youthful love returned, - Each breast with throb responsive yearned, - The oracles of passion sweet, - All augured happiness complete. - But, ere the nuptial knot was bound, - A whispered rumor crept around, - A whispered rumor, such as rise - From nothing to colossal size; - Though none their origin can trace, - Nor ferret out the starting place, - Which start sometimes, in idle jest, - When knowing looks imply the rest. - The lightest rumor, or the worst, - May be discredited at first, - But oft repeated and received - Is soon unconsciously believed. - Though inconsistent and abstract, - Fanned by insinuating tongues, - Imaginary faults and wrongs - Soon gain the currency of fact. - The purest acts are misconstrued - By the lascivious and lewd, - And envy loves to lie in wait - With fangs imbrued in venomed hate. - This slander, born of jealousy, - Was told as solemn truth to me, - By tongues I deemed immaculate. - - Alas! that shafts from falsehood's bow - Should undetected cleave the air, - Or wanton hands in malice sow - The tares of discord and despair. - For every seed of falsehood sown - Brings forth a harvest of its own, - And ears, most ready to believe, - Are difficult to undeceive. - Alas! that shafts from falsehood's tongue - Should fall suspicious ears among, - And be received, and nursed, forsooth, - As arrows of unblemished truth: - Maligning spotless innocence, - With grave impeachments of offence. - Their crime, of heinous crimes the worst, - With multiplied damnation cursed, - Who, lost to every sense of shame, - Assassinate a woman's name. - For such, with trumped-up calumnies, - Would drag an angel from the skies, - And stain its vestal robes of white - With slander's sable hues of night, - Holding to ridicule and shame - The ruins of a once fair name. - - Who so, from slander's chalice sips, - May greet you with a friendly kiss, - Nor may the foul, envenomed lips - Betray the adder's sting and hiss. - The fairest flowrets of the field - The rankest poisons often yield, - And falsehood loves to hide her tooth - 'Neath the habiliments of truth. - This scandal, venomous and vile, - Had no foundation but a smile, - But on it wagging tongues had built - A massive pyramid of guilt. - - In evil hour, I, too, believed - For fabrications more absurd - Than the aspersions I had heard - Have wiser ears than mine deceived. - I fought suspicion, vainly tried - To cast each rising doubt aside. - But he who lists to tales of ill - Believes in part, despite his will. - Then in my face, as in a book, - She read one sad distrustful look, - A look of pity, yet of doubt, - For silence cries most loudly out, - And who can smile with visage bright - To shield misgivings black as night? - - Unhappy trait that in us lies! - We doubt the verdict of our eyes; - We doubt each faculty and sense, - Yet credit sham and false pretence. - We question Truth, and much prefer - To list to Falsehood, than to her: - And that, which most substantial seems, - We doubt, yet place our faith in dreams. - We doubt the pearl of purest white, - We doubt the diamond clear and bright, - And yet accept the base and flawed, - Yes, revel in all forms of fraud. - - That moment's lack of confidence, - The shadow of remote offence, - Cost each the sweetest joys of life, - Cost her a husband, me a wife. - - Ere yet that month its course had spent, - In time's continuous descent, - Her face had been forever hid - Beneath the sod and coffin lid. - Then slanderous tongues forgot their lies, - And wagged in glowing eulogies. - - Though tears, the pearls of sorrow be, - And many o'er her grave were shed, - Mine was a tearless agony, - A deeper, dry-eyed grief instead. - - That rumor, void of fact or proof, - Too late betrayed the cloven hoof. - Too late, alas! 'twas given me - To recognize its falsity. - - Within a rural burial place, - A rude, though quaint, necropolis, - Where, through the growth of hemlock trees, - Is borne the requiem of the breeze; - Where stand the funeral pines as plumes, - Above the scattered graves and tombs, - And sigh, with drooping branches spread, - In sylvan dirges for the dead; - Beneath a fir tree's sombre shade, - My last adieu to her was made. - - Close by the slab of graven stone, - Which marks her place of silent rest, - I knelt at midnight, and alone, - Then rose and started for the West." - - * * * * * - - The wind in temporary lull, - Had dwindled to a plaintive moan; - As if in mournful monotone, - Her cup of anguish being full, - Sad nature's fountain-heads of bale - Had overflowed with plaint and wail. - In palpitating throbs of woe, - It now arose and whirled the snow - With triple energy renewed, - Filling the dismal solitude - With woeful shriekings of despair, - As demon orgies in the air, - And culminated in a roar - More violent than aught before. - - * * * * * - - At length another timely lull - Made human voices audible. - As Uncle Jim resumed his seat, - A voice cried out for Russian Pete. - - * * * * * - - -III. THE PRISONER - - Of Russian Pete but little had been known, - He liked to read and be so much alone; - No more his close associates could tell, - Save that he spoke the English language well. - About this stranger with the clever tongue, - An air of mystery and sadness clung. - His name, so long and unpronounceable, - Which none could frame, much less presume to spell, - Waiving abridgment, partial or complete, - Was, by the boys, transformed to "Russian Pete." - - Now Russian Pete was tall and strong of limb, - Nor more than half as old as Uncle Jim, - Of noble stature and commanding brow, - With knees which in no genuflections bow. - His face was sad, the index of a breast - Where memory's fires were raging unsuppressed. - With eyes which search in closest scrutiny, - Nor yet offend the object they would see. - One, who from feature, act and equipoise, - Had known life's sorrows better than its joys. - A man whom you would notice in the street, - And know the second time if you should meet. - - This man of mystery and intellect - Arose, and stood in manhood's poise erect. - In tone of voice so musical and clear - It might have charmed the most exacting ear, - And wealth of language few can hope to reach, - Nor trace of foreign accent in his speech, - He forthwith spake: "My simple tale shall be, - Not one of love, but dire captivity. - Like Uncle Jim's, however, it contains - The cause why I forsook my native plains. - No tender web of sentiment, but one - By treachery and machination spun. - - Across the sea, in distant realms afar, - In the remote dominions of the Czar, - Past where the Dnieper rolls his murky flood, - Surcharged with fertilizing silt and mud, - Past the dark forests and productive plains, - Which he with many a tributary drains; - Within that city whose inhabitants, - With flaming torch, withstood the arms of France, - Preferring ruin to the victor's boast, - Or occupation by an alien host. - Fair Moscow, which became a funeral pyre, - And perished in her self-ignited fire, - That her invaders, chilled by snow and sleet, - Might sink in irretrievable defeat. - A few years since, the date concerns us not, - A minor detail readily forgot, - Beneath the shadow of her noblest spire, - There dwelt two students, children of one sire. - - With prospects fair at manhood's budding edge, - In caste esteemed of no base parentage; - Two students, versed in languages, and planned - For consul service in a distant land, - As foreign usages are studied most, - When one aspires to diplomatic post. - Thus eagerly, did we acquire the tongue - Of you, whom I address and live among. - With lucubrations diligent, we sought - Our ways up varied avenues of thought, - Until by prejudice no longer bound, - We stood at last upon dissenting ground; - Or wavered, where reluctant doubts confuse, - In that strange zone of ruminating views, - Where progress and established custom meet; - Yes, crossed its boundaries with reckless feet. - - In that stern Empire, on disruption's brink, - Some things you may,--and some you may not,--think; - Express yourself, and instantly disgraced, - Your steps may point toward a Siberian waste; - Your substance confiscated by a court - Where equity is but a theme for sport; - Extol your theories, proffer your advice, - And chains or banishment may be the price. - - For despot hands, since might's initial sway, - Have fashioned chains for worthier hands than they; - And oftentimes beneath the tyrant's heel - Are crushed the lives which strive for human weal; - Who dare to hold the gonfalon aloft - For human rights and progress, yes, how oft - Since Cain that fratricidal murder wrought, - Have death and durance been the price of thought! - - He who espouses radical reform - Invites upon his head the gathering storm; - Each forward step from Custom's hackneyed school, - Draws forth the floods of scorn and ridicule; - Witness the dungeon, guillotine and rack, - Chains for the feet and scourges for the back; - Bestrewn with insult, diatribe and cuff, - The pathway of reform was ever rough; - And when reforms, as tidal waves have come, - The foremost breakers dash to martyrdom. - - Perhaps, in youth's enthusiastic heat - We may have been a little indiscreet, - When we, thus inexperienced and young, - Against oppression dared to raise the tongue. - Perhaps 'twere best to tarnish manhood's brow - With servile adulation, and to bow - With craven salaam and obeisance, down - In sycophantic homage to a crown. - What, though the diadem its blazon rears - Above a population's groans and tears! - What, though the paths of tyranny be strew'd - With suspirations of the multitude! - If one but bask within the regal smile, - Why strive against injustice, fraud and guile? - Or, why enlist the sympathetic pen, - Though thrones may crush the liberties of men? - - One inadvertent hour, some chance remark - Was misconstrued with application dark; - For little is required as an excuse - When private ends are furthered by abuse; - Suspicion's tunes are played with greatest ease, - When jealousy manipulates the keys. - What followed, it were wearisome to tell, - Save that we found ourselves within a cell, - Charged with sedition and conspiracy, - By those more likely to conspire than we. - -[Illustration: - "He towered with mute and massive form - A challenge to the gathering storm." - - _See page 20._] - - Three days were we, in custody detained, - In stern abeyance formally constrained. - Within a court, where no protesting word - From prisoner or counsel may be heard; - A court, where no forensic eloquence - May quash the allegations of offence; - Our doom was sealed, by a capricious judge - Who thereby satisfied a family grudge. - - The sentence passed, the stalwart Cossack guard - Straightway transferred us to a prison yard. - There parted we, before its grated door; - They dragged him in,--and he was seen no more. - - Another door, with dull metallic sound - Was closed, and I was hurried underground, - Through labyrinth of passages and halls, - Past dingy arches and protruding walls, - Where gloom perpetual the eye obscures, - Through damp recesses, nooks and apertures, - With foul effluvia and odors filled, - By darkness, dampness and decay distilled. - For noisome vapors float in gaseous waves, - In cavern depths of men-created caves, - And generate in humid warmth or cold - The loathsome mildew and corrupting mould. - - At length, through cruel maze of grate and stone, - By paths circuitous and ways unknown, - We reached the cell,--as hideous a den, - As ever held unwilling beasts or men. - And soon with manacles securely bound, - Myself its only occupant I found. - A dungeon, dimly lighted and obscure, - With pools of water, stagnant and impure, - Whose noxious exhalations permeate - The deadened air, which could not circulate: - And laden with malignant slime and ooze, - Upon the walls discharged in baneful dews: - Or else precipitate, with vapory loss, - Enrobed the cruel stones with pendent moss. - And water, foul as e'er offended lip, - Fell from the roof with intermittent drip. - Remote from daylight, dismal and unsunned, - Decompositions stored a teeming fund - Of molecules and organisms strange, - In an invisible but constant change. - As stagnant waters generate a froth, - These, with spontaneous and fungous growth, - Had draped the dungeon's limited expanse - With toadstool, bulb and foul protuberance. - These from the air its milder virtues drank, - Supplanting ichors, venemous and dank, - Whose essence deleterious, the while, - Exudes in savors and miasmas vile. - - High on the wall, a double-grated slit - A slender ray of sunshine would admit - On pleasant mornings, when the sky was clear - From leaden fogs and hazy atmosphere. - A ray of sunlight, yes, a welcome ray, - A wholesome beam, but just too far away. - Although I tugged at the remorseless chain - And strove to reach that sunbeam, 'twas in vain; - The lambent gleam which broke into the cell - Alone on toad and savage rodent fell. - In vain I wrenched the manacles, in vain - I sought to rend the cruel gyves in twain, - Strove, with contortions painful and extreme, - To lay my head within this gladsome beam, - Or even touch it with the finger-tip; - In vain,--no galling chain relaxed its grip. - - A ray of sunlight just beyond my reach, - Like Tantalus, as ancient classics teach, - When for duplicity and theft immersed, - In rippling waters, doomed to ceaseless thirst,-- - For as his parching lips essayed to drink, - The mocking waters would recede, or sink; - Though luscious fruits hung pendent in his sight, - To coax the palate and the appetite, - Whene'er his hand reached forth with eager thrust, - Those selfsame fruits resolved to baleful dust. - That sunbeam, though an aggravation fair, - Still closed the floodgates of complete despair. - As dykes constrain, in distant lowland realms, - The deluge, which engulfs and overwhelms. - With final resource and expedient - And all her vials of expectation spent, - Fate, in her changeable kaleidoscope, - Evolves new turns to reëstablish hope. - That ray of sunshine, as an angel's smile, - Beaming in love amid surroundings vile, - Came, morn by morn, to mitigate and bless; - A benediction in my bitterness. - - Time after time, when the approaching night - Had banished every modicum of light, - And clothed each outline with her sable guise, - I watched the greenish glow of reptile eyes, - Nor dared to slumber, till exhaustion's sleep - Benumbed my senses with its stupors deep. - Then, conjured by the witcheries of night, - Came pleasant dreams and visions of delight, - Those iridescent phantasies of air, - Which mock the troubled breast in its despair; - Then waking, the delusive phantoms flown, - A prisoner upon a floor of stone. - My fare was still the captive's mouldy crust, - My chains still reeked with clotted gore and rust, - The rigid shackles still retained their clutch, - And clammy walls repulsed the friendly touch. - - Day after day, besmeared with filth and slime, - In foul monotony I passed the time, - Battling with vermin foes, a teeming brood, - Prolific and not easily withstood: - An evil pest, ubiquitous and rife, - In the fecundity of insect life. - In agony of body and of brain, - Each breath a stifling gasp and twinge of pain, - Cursing my fortune, though each fevered curse - Redounding, made my agony the worse; - For fits of anger seldom mollify, - When vacancy reiterates the cry, - Or walls of cold, unsympathetic stone - Respond but hollow echoes of a groan. - Though limbs as free and restless as the wind - Are not to shackles readily resigned, - Complaint, with oath and bitterness replete, - In prisoner is doubly indiscreet. - The imprecation, born of righteous wrath, - Subtracts no obstacle from any path. - - Bereft of star or luminary bright, - No night so dark as artificial night; - No glittering constellations kindly throw - Their twinkling beacons o'er the void below; - No satellite with pale invasive beam - Breaks through the darkness awful and extreme; - No comet, through the vast sidereal waste, - Pursues its orbit with unbridled haste; - No silvery moon, through the dissembling shroud, - May shine or burst through orifice of cloud - In mellow radiations, soft and sweet; - Darkness most dense, oppressive and complete. - - No friendly voice might penetrate the gloom, - Nor break the silence of that fetid tomb, - With genial converse, which in some degree - Makes men forget their depth of misery. - Silence, most tragic, horrible, profound, - Except the sharp and intermittent sound - Of rodent feet, and noise of creeping things, - The squeak of vampires and their whirr of wings; - Or cries of swift pursuit, or of despair, - Rang out upon the pestilential air, - As ever and anon a dying squeak - Told of the strong prevailing o'er the weak; - For might obtains along the selfsame plan - With ruthless vermin and enlightened man. - Yet man in his dominion absolute, - Removed above the province of the brute, - From social claims and attributes released, - Has little to distinguish from the beast. - With all associative wants denied, - And his gregarious longings unsupplied, - By human comradeship, affection springs - Well up in effluent love for baser things. - For 'neath the polish and embellishments - Of cultivation and intelligence, - There lies a basic bond of sympathy, - For man and beast are friends in misery. - Yes, friends, the most ill-favored shape which squirms - In reptile folds, repulsive snakes and worms, - Soon lose their dread repugnance, one and all, - To solitary man in prison thrall. - Through the long hours of physical distress, - In my extremity of loneliness, - I felt companionship in this abode, - For e'en the vicious rat and sluggish toad. - - Thrice sixty days of corporal decay - And mental anguish, slowly wore away; - Thrice sixty nights of filthy durance passed, - Each day and night more hopeless than the last. - My limbs, no longer brawny and alert, - Were famine-wasted, loathsome and inert. - With shaggy beard and matted unkempt hair, - With face no longer rubicund and fair, - Which haggard and emaciated shone, - And through the sallow skin disclosed the bone. - Thus languished nature in enforced decay, - Till hope's last beacon light had burned away. - - Though never exculpated from offence, - Time brought conditional deliverance; - A writ of amnesty, the Czar's decree, - Within its gracious scope included me. - Released at last by ukase absolute, - But famished, homeless, sick and destitute. - What followed would be tedious to recite, - The sequel, but the incidents of flight. - Alone, an outcast from my native hearth, - An aimless wanderer upon the earth, - Blown as the desert shifts a grain of sand, - Borne by each wanton gale, from land to land. - - A keen observer of the play of life, - Withal a nether factor in its strife. - Watching existence as a game of chess, - Where love, hate, smile, tear, insult and caress - Hold us by turns in various forms of check; - Some sort of yoke is worn by every neck. - Kings, queens and knights, exalted castles see, - Undone by pawns and powers of base degree. - Positions gained at a tremendous cost, - By one false move may be forever lost; - Each studied movement, each strategic course, - Is shaped by contact with opposing force, - And moves which seem fortuitous and blind - Are often those most cunningly designed. - In devious ways we may not understand, - Our steps are ordered by an Unseen Hand. - Proud queens, subservient pawns, with varied rôle, - Are vain components of the wondrous whole; - Life's pantomime, in figures complicate; - Men are but puppets on the wires of fate. - - * * * * * - - My native land, henceforth no longer mine, - My footsteps, seeking an adopted shrine, - Have found a home, within the mountain West, - Where Truth may preach her gospel unsuppressed." - - * * * * * - * * * * * - - All eyes were now on Russian Pete, - Who quietly resumed his seat. - - At the conclusion of his tale - The wind had risen to a gale, - And mourned as though in sympathy - With human woe and misery. - Or as the winds, for some offence - To man, or his creations done, - Now wailed a frenzied penitence - In anguish-laden orison. - The elements petitioning - The pardon of their stormy king, - E'en as the supplicating cries - Might from the damned in torment rise, - And cleave the palpitating air - With hopeless accents of despair. - - * * * * * - - As Uncle Jim stirred up the fire - With observation taciturn, - All watched the crackling hemlock burn - Till some one called for Dad McGuire. - - -IV. A SEQUEL OF THE LOST CAUSE - - Now, Dad McGuire was old, and bent of form, - Tanned by exposure to the sun and storm; - Of grizzled beard and seam-indented brow, - The furrows traced by Time's remorseless plough; - Hardy and gnarlèd as the mountain oak, - Bent by the hand of Time but still unbroke; - Bowed by the weight of years and labors done, - A man whose course had neared the setting sun; - His face a blending of the calm and sad, - Paternal-looking, so they called him "Dad." - - * * * * * - - This man, so near his journey's close, - With great deliberation rose, - Coughed once or twice and scratched his nose; - Then, as became a veteran, - Surveyed his hearers and began; - "Since Uncle Jim and Russian Pete - Declared the reasons why their feet - This rugged wilderness have trod, - And left for aye their native sod, - I, too, will recapitulate - That chapter, from my book of fate. - - Where Rappahannock's silver stream - Reflects the moon's resplendent beam, - And sheds a mellow lustre o'er - The trees and shrubs that fringe the shore; - Where Nature's lavish hand bestows - The crystal dews and generous showers; - Where lily, hollyhock and rose, - And many-tinted herbs and flowers - Combining, form a floral scene - On background of eternal green; - Where through the solemn night is heard - The warbling plaint of feathered throats, - As whippoorwill and mockingbird - Pour forth their wealth of liquid notes, - [Blank Page] - While the accompanying breeze - Sighs through the underbrush and trees, - And rippling waters blend their tune, - In salutation to the moon; - Where singing insects, bugs and bees - Mingle their droning harmonies, - With croakings of loquacious frogs - In the adjacent swamps and bogs; - Where from the water, air and ground, - Rises a symphony of sound; - Mid nature's fond environment, - My boyhood's happy hours were spent. - - But now, my narrative begins: - I had a brother, we were twins, - Sunburnt and freckled, light of heart, - Resembling each other so - That few could tell the two apart. - We grew, as two twin pines might grow, - Upon the isolated edge - Of some lone precipice or ledge, - That overlooks the vale below; - Remote from every wooded strip, - With but each other's fellowship, - In solitary station placed, - With branches locked and interlaced, - As sworn to cherish and defend - Each other, to the bitter end. - -[Illustration: - "With swift and spoliating flow, - Uprooting many a noble tree, - To strew the desert's waste below, - With scattered drift-wood and debris." - - _See page 22._] - - The course of uneventful life - Ran smoothly on, unmarred by strife, - Till childish fancy disappeared, - As manhood's sterner age was neared; - Then in a city's bustling mart, - The cords of fate drew us apart, - Through paths of accident and chance, - Environment and circumstance; - Within their complicated maze, - We reached that parting of the ways, - Where sentiment is nipped by frost, - Where ties of consanguinity - Disrupt, and often disagree, - Or, through indifference are lost. - - We happened that eventful spring, - To hold a family gathering, - To reunite each severed tie - So soon to be dissolved for aye. - - As famines, with their blight respond, - When some vile genius waves his wand, - And leave a ghastly aftermath - Of bleaching bones to mark their path; - Or demon hands, in foul offence, - Pour out the vials of pestilence, - To reap, with desolating breath, - A harvest of untimely death; - The throes of internecine war - Now rent the nation to its core, - And smote, with decimating hand - The best and bravest of the land, - Estranging, never to amend, - Father from son and friend from friend; - Dissolving many sacred cords - Of love in bitterest enmity. - Lips once replete with friendly words - Now challenged as an enemy; - We, who had never quarrelled before, - Parted in wrath, and met no more. - - His firm convictions led him where - A banner floated in the air, - In silken corrugations curled, - The admiration of a world; - Beneath its constellated stars, - Its azure field and crimson bars, - Although no message ever came - To tell his fate, or spread his fame, - I know that 'mid the shot and shell - He served the cause he fought for, well. - For aught I know, his manly form - Went down before some leaden storm, - And lay with mangled flesh and bone - Among the numberless unknown, - Who filled the trenches where they died, - Uncoffined, unidentified. - - The voice of duty led me where - The strains of Dixie filled the air, - Where curling smoke in graceful rings - Rose on the evening's silent wings, - And hovering o'er the mist and damp, - Betrayed the presence of the camp. - I pass the story of the war,-- - The cause we lost, but struggled for - Through four long years, in southern fens,-- - To wiser tongues and abler pens. - Through four long years of tragedy, - I fought, bled, marched and starved with Lee, - Till Appomattox's final day, - I, in a uniform of gray, - Before the cannon's yawning mouth, - Defended my beloved South. - - The struggle ending, in complete, - Although most honorable defeat, - Footsore and hungry, broken, sad, - In ragged regimentals clad, - Towards Rappahannock's silver flood, - I plodded homeward through the mud, - To find a desolated home, - The final page in war's red tome. - - That day, as I remember well, - The splashing rain in torrents fell; - The pregnant clouds discharged their debt - Of moist, apologetic tears, - As if in passionate regret - For rain withheld in famine years, - And from exuberance of grief - In drizzling penance found relief; - Or, as if tears from unseen eyes - Were wafted downward from the skies, - In tardy expiation for - The carnage of remorseless war: - The sorrow of the elements - For human woe and violence. - The roads which thread the country lanes, - Had turned to sheets of liquid mud, - As if to cover up the stains - Of civil war and human blood. - - That evening, as a pall of cloud - Enveloped nature as a shroud, - Bedraggled and dispirited, - My footsteps to the old home led: - Again I stood before the door - I left in wrath, four years before: - But what a change! The vandal torch - Had long devoured the roof and porch: - The gray disintegrating walls - Still swayed and tottered in the air, - Or lay in heaps within its halls, - In melancholy ruin there: - The towering chimney, black and tall, - Stood, as if mourning o'er its fall: - And through the dismal mist and rain, - The windows, void of sash and pane, - Seemed staring at the gathering night, - In wild expression of affright. - The fields my infancy had known, - With briar and weed were overgrown; - The sunlight, heralding the morn, - No longer smiled on waving corn. - - I wandered, aimlessly around, - Yet heard not one familiar sound, - No stamp of hoof nor flap of wing, - No low of cow, nor bleat of sheep, - Nor any tame domestic thing; - Silence, most horrible and deep. - No pony whinnied in its stall, - Nor neighed in answer to my call; - No purr of cat, nor bark of dog, - Naught but the croaking of the frog; - No voice of relative or kin, - No father paused and stroked his chin, - Then rushed with recognizing grasp - To hold his son within his clasp; - No mother, with her silvered hair, - Rocked in the same old rocking chair. - - First at the ruins, then the ground, - I gazed in turn, mechanically, - Till, startled by a mournful sound, - A piteous and plaintive cry, - I turned, and peering through the storm, - Discerned the outlines of a form, - Bewailing o'er the ruins there - In accents of complete despair. - I knew her voice, and felt her woe, - She was my nurse, poor Aunty Chloe! - Between her sobs disconsolate, - This freed, but ever faithful slave, - Told of my agèd parents' fate, - Then led me to the double grave. - - I, who through four long tragic years, - Had never yielded once to tears, - Clasping her hand, so kind and true, - Wept with the rain, and she wept too. - - * * * * * - - Ere daybreak, with increasing light, - Evolved from disappearing night - The morn, in radiant splendor dressed, - I, too, had started for the West." - - * * * * * - * * * * * - - Ere the conclusion of the narrative, - Through every crack and cranny of the door - The snow had sifted in, as through a sieve, - And piled in little cones upon the floor. - Without, the raging tempest still assailed; - Within, the fire to glowing coals had failed. - All smoked, and with their eyes on Dad McGuire, - Waited for some one else to build the fire. - Such close attention had his tale received, - It seemed as if 'twas partially believed; - Few of the tales which we enjoy the most - In verity, may that distinction boast. - - The dying embers shed their mellow glow - Upon the agèd face of Dad McGuire, - As he swept out the little piles of snow - And laid a hemlock log upon the fire. - Then followed disconnected colloquies - And witticisms in the form of jest; - The joke is always where the miner is, - The form of levity he loves the best, - For cutting truths have thereby been conveyed, - Where delicacy all other forms forbade. - - As some fierce gale that bows the gnarlèd oak, - Sinks till it scarcely sways the underbrush, - The laughter, incident to jest and joke, - Subsided to a calm and tranquil hush. - All husbanded their energy and strength - And smoked in silence for a moment's length. - - * * * * * - - -V. THE AVALANCHE - - Just then a crashing sound was heard, - That caused each ruddy cheek to blanch, - Though no one moved nor spoke a word, - All listening to the avalanche - With apprehensive ears intent, - Knew what a mountain snowslide meant. - Nor marvel that each visage paled, - Nor that the hardy sinews quailed; - These terrors of the solitude - The mountain's timbered slopes denude, - Sweeping the frozen spruce and fir - As with a snowy scimitar; - Nor can the stately pines prevent - Its irresistible descent; - A foe admitting no defence. - A moment passed in dire suspense, - And at its expiration brief, - Each heaved a breath of deep relief; - The snowslide, terrible and vast, - Had precipice and chasm leapt, - And down the rugged mountains swept, - Missing the cabin as it passed. - - * * * * * - - The cabin clock had indicated five - When due composure was at length restored; - As evidence that all were still alive, - Queries were made about the "festive board," - As sailors shipwrecked on some barren rock, - After the first excitement of the shock, - Mingle their words of gratitude and prayer - With speculations on the bill of fare. - No depth of danger man is called to face, - No exultation nor extreme disgrace, - No victory nor depression of defeat - Can shake recurrent Hunger from her seat. - - The cabin oracle so often used, - A pack of playing cards, was soon produced. - A turn at whist the afternoon before, - Told who should cut the wood and sweep the floor. - As one of the disasters of defeat, - Washing the dishes fell to Russian Pete. - A game of freeze-out, played with equal zeal, - Decided who should cook the evening meal; - Conspiring cards electing Uncle Jim, - The culinary task devolved on him. - - Accordingly, with acquiescent nod, - Abiding by the fortunes of the game, - This patriarch, so venerable and odd,-- - Whose skill in cooking was of local fame, - Knocked out the ashes from his meerschaum pipe - And laid it tenderly upon the shelf, - Took a preliminary wash and wipe, - And squinting in the mirror at himself, - Like most of those possessed of little hair, - Brushed what he still had left with greatest care. - Small use for comb or brush had Uncle Jim, - His capillary wealth, a grayish rim - Or hirsute chaplet, as it had been called - By other miners less completely bald, - Fringing his head an inch above the ears, - Marked off his shining pate in hemispheres. - His flowing beard, of venerable air, - Enjoyed a strict monopoly in hair, - As if the raven curls that once adorned - His occiput, that habitation scorned - And took, as an expression of chagrin, - A change of venue to his ample chin. - - When Uncle Jim was duly washed and groomed, - The running conversation was resumed, - And as the veteran his task pursued, - Mixing the biscuit dough with judgment good, - All smoked and talked, excepting Dad McGuire, - Who, helping Uncle Jim, stirred up the fire, - Raking the embers in a little pile, - Then warmed the old Dutch oven up a while, - And after greasing with a bacon rind, - The biscuit dough was to its depths consigned. - - Soon from within the oven, partly hid - By embers piled upon the cumbrous lid, - The baking powder biscuits nestling there - With wholesome exhalations charged the air. - A pot of beans suspended by a wire - Swung like a pendulum above the fire, - And answered every flame's combustive kiss - With roundelay of bubble and of hiss, - While in the esculent commotion swam - The residue of what was once a ham. - Though epicures, who yearn for fowl and fish, - May scorn this plain and inexpensive dish, - So free from the extravagance of waste, - Yet succulent and pleasant to the taste, - Of all the varied products of the soil, - The bean is most esteemed by those who toil. - Removed, in place less prominent and hot, - One might have seen the old black coffee pot, - And watched the puffs of aromatic steam - Rise on the background of the firelight's gleam. - A pleasant sibilation filled the room, - As with an unctuous savor or perfume - The bacon sizzled in the frying-pan, - The bane and terror of dyspeptic man; - But those who labor for their daily bread - Of sedentary ills have little dread. - - The simple yet salubrious repast - Was on the rustic table spread at last. - No cut-glass flashed and sparkled in the light, - Nor burnished silver service met the sight. - No butter dish, nor sugar bowl was seen, - The grains of sugar, white and saccharine, - Imprisoned in a baking powder can, - Rose in a wilderness of pot and pan. - The butter firkin stood upon a shelf - Where every one could reach and help himself. - The nibbling rodent and destructive moth - Found naught to lure them in the shape of cloth. - No tablespread of costly linen lent - Its white disguise or figured ornament - To catch the bacon or the coffee stain. - Nor was there cup or plate of porcelain, - For empty cans, stripped of their labels, bare, - And pie tins held the same positions there. - - * * * * * - - All congregated 'round the simple spread - And ate the beans and baking powder bread, - [Blank Page] - With all the satisfaction and delight - That crown the hungry miner's appetite; - Not gluttony, that enemy to health, - That often follows in the trail of wealth, - But wholesome relish, which the laboring poor - Enjoy, who eat their fill, but eat no more. - -[Illustration: - "Arrayed in Nature's pristine dress - This was, indeed, a wilderness." - - _See page 29._] - - The final course was ushered in at last, - When apple sauce around the board was passed; - As Uncle Jim stretched forth his hand across - The table to the dish of apple-sauce, - And on his ample pie tin placed some more, - A hurried knock resounded from the door, - And Steve McCoy, a miner in the camp, - With brow from snow and perspiration damp, - Rushed in, from out the white and whirling waste, - In the excitement incident to haste, - And waiving further ceremony cried:-- - "Our cabin has been taken by a slide!" - - Steve as a snowy Santa Claus appeared, - Pulling the icicles from off his beard, - Relating, in his intervals of breath, - His tale of dire disaster and of death; - He, and his partner "Smithy," were on shift - Within the tunnel working in a drift, - Chasing a stringer in their search for ore, - Within the hill a thousand feet or more. - The rock was hard and both of them were tired, - The holes were blasted as the work required; - Then to their consternation and surprise, - Upon emerging from the tunnel's mouth, - No hospitable cabin met their eyes - Upon the hillside, sloping toward the south; - The hut of logs where they had cooked and slept - Had been from human eyes forever swept. - Their partners, it were reason to presume, - Were suffocating in a snowy tomb. - - "Smithy" had gone to Uncle Bobby Green, - Whose cabin lay the nearest to the scene, - To summon help, and get the boys to go - To probe with poles and shovels in the snow, - To find the living, or if life had sped, - To make the avalanche yield up its dead. - Of partners, Steve and Smithy had but two, - "Daddy" McLaughlin and young Dick McGrew, - Uncle and nephew, patriarch and youth, - Both men of strict integrity and truth. - Four other miners on another lease - Dwelt with the boys in harmony and peace. - Two strangers, who arrived the night before, - Had been invited, till the storm was o'er, - To share their hospitality. Their fate - Had raised the list of dead, perhaps, to eight. - - Ere Steve had panted forth his final word, - The boys had risen up with one accord; - The rescue must be tried at any cost, - The chance, however slight, must not be lost. - - Steve as a runner who has reached his goal, - Leaned half exhausted on his snowshoe pole, - The while his sturdy auditors began - To don their caps and mittens, to a man, - Then wrapping mufflers 'round their ears and throats, - Put on their clumsy, canvas overcoats. - Thanks to the providence of Dad McGuire, - Who always kept a stock of baling wire - And odds and ends of everything around, - Their feet were quickly and securely bound - With canvas ore sacks or with gunny-sacks, - A thing the miner's wardrobe seldom lacks. - - -VI. THE RESCUE - - Forth to the rescue went the miners bold, - Regardless of the tempest wild and brisk, - Regardless of the driving snow and cold, - Regardless of the hazard and the risk; - Facing with stalwart resolution brave - The snowy fate of those they strove to save. - - One form of courage nerves the soldier's arm, - Excitement overcomes the wild alarm - Which at the onset e'en the bravest feel, - Though self-possession may that fear conceal. - The unromantic dangers of the storm - Require another and a sterner form, - For no emotion nerves the craven breast - To tempt the snowslide on the mountain's crest; - That noblest element unnoticed thrives - Beneath the surface in unnumbered lives; - At danger's call the sympathetic bond - Leaps to the surface, as the waves respond - When one has tossed a pebble in a pond; - For man has ever since the world began - Laid down his life to save his fellow-man; - Heroes are they, no praise commensurate, - Who do their duty in the face of fate. - - Through gloomy forests, intricate and dark, - Which skirt the confines of the mountain park, - With arduous climb and hazardous ascent - Up through the gulch precipitous and wild - To where the avalanche its force had spent, - In silent haste the rescue party filed. - - On such occasions little may be said, - The sternest use subdued and whispered breath, - For silence seems contagious from the dead, - A vague, unconscious reverence for death. - Facing the inconvenience of the blast, - Which whirled the drifting snowflakes as it passed, - The party shovelled; and with one accord - Abstained from converse, no one spoke a word - Till hours of strenuous search disclosed to sight - Six corpses from their sepulchre of white. - The other two, who by some wondrous means, - Escaped with but some trifling cuts and sprains, - Were in the meantime by their fellows found, - Dazed and exhausted in the gulch below, - For storm-bewildered men will grope around - Describing circles in the blinding snow, - Until they sink, their vital forces spent, - And crystal snowflakes weave their cerement. - - Six pairs of skies,[1] each improvised a sled, - On which were placed the stark and staring dead; - As flickering lanterns flashed a ghostly glow - Upon them in their winding-sheets of snow, - The sad procession now retraced its course - Back through the dismal forest, while the blast - Wailed forth a requiem in accents hoarse, - Which shuddering pines re-echoed as it passed. - - * * * * * - - With sorely overtaxed and waning strength, - As some spent swimmer struggling to the shore, - The weary party found its way at length, - Back through the forest to the cabin's door. - As Uncle Jim, whose life was ever spent - In ministering to others, had been sent - Ahead, the dying coals had been renewed - With fresh supplies of pine and aspen wood, - And blazed a cheery invitation forth - To those who sought the comfort of the hearth. - - [1] Norwegian snowshoes. - - The two survivors were the strangers who - Had just arrived the afternoon before; - Their names nor antecedents no one knew, - But western miners do not close the door - On weary travellers, whosoe'er they be, - No matter what their race or pedigree; - The one credential needed in the west - Is--human being, storm-bound and distressed. - The rescued miners, much benumbed and chilled, - To show some signs of conscious life began; - So Dad McGuire, in therapeutics skilled - To cure the maladies of beast or man, - Pursuant of his self-appointed task, - From out some secret depths produced a flask, - Which to the rescued miners he applied - As guaranteed to warm them up inside. - By way of chance digression, should you ask - The nature of the liquid in the flask, - Which, evidently, the boys had used before, - We must admit, the empty bottle bore, - Like most of bottles used in mining camps, - The revenue collector's excise stamps. - - The senior of the rescued men appeared - In age to crowd the three-score years and ten; - Of stalwart form, with whitened hair and beard, - The peer of multitudes of younger men, - In matters appertaining to physique; - He first recovered and essayed to speak. - As Dad McGuire and kind old Uncle Jim - Were ministering as best they could to him, - In kindly interest they inquired his name, - "John T. McGuire," the labored answer came. - As Dad McGuire leaned over him to hear, - His gaze descried a mole behind his ear, - Then with an exclamation of surprise, - As one who scarcely can believe his eyes, - He turned the stranger over on his back, - Found two more moles,--and cried--"My brother Jack!" - - * * * * * - * * * * * - - Erratic as the vacillating wind, - Are the mysterious wanderings of the mind. - When reason lays her golden veil aside, - What vagaries and aberrations glide - Through the disordered precincts of the brain! - What phantoms rise and disappear again! - What curious blendings of reality - And fact, with wildest flights of phantasy! - The flickerings of reason's feeble light - And relaxation into mental night, - Seem as a beacon on some rock-bound coast, - Which flutters, wanes and disappears almost, - Then with a flash illuminates the shore, - Gleams for a moment and is seen no more; - Or on some starless midnight, when the storm - Dissolves in chaos each familiar form, - And robes the landscape in cimmerian pall, - The lightnings play,--then darkness covers all. - - Unlocked by fever and delirium, - The cautious tongue becomes no longer dumb, - And with the nervous tension overwrought, - Oft gives expression to the secret thought. - 'Twas thus the junior of the rescued men, - A modern Hercules, both fair and young, - With accent truly cosmopolitan, - Raved both in English and some unknown tongue. - His accents wild and unintelligible, - Devoid of meaning, on his hearers fell, - With the exception of the practised ear - Of Russian Pete, who stood beside him there, - And seemed from his expression to detect - Some most familiar tongue or dialect. - - When reason, with a penetrating gleam, - Burst through the canopy of mental gloom, - As one awakening from a hideous dream, - He started up and stared about the room, - Until he chanced to catch the kindly eyes - Of Russian Pete, which kindled with surprise. - A look of mutual recognition passed - Between the men, so strangely joined at last. - All that the congregated miners heard - Was one, presumably a Russian word, - And Russian Pete, with joy-illumined face, - Held his lost brother in his kind embrace. - - * * * * * - * * * * * - - Dazed by exhaustion, comatose and deep, - The two survivors, while the tempest roared, - Were through the gentle ministry of sleep - To normal strength unconsciously restored. - -[Illustration: - "We grew as two twin pines might grow, - Upon the isolated edge, - Of some lone precipice or ledge." - - _See page 57._] - - 'Tis human nature to review again The stirring incidents of joy or - pain; So on the eve of the succeeding day, When four-and-twenty hours - had passed away, The party grouped around the blazing light Which from - the fireplace streamed into the night, And in its glow, so comfortable - and warm, Recounted the disasters of the storm. Like some informal - gathering, at first All spoke at once, as with a common burst; Then as - the intermittent tempest wailed, The talk subsided and a calm - prevailed. All watched the pitch ooze from the knots and burn, Or - smoked their pipes in silent unconcern. - - Some moments passed, when Uncle Jim arose, Nudged Dad McGuire, who - seemed inclined to doze, And as he started up and rubbed his eyes - Addressed him and the Russian in this wise: "Two days ago the three of - us confessed The reasons, that impelled us to come West; Now if it - please your brethren to relate The strange caprice of fortune or of - fate, Which led them hither,--after all these years, The boys will - listen with attentive ears." - - -VII. THE BLIGHT OF WAR - - All eyes now sought the brother of McGuire, - Who sat apart, some distance from the fire - Smoking in silence, while the flickering light - Mingled its crimson with his locks of white; - He, with his flowing, patriarchal beard, - A sage, from some forgotten age, appeared, - Or wrinkled seer from some enchanted clime, - Whose eye could pierce the veil of future time. - There in the ever thickening haze of smoke, - He, being three times importuned,--awoke. - - As from his corncob pipe and nostrils broke - The spiral wreaths of blue tobacco smoke, - Which formed a smoky halo, as they spread - A foot above his venerable head, - Resembling halos which the artist paints - O'er angel heads, or mediæval saints, - This man of years, so calm and circumspect, - Stroked his long beard, yawned twice and stood erect. - - Like to a wizard, or magician old, - With some mysterious secret to unfold, - This man, whose bearing would command respect, - Stepped forth and eyed his listeners direct; - Then waiving preludes or apologies, - Addressed his auditors in terms like these: - "These lips, which now their secret shall reveal, - For more than forty years have worn a seal. - For years as hunter, pioneer and scout, - I roamed the western solitudes about, - Not caring whether fortune smiled or not, - If memory's painful twinges were forgot. - I sought, as many other men have done, - Within the wilderness,--oblivion. - Work is the only sure iconoclast - For the unpleasant memories of the past; - So as a placer miner, prospector, - And half a dozen avocations more, - Within the city, and the solitude, - The star-eyed Goddess of Success I wooed. - Twice was I numbered with the men of wealth, - Twice lost I all, including strength and health. - For wealth, when fortune's fickle wheel revolves - Adversely, into empty air dissolves. - Till fate so strangely led my footsteps here, - Mine was, indeed, a versatile career. - Yet none my antecedents ever guessed, - Nor learned from me the cause that led me west. - - This hair and beard which envy not to-night - The drifting snowbanks their unbroken white, - Methinks, as memory scans the backward track, - Vied with the raven's glossy coat of black, - When I, with some adventurous emigrants, - First crossed the plain's monotonous expanse, - To leave my former history behind. - But who can regulate his peace of mind, - Or drop the morbid burdens of the breast - By simply going east or coming west? - - 'Way down upon the Rappahannock's shore, - Enshrined in memory, though seen no more, - There lies an old plantation. There I drew - My infant breath, and into manhood grew. - Its fields are overgrown with willows now, - For more than forty years unturned by plough, - While war's red desolation razed to earth - The old stone manor-house that claimed my birth. - - Ah, yes! 'Tis forty years ago, or more, - Since, standing near the old paternal door, - One pleasant morning in the early spring, - With some few friends and kinfolks visiting, - Two mounted neighbors stopped in passing by, - And reining up their horses hurriedly - Told us the news, which like a cannon ball - Sped through the land, announcing Sumter's fall. - The animus with which their comments fell, - I heard months later in the rebel yell. - - In civil war or fratricide is found - No place for such as seek a middle ground. - Though lines of demarcation intervene, - No peaceful neutral zone may lie between. - 'Tis not an easy thing to breast the tide - Of public sentiment, and to decide - In opposition, though the cause be right, - When crossing public sentiment means fight. - 'Tis easier to let the moving throng - Without resistance carry you along. - When he who hesitates, or turns around, - May in the grist of public wrath be ground. - But men there are you cannot drive in flocks; - They dash like breakers, or resist like rocks. - - Within my breast I fought my sternest fight, - I could not view the southern cause as right, - And yet I loved the people of the south; - Debating thus I opened not my mouth. - Both in my waking hours and in my dreams, - I heard the arguments of two extremes. - My conscience said: 'A uniform of blue - Awaits your coming, wear it and be true.' - My interests argued: 'Though the cause be wrong, - Your people have espoused it right along. - Your worthy family has for many years - Seen sorrow only in the white man's tears. - Desertion means to wear the traitor's brands, - And face your friends with muskets in their hands, - To slay them with the bayonet and ball, - Or by, perhaps, your brother's hand to fall.' - - I heard the clarion accents of the fife - Fan into flames the dormant coals of strife. - With blast prophetic and reverberant swell, - I heard the bugle's echoing voice foretell - The coming conflict, while the brazen notes - Were answered by the cheers from many throats. - I heard the measured rattle of the drum, - Proclaiming that the day of wrath had come. - I heard harangues, incendiary and loud, - Meet with the approbation of the crowd. - I saw the faltering and irresolute, - Greeted with jeer and deprecating hoot. - I saw the threatening clouds of war increase, - Yet prayed for peace, where there could be no peace. - The winds of slavery their seed had sown; - That seed to rank maturity had grown; - The cup was full, and now from branch and root, - The whirlwind came to strip its lawful fruit. - - I saw my friends and neighbors march away - With martial tread, in uniforms of gray. - I saw them raise their caps in passing by - And fair hands wave their kerchiefs in reply. - Then I, who had in military schools - Received some insight into army rules, - And, being of a martial turn of mind, - Was offered a commission, and,--declined. - My declination was a shock to all, - 'Coward!' said they, 'to shun your country's call,-- - Then stay at home, from wounds and scars exempt, - But pay the price,--your former friends' contempt.' - - That action was, for me, the Rubicon, - Which crossed, I had no choice but follow on. - But what a change! The penalty was high, - My childhood's friends now passed me coldly by. - I, who had been a social favorite, - Received no salutation when we met. - Fair ones, who used to smile, now looked askance, - Or eyed me with a cold indifference. - My action seemed base cowardice in their eyes, - They knowing not my secret sympathies. - Though of a family rich and widely known, - I stood in the community, alone, - Like a pariah none would recognize, - Inaction was enough to ostracize. - I seemed to see, like Hagar's fated son, - Against me raised the hand of every one. - - The time had come when I must make my choice, - Defend one side with musket and with voice; - Then I, to conscience and convictions true, - Seemed an apostate,--for I chose the blue. - - There are inscriptions on the scrolls of fate - Which seem too bitter even to relate. - I waive the details,--better to conceal - The secret skeletons, than to reveal. - I shall not tell you how my brother stormed, - When he of my intentions was informed. - I pass the story, how my ringing ears - Were filled with threats, entreaties and with sneers. - And how with tear-stained face the maiden came, - Who was to be my bride and bear my name; - How she appealed to sentiment and pride, - Plead, supplicated,--then forsook my side; - And how one evening, in an angry burst, - My sire pronounced his favorite son accurst; - And how a mother, clinging to her child, - Saw son and father still unreconciled; - And how that father, pointing to the door, - Forbade that son to cross the threshold more; - 'Go, go!' said he, 'but never more return! - Go, slay your neighbors, pillage, sack and burn! - But never while the golden sun doth shine, - Be welcomed home as son and heir of mine.' - I state not what in anger I replied, - For anger in my breast has long since died. - Renounced, despised and disinherited, - I trod the path of duty where it led, - And ten days later, in the rain and damp, - Stood as a sentry near a Union camp. - - * * * * * - - Fain from my recollections would I blot - These images, which time erases not, - And leave to history's undying page, - The recitation of those acts of rage. - Incarnadined with human blood appears - The record of the four succeeding years. - Black with the ruins of the vandal flame, - A carnival of misery and shame. - I must abridge, and if my hearers please, - Confine myself to generalities. - - From first Manassas to the Wilderness, - A period of some four years,--more or less, - But anyway, till long in sixty-four, - A musket or a shoulder-strap I bore. - Though years have passed, I have remembrance yet - Of musketry and glistening bayonet. - As retrospective moods attune the ear - To memory's voice, again I seem to hear - The cannon's deep and minatory roar, - Like breakers dashing on a rock-bound shore. - The bursting bomb and fulminating shell, - Again their stories of destruction tell. - - Again to-night, with memory's eye I view - The sanguinary scenes of sixty-two, - The march of infantry, the reckless dash - Of cavalry, with onslaught fierce and rash; - I see their sabres, glittering and bare, - Flash from their scabbards in the smoky air; - I hear the clatter of the horses' hoofs, - And see the smoke expand in greyish puffs; - As rifles flash and speed the deadly ball, - I see the riders from their horses fall; - Yet forward moves the furious attack, - The opposing column wavers and falls back; - I see the impact, combat hand to hand, - Horses and riders writhing on the sand; - I see the steeds with perspiration wet, - Sink on the well-directed bayonet; - I see them, wounded by the fatal lunge, - Become unmanageable and madly plunge; - Foaming and snorting with the sudden pain, - They trample on the wounded and the slain; - I see their riders in the stirrups stand - And grasp their pistols with the bridle hand; - I see the pistols flash and sabres thrust, - A scene of wild confusion, smoke and dust; - I hear the bugle sounding a retreat, - They now retire, their victory complete; - But mark the price paid for their brief success; - Horses with blood-stained saddles,--riderless. - - I see an army bivouac on the field, - To nature's obdurate demands they yield, - And on the ground, from sheer exhaustion spent, - They lie without protecting roof or tent. - So silently their prostrate forms are spread, - One may not tell the sleeping from the dead. - I see, before the campfire's fitful gleam, - The sentry pace, as in a waking dream, - Yet manfully subduing the fatigue - Of battle, and the march of many a league, - For no excitement or emotion serves - To buoy his spirits or sustain his nerves. - Weak from the loss of their accustomed rest, - With heavy eyes and aching bones distressed, - The while their weary comrades soundly sleep, - The sentinels their lonely vigils keep, - As from the glittering expanse of skies, - The stars look down with cold, impassive eyes. - - I see brigades, magnificent and large, - With bristling bayonets prepare to charge; - I see their banners in the distance gleam, - Reflecting back the sun's resplendent beam; - Within the shelter of the rifle pits, - Another army with composure sits, - While ever and anon a rifle's crack - Seems to invite the spirited attack. - From a commanding, wooded eminence, - By nature calculated for defence, - Upon the advancing regiments I see - The murderous belching of artillery; - I see their proud and militant array, - Before the deadly grapeshot melt away; - Before the rifle's supplementing breath, - Whole columns sink in ghastly heaps of death; - I see them close their gaps and press ahead, - But only to augment the list of dead; - I see them, stretched upon the burning sands, - Clutching the air with lacerated hands; - From underneath the mutilated heap, - The wounded, with great difficulty, creep; - Dragging a helpless arm, or shattered limb, - With reeling brain and sight confused and dim, - They grope, they crawl, or limp with painful tread; - Their uniforms no longer blue, but red; - And pinioned underneath the ghastly pile, - I hear them struggle for release the while; - But fainter, ever fainter grow their cries, - Fainter, and fainter still, their groans arise; - Weaker and weaker are their throes, until - With one last quivering throb, they too, are still. - - I see the vultures, as they scent afar - Their portion in the reeking spoils of war; - Far in the distance scattering specks appear, - Which multiply in size as they draw near, - Until they balance with their pinions spread, - Or circle 'round the dying and the dead. - - This is the realistic side of war, - Which most men overlook and all abhor, - Which differs from the sentiments conveyed - By spotless uniforms on dress parade. - - * * * * * - - War is a crucible that tries men's souls, - A drama, stern in all its various rôles; - Though saturated with all forms of crime, - 'Tis celebrated in heroic rhyme; - Though opposite to every humane thought, - With murder, pillage and destruction fraught, - In literature, in history and art, - It forms the theme, or plays a leading part; - Though at the best, deplorable and bad, - 'Tis yet with sentiment and romance clad; - Thus are the gory deeds of sword and fire, - Commemorated by the bardic lyre. - - Its eras, though with tragedy replete, - Form stepping-stones whereon ambitious feet - May mount to prominence, perhaps to fame, - And write in crimson an illustrious name. - 'Tis said that heroes are the fruits of war, - No matter what the struggle may be for, - As men will fight to make, or unmake laws, - Will fight for, or against the worthiest cause. - They must have heroes, though to make them drains - The life-blood from the nation's noblest veins. - And though no vocal adulations rise, - Their heroes many men apotheosize. - Man is so strangely constituted, he - Must hero-worshipper, or hero be,-- - So give him heroes, let the armies bleed, - And he will worship them with word and deed; - Though down within their breasts most men prefer - To be the hero, than the worshipper. - - To gain the plaudits of the multitude, - The warrior, with ambitious zeal imbued, - Climbs upward, and accomplishing his ends - To take his share of worship condescends, - Forgetting that his honors are bedewed - With human tears and based on human blood. - - Some streaks, in military pomp, we see, - That savor much of pride and vanity, - As thirst for notoriety and fame - Has often fanned the patriotic flame. - Though one might think that men would be content - To pluck one star from glory's firmament, - Yet, when they mount the ladder a few rounds, - Their envy and ambition know no bounds. - To wear the epaulette and strut with pride, - Makes men forget that war is homicide. - - Some call it fate, some call it destiny, - Some call it accident; what'er it be, - It seems that some have been created for - The honors, some, the sacrifice of war. - - * * * * * - - When I enlisted as a raw recruit, - Promotion was no object of pursuit, - But liking honor more than sacrifice, - On shoulder-straps I soon cast envious eyes. - For one rash act,--'twas counted bravery, - Good fortune made a corporal of me. - Soon, as if favored by some lucky charm, - I wore a sergeant's stripes upon my arm. - Twice was I wounded, twice resumed the field - Before my wounds had been completely healed. - I carry yet, and shall until I die, - A musket ball, encysted in my thigh. - Twice was I captured, twice as prisoner - Drank I the dregs from out the cup of war. - As if some guardian star my course arranged, - Once I escaped, and once was I exchanged. - Then, as lieutenant, rose I from the ranks, - Received a medal and a vote of thanks. - - The ladder of promotion, round by round, - I soon ascended and henceforth was found - Among the few selected favorites - Whom fortune decks with stars and epaulettes. - Though liking not the rôle of matador, - Within the ruthless theatre of war, - From private soldier every part I played, - Until my sword directed a brigade. - I wore, the night before I started west, - Four medal decorations on my breast. - - The war progressed, for time rolls on the same - In peace or war, and sixty-three became - A chapter in the annals of the past. - When sixty-four was ushered in at last, - To write in characters of blood and fire - Its page of human immolation, dire, - The waiting army lay encamped, before - The Rapidan's inhospitable shore. - The first few weeks, devoid of incident, - Were in the army's winter quarters spent, - Until the winter, on his snowy wing, - Retired before the genial breath of spring. - In speculation on the moves to come, - The tongue of prophecy remained not dumb, - But showered prognostications of defeat, - Succeeded by the usual retreat, - When rumors of offensive action planned - As spring approached, were spread through each command. - Until the troops were mobilized and massed, - Until the final orders had been passed, - The veterans, who had remembrance still, - Recounted Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. - - But soon the dreadful Wilderness campaign, - With its long lists of wounded and of slain, - Vied with the carnage of the year before, - If it be possible to measure gore. - The tactics had been changed, for no retreat - Was ordered, as the sequel of defeat; - Instead of faltering or turning back, - There came another furious attack, - Another movement with invasive tread, - And, Spottsylvania claimed its heaps of dead. - Defeated, but uncrushed and undismayed, - The weakened corps, including my brigade, - With sadly thinned and decimated ranks, - Was hurled once more against the rebel flanks. - There in a hurricane of shot and shell, - One-half of its surviving numbers fell; - 'Twas thus Cold Harbor's quarry made complete - The trio of victorious defeat. - - Three Southern victories, yet like a knell - Upon the Southern ear these triumphs fell; - For those who perished in that dismal waste, - Had fallen and could never be replaced. - Though stubbornly contested inch by inch, - The lines were tightened like a horse's cinch. - We watched the Southern forces day by day, - From natural abrasion, wear away. - - * * * * * - - One evening as the disappearing light, - Unveiled the beauties of a cloudless night, - With much diminished numbers, my brigade - Its camp beside the Rappahannock made, - Some five miles distant from the spot of earth - Associated with my humble birth. - - Next morning, ere the twinkling stars had set, - While officers and men were sleeping yet, - A courier rode up to my command, - And placed a cipher message in my hand; - Then spurring well his horse of dapple grey, - With parting salutation rode away. - This was the import of that message stern: - 'Lay waste the district. All the fences burn. - Leave not a house or stable unconsumed.' - My father's house among the rest was--doomed. - I read that message and my anger blazed, - My home to be, by my own orders, razed! - - A vision rose before my swimming brain, - I saw the old parental roof again, - I saw my father, as in days of yore, - Smoking his pipe beside the open door; - I saw his gaze, with penetrating look, - Fixed on the pages of some wholesome book; - I saw my mother sit beside him, there, - Recumbent in her old reclining chair. - The vision changed,--I saw her parting tears, - My father's parting curse rang in my ears; - 'Go! Go!' said he, 'but nevermore return, - Go, slay your neighbors, pillage, sack and burn, - But never while the golden sun doth shine - Be welcomed home as son and heir of mine.' - - I felt but little longing to return, - And less desire to pillage, sack and burn. - And yet,--those cruel orders I must give, - No power had I to voice the negative. - In commonplace affairs of life, 'tis true, - Men may elect to do, or not to do. - In military operations, they - Have no alternative, but to obey. - - Ah! Fain, from that impending holocaust - Would I have snatched them! Rather had I lost - The tinselled honors and the epaulettes, - And doffed my uniform without regrets, - Than harm by word or deed that agèd sire; - Yet I must start, who fain would quench the fire. - I read and read that cipher message there, - How many times, I have not to declare, - But over and again I scanned the lines, - And pondered well its symbols and its signs; - Ironclad were they, from every standpoint viewed, - Admitting not of choice or latitude; - So, to the officers of my command, - I gave their orders, with a trembling hand, - And swift as horseflesh ever travelled, went - To seek the corps commander in his tent, - To crave this boon, or favor, at his hand,-- - My father's house be still allowed to stand. - - 'Twas long before I gained an audience; - I felt, but cannot picture the suspense - Of that long hour's involuntary wait; - Too late, my heart would beat, too late, too late! - I took a seat and pulled my watch out once; - 'Too late, too late,' the timepiece ticked response! - I paced the ground with quick, impatient tread; - 'Too late, too late, too late,' my footsteps said! - 'Too late, too late, too late!' With fluttering beat - My heart responded to my echoing feet. - - The General, who a kindly heart possessed, - No sooner heard, than granted my request; - 'Twas but a moment's work to mount my steed, - And spur him to his maximum of speed; - The faithful creature seemed to understand - And needed little urging from my hand, - As down the turnpike, toward my childhood's home, - He fairly flew, his bridle white with foam; - His hoofbeats, as we clattered o'er the ground, - Returned a dull, premonitory sound, - Which seemed to echo and accentuate - The burden of my heart, 'Too late! Too late!' - - The fences, near the turnpike, as we passed, - Were by my orders disappearing fast; - The rails were piled in heaps and soon became - A prey to war's red ally,--vandal flame. - Houses, familiar to my childish sight, - Glowed strangely with an unaccustomed light, - While from adjacent barns and hay-ricks broke - Incipient tongues of flame and clouds of smoke. - The orders, ruthless and inflexible, - Were by the soldiers executed well. - - Still down the turnpike dashed my sweating horse, - I plied the cruel spurs with double force, - When in the distance there appeared to view - The old stone manor-house my childhood knew. - My spirit sank,--though I was not surprised, - My worst misgivings had been realized, - For from the roof and upper windows came - Dense clouds of smoke and lurid sheets of flame. - It had its portion in the common fate, - 'Too late!' the mocking hoof-beats rang, 'Too late!' - - We passed a company, on their return - From executing those instructions stern; - It was the company of my brigade - Wherein I first was a lieutenant made; - Its officers and men I knew by name; - They cheered me when their captain I became; - They cheered me when I left a major's tent, - To be the colonel of their regiment. - - They did my bidding. How could I condemn! - They honored me and I respected them; - And yet, these favorites of my command - Had not one hour before applied the brand - Which was transforming with its wand of fire - My father's house into--his funeral pyre. - - That they had met resistance, I could see, - For wounded men, in number two or three, - Were by their comrades carted in advance, - While one more limped behind the ambulance. - Upon a stretcher carried in their van, - The soldiers bore the body of a man; - He was their captain, and my bosom friend; - He plied that torch,--and met a bloody end. - - I plunged the spurs, but not without remorse, - Into his steaming flanks and urged my horse, - Which I disliked to tax beyond his strength; - Such speed had he maintained, that now, at length, - He was compelled to pant and hesitate; - With labored effort we dashed through the gate, - Or where the gate had been an hour before, - For gate and fence alike, were seen no more, - Save in the scattered bonfires, while at most - All that remained was here and there a post. - - There was a fascination in that sight - Which seemed to conquer and unnerve me, quite; - A sense of horror, not akin to fear, - Possessed my being as we galloped near; - All sorts of evil pictures filled my mind, - As one who seeks, yet dreads what he may find; - As we drew nearer, I remember well, - With hissing crash the roof collapsed and fell; - Dismounting, I the premises surveyed, - And viewed the havoc and destruction made; - Crushed by the disappointment, the suspense, - And failure of my planned deliverance, - I moved about with apprehensive tread, - To seek my relatives, alive or dead; - And, near a haystack's smouldering ruins found - My father's body, weltering on the ground; - A musket tightly clenched within his hand, - Slain by the troopers of my own command; - His whitened locks were streaked with crimson stains, - The same red blood then coursing through my veins. - - Close by his side, a form with silvered hair, - Caressed his brow, with dazed, abstracted air; - 'Twas she who nursed my being into life, - The highest type of mother and of wife; - Our glances met, yet e'er I framed to speak, - She started up, then with a piercing shriek - Fell back, expiring on the speechless clay - Of him whose life so lately ebbed away. - - * * * * * - - As campfires gleamed, and heaven's orb, serene - With borrowed radiance, o'erflowed the scene, - Within a grave, beneath the crimson sands, - I laid them both to rest with my own hands. - In lieu of prayer, or solemn dirge, was heard - The twittering cadence of the mockingbird, - Uniting with the sentry's muffled tread, - Which seemed a measured requiem for the dead, - As, side by side, in death's eternal sleep, - I laid them tenderly, nor paused to weep, - For feelings which in tears find no relief - Had dried the very fountainheads of grief. - I shaped a double mound above their clay, - Planted a wooden cross,--and went my way. - - * * * * * - - That night I tore the medals from my breast, - Resigned my sword and started for the West." - - -VIII. THE STORY OF AN EXILE - - Such was the tragic story told, - And, tired from standing on his feet, - This patriarch so gray and old - Relit his pipe and took a seat. - As one, inert and overtaxed - From strenuous toil, he soon relaxed - Into that dull composure, which - Fatigue accords to poor and rich. - - The observation could detect - No levity nor disrespect, - Nor through his story was there heard - Remark or interruptive word, - His voice and bearing as he spoke, - Admitting not of jest or joke. - The common feeling seemed to be - Respect and deepest sympathy. - - As childish incidents recurred - In memory to Dad McGuire, - As one who neither saw nor heard - He sat, intent upon the fire; - Yet watched the ever-changing blaze - With that intensity of gaze - Which shows the things the eyes have caught - Are not the subjects of the thought, - But far beyond their metes and bounds - The vision rests on other grounds. - - This story of a life rehearsed, - Left other eyes bedimmed and blurred; - Each with his silent thoughts conversed - And none presumed to speak a word, - Lest sympathy the tears provoke. - Old Uncle Jim forgot to smoke - And though he had replenished it, - Still left his meerschaum pipe unlit, - Till as the watchdog suddenly - Wakes up with apprehensive sniff, - He started from his reverie - And took an unsuccessful whiff; - But embers which the fire supplied - Soon changed the fragrant charge inside - With alternating draw and whiff, - Into a meerschaum Teneriffe. - - All smoked, excepting Dad McGuire, - Who stirred the embers of the fire, - And placed thereon what seemed to be, - The remnants of a hemlock tree; - 'Twas one of those ungainly stumps, - Composed of twisted knots and bumps, - Which every boy or even man, - In chopping wood, skips if he can; - 'Twas such a chunk as may be seen - After the woodpile's chopped up clean; - The log they split the blocks upon - And leave when all the rest is gone. - This chunk, which none of them could split, - Though many had attempted it, - By divers and ingenious ways, - Was soon enveloped in a blaze, - Which shed its glare into the night, - As beacons radiate their light. - - Reclining by his brother's side, - Abstracted and preoccupied, - The Russian, rubicund and hale, - Was importuned to tell his tale, - And slightly coughing from the smoke, - Forthwith in faultless diction spoke: - "My brother's story you have heard, - The same should mine be, word for word, - Up to that dismal dungeon grate, - Which he presumed had sealed my fate. - I doubt not he related well - The horrors of that loathsome cell, - So that description, now by me, - Would fruitless repetition be. - Sufficient be it to declare - That brief was my detention there. - - Though discontent the action was - Which constituted my offence, - I felt the weight of Russian laws - When chained to other malcontents. - Before the chains had time to rust - I plodded through the mud and dust - As many exiles erst had trod, - Their footprints often stained with blood. - With clanking chains and painful stride, - With Cossack guards on either side, - We marched in silence, in the reach - Of sabres that discouraged speech. - A sad procession, for full well - Our destinations could we tell. - Down country lane and village street - We limped with bruised and blistered feet, - In single file, as some infirm - Though monstrous centipede or worm, - Beset by some tormenting foe, - Might move with locomotion slow, - And tortured by its enemy, - Propel its foul dimensions by. - - Past where the Urals, bleak and high, - Invade the cerulean sky - With summits desolate and gray, - With weary tread we wound our way. - Where intertwining branches made - A vernal canopy of shade, - The song-birds, from their arches high - Mocked at our chains, as we passed by; - The only forms of earth or air, - Deprived of rightful freedom there. - - At night in forest depths profound, - We lay upon the cheerless ground, - Where on our route we chanced to be, - Nor couch nor coverlet had we - Between us and the turf or stones, - To soothe our tired and aching bones. - Our limbs emaciated grew, - Ragged were we and dirty, too, - As o'er the trans-Slavonian plains, - We dragged our grievous weight of chains. - - As passed the autumn months away - Six leagues we measured every day, - Six leagues our loads were daily borne, - On shoulders galled and callous-worn. - Each morning was our march begun, - Before the advent of the sun, - While every evening in the west - He sank, before we paused for rest. - Time and again upon the road, - The weaker dropped beneath their load, - And fainting from fatigue and pain, - They sank, but rose not up again. - - Where the Pacific's broad expanse - Of sleeping waters, calm and fair, - Divide the mighty continents - With their pelagic barrier; - Upon the Asiatic shore, - Some twelve leagues from the sea or more, - In course of time, our weary line - Was halted at a penal mine. - 'Twas there within a log stockade - Constructed in a manner crude, - That we our habitation made - Through many months of servitude. - - A mine's a mine the world around, - A cheerless place wherever found, - Dismal and dark beyond compare - And charged with foul, unwholesome air, - Which fills the lungs at every breath - With germs of an untimely death. - In caverns subterranean, - With limbs not bound by gyve or chain, - Of those who toil, few are the men - Who reach the threescore years and ten. - Such was the smoke-polluted mine - Wherein we slaved from morn till night, - Or when the sun had ceased to shine - We toiled till his returning light, - Then dragged each one his ball and chain - Back to his bed of straw again. - Day after day could there be seen - The same monotonous routine; - Such was the drudging life we led - Till hope from every bosom fled, - And each became as time rolled on - A spiritless automaton. - - The details of a captive's lot - I fear would interest you not, - So your forbearance I beseech, - While, in impromptu forms of speech, - I strive in simple terms to shape - The narrative of my escape. - - * * * * * - - From out the realms of tropic heat, - Invading with contagious feet, - Came there a plague, one summer-tide. - Up from the south with fatal stride - It stalked, and poured its vials forth - Upon the sparsely settled North; - A wave of pestilence and fear - Swept o'er the northland far and near; - The frenzied peasants, in their fright, - Sought safety in promiscuous flight; - In consternation and alarm, - To seek immunity from harm, - They left the sick in their distress, - And fled into the wilderness; - As if, within the solitude, - The Nemesis, which had pursued, - Might satiate its deadly wrath, - And deviate or change its path, - And its malignant steps retrace - Back to the southern starting-place. - - The able-bodied left behind - The paralyzed, the halt and blind; - The well in abject terror fled, - Forsook the dying, while the dead, - Unburied in the summer breeze, - Became a nidus of disease, - Wherefrom fresh seeds of pestilence - Were scattered by the elements. - - Of those who felt its loathsome breath, - But few escaped a speedy death; - So rapid were the ravages - Of that distemper or disease, - That many, stricken in the night, - Expired before the dawn of light; - For some, who in the morning time - Stood well and strong in manhood's prime, - The noontide brought the fatal scourge, - And evening zephyrs played the dirge; - Those who survived the plague direct - Oft died from hunger and neglect; - The convalescents woke and found - No ministering forms around, - No watcher sitting by the bed, - Alone were they, save for the dead; - They called, but Echo's voice alone - Answered the supplicating moan; - They prayed, but no one heard their prayer, - Then perished from the want of care. - - The suffering of the stricken then, - Defies descriptive word or pen; - I see with memory's vision yet - The beads of suppurating sweat - Stand on the burning brows of those - Smitten with agonizing throes; - As racking tortures permeate - Each swollen and distorted shape, - With thirst which none may mitigate, - They call for drink with mouths agape; - Yet naught may succor such distress, - Save coma and unconsciousness; - When these the intellect benumb, - The sense and feeling overcome, - Within its tuneful cavern hung - No longer rests the fluent tongue, - But swollen by the pain and drouth, - Protrudes from out the parching mouth; - The burning and discolored lip - Imagined moisture tries to sip; - Again they vainly strive to speak - Their fevered incoherencies, - But vocal organs parched and weak - Respond but labored gasp and wheeze. - - I scent the putrefying air, - And see the horror and despair - Depicted on the lineaments - Of every stricken countenance; - I see them writhe, then suddenly, - With ghastly leer convulse and die. - - As stagnant waters generate - A fungous and unsightly freight - Of morbid scum and slimy moss, - Of origin spontaneous; - So latent germs, unnoticed, lurk - In readiness for deadly work; - When these the right conditions find, - And spread infection to the wind, - Chronologers, both far and near, - Record an epidemic year. - - Within the bounds of our stockade, - The plague its foul appearance made, - And soon inoculated there, - Its virus to the very air, - Till e'en the genial summer breeze - Seemed a dispenser of disease; - Then, as impartial lightnings strike - The nobleman and serf alike, - Within this filthy prison yard, - It smote both prisoner and guard; - The difference of race, of lot, - Of rank was speedily forgot, - As discipline succumbed to dread - And officers and soldiers fled, - Save such as, fallen by the way, - Helpless and unattended lay, - Till death brought silence and relief, - From agony intense, though brief. - - Within the walls of the stockade - Not one unstricken person stayed, - Except some convicts who remained - For one good reason:--we were chained. - Our dingy quarters, floor and bed, - Were filled with dying and with dead; - The only shelter we could claim, - A fetid lazar-house became. - I need not tell you how the air - Was filled with accents of despair, - How clamor and entreaty smote - The air, from blistered tongue and throat, - As burning rash and ghastly rheum - Supplanted nature's ruddy bloom; - How moan and outcry, curse and prayer - Were mingled with each other there; - Some raved in dialects unknown, - Or terms provincial, while the groan, - The common tongue of suffering men, - Was echoed ever and again. - - Some, with reluctant clutch and gasp, - Saw life receding from their grasp; - And some, with stoic countenance, - Maintained a stern indifference, - For what are death's abstruse alarms, - When life is shorn of all its charms; - As zealots, when they come to die, - Lift their enraptured gaze on high, - And clasp to the expiring breast - Some crucifix or icon blest, - And mutter with stertorious breath - Some sacred word or shibboleth, - Then sink expectant and resigned, - As if in death a boon to find, - Some in excruciating pain, - Welcomed its foul destroying breath - And sought from cruel gyve and chain - Emancipation, though in death. - - 'Tis not my purpose to declare - The horrors which befell us there, - As passed the fatal hours away, - Of that most memorable day. - Each hour increased our dire distress, - Yet found our numbers less and less, - Till when the shadows overspread, - The major number were the dead. - But three survived that awful night, - To gaze upon the morning light; - And when the noonday breezes blew, - That three had been reduced to two; - And ere the setting of the sun - I was the sole remaining one. - A silence strangely mute and dumb - Succeeded pandemonium. - - There when my last companion died, - Chained to a corpse on either side, - Strange as may seem the miracle, - I never felt more strong and well, - Nor held my life in less esteem; - In that position most extreme, - By silent death surrounded, I - Enjoyed a weird immunity. - - 'Twould serve no purpose to recite - My feelings, as approaching night, - With his impenetrable pall, - Descended and enveloped all. - I sat alone in fear and dread, - Chained to the floor,--and to the dead. - A gruesome and revolting sight - Is horrifying in the light, - But when dissembling night conceals, - The breast a double terror feels. - That darkness, black beyond compare, - Seemed a fit mantle for despair. - Few are the words when hope has failed; - An awful quietude prevailed; - I sat, a mute and helpless lump, - And felt my heart's pulsating thump, - With movement regular and strong, - Propel life's crimson flood along, - But made no sound until the spell - Of silence was unbearable. - - I spoke, but all the ears in reach - Were deaf to every charm of speech; - I shouted till the roof, the floor - And walls resounded with the roar; - I called the dead men at my side, - But Echo's voice alone replied; - I was alone, nor man nor brute - Was there, save those so stark and mute; - My voice upon my listening ear - Fell, most unnatural and queer, - As if with weird, uncanny sound - The walls responsive voices found, - And echoed back the tones at will, - To mock those tongues so cold and still; - Though these vociferations made - My spirit none the less afraid, - The silence seemed more terrible; - Words fail me as I strive to tell - How in my desperation, I - Abandoned hope, yet could not die. - - I never craved the morning light, - As through that terrifying night, - For gentle but erratic Sleep - Withheld her respite soft and deep, - As in that charnel house I lay, - Till twilight ushered in the day. - - When daylight had returned again - I strove with the relentless chain, - Twisted and tugged until at length - A more than ordinary strength - Possessed my arm, and at one stroke - The rivets weakened, bent and broke; - One master wrench and from the floor, - The ring which held the chain I tore; - I dragged the dead men o'er the ground - Till forge and anvil I had found; - There with the hammer, rasp and file - I wrought with diligence the while; - At some expense of time and pains, - I disengaged the cruel chains, - And stood once more erect and free: - Thus ended my captivity. - - * * * * * - - A guard lay prostrate on the sand, - His rifle in his lifeless hand; - I wrenched it from his rigid clutch, - Then played the ghoul in self-defence, - For clothing and accoutrements - Escaped not my despoiling touch; - I breathed the air of liberty, - Alone I stood, but armed and free. - To mislead any watchful eyes, - I donned a militant disguise, - And, in the dead man's uniform, - Was soon prepared for strife or storm. - - Unseen, unhindered, unpursued, - I soon was in the solitude, - Contending with impediments, - Which every wilderness presents. - Primeval forests, through which poured - Rivers unknown to bridge or ford; - Swamps, overgrown with weeds and moss, - Almost impossible to cross; - A waste of fallen trees and logs, - Rank vegetation, stagnant bogs; - Decaying leaves, profusely spread, - Which rustled at the slightest tread, - While underbrush and thicket made - A thorny maze or barricade, - Through which 'twas difficult to force - A passage or retain one's course. - - There my experience began, - Along the lines of primal man; - My fare, as I remember well, - Was strictly aboriginal, - For stupid grouse and ptarmigan - Were easily approached and slain; - And, as a relish for such food, - I had the berries of the wood. - - Through arches of umbrageous shade - I journeyed onward undismayed, - And undisturbed by man or beast, - Made daily progress toward the east, - Till viewing the Pacific shore, - Northward along the coast I bore. - I kept that course for many days, - Where none but savage eyes might gaze; - Full many a mile my footsteps led - Through regions uninhabited, - Till where Kamschatka's barren rocks - Resist the sea's aggressive shocks, - One gloomy afternoon, I stood - And watched the wide and trackless flood. - - 'Twould make a tedious tale, I fear, - Not meet for recitation here, - Should I endeavor to relate - The details of a hermit's fate. - To all appearance I was free; - A plethora of liberty - Is little consolation, where - One lonely recluse breathes the air; - For solitary mortals find - But little joy and peace of mind; - When freedom is enjoyed alone, - Its fondest attributes are flown; - Men of companions destitute - Sink to the level of the brute; - Their sacred essence seems to be - Dependent on community. - - Each morning, in the reddening skies, - Alone, I watched the sun god rise, - While every evening in the west, - Alone, I watched him sink to rest. - To catch a passing ship, in vain - I hourly scanned the watery plain, - Till one fair morn a distant sail - Brought the conclusion of my tale. - - The whaler, such she proved to be, - Steered landward through a rippling sea, - And made directly for the shore; - She anchored, then I saw them lower - The ship's long-boat; at a command - I saw them row, then saw them land. - Fearing occasion might require - The service of a signal fire, - A mass of driftwood I had heaped; - Behind that pile I hid and peeped. - From that concealed position, I, - Watching with closest scrutiny, - Discovered that the squad of ten - Were not my fellow-countrymen. - - Their purpose I could now discern; - One had a spade, which turn by turn - Each wielded till their willing hands - Had delved a grave within the sands. - Six of the party I espied - Returning to the long-boat's side, - Where from its bottom they began - To raise the body of a man, - In canvas strips securely sewed, - All ready for its last abode; - From every motion it would seem - The object of sincere esteem. - From my location I could see - Them balance it most tenderly, - As on six shoulders broad and strong, - They bore it sorrowfully along, - While wind and ever-restless surge - Joined in a requiem or dirge. - - The sun through hazy Autumn skies - Shone on the simple obsequies, - As round the open grave they stood, - In reverential attitude, - And shovelled in the brown sea sand; - One, with a prayer-book in his hand, - Essayed the rôle of corybant; - Omitting the accustomed chant, - He read a burial service there, - Concluding with its words of prayer: - 'Ashes to ashes! Dust to dust!' - These words of that abiding trust, - In life beyond the fleeting span - Which heaven has accorded man; - Elysian fields, where perfect peace - Succeeds life's transitory lease; - The inextinguishable fire - Of faith, the daughter of desire, - Glows brightest, when the faltering breath - Is conscious of approaching death; - Bent 'neath the weight of many years, - The form of hoary age appears, - E'en as the failing hourglass shows - That life is drawing to its close, - And when the final sands are spent, - The trembling limbs make their descent - Into the shadows, while the ray - Of faith illuminates the way. - Vain introspection, which descries - No light behind the mysteries - Of death, engenders in the breast - But vacant yearnings and unrest; - Relying on the eye of hope, - We look beyond our mundane scope, - And with enraptured vision see - The fore-gleams of futurity. - - With eager eyes I watched them stand, - Upon that barren waste of sand, - Until the final words of prayer - Had died away upon the air. - Their words, euphonious and clear, - Were wafted to my listening ear, - Borne on a favorable breeze - Which blew directly from the seas; - My breast, with deep emotion stirred, - I recognized their every word, - An English burial ritual read, - On this wild shore, above the dead. - This dissipated every fear, - I knew deliverance was near; - My secret would be safe among - The scions of the English tongue. - - Forever from the light of day - They laid his pallid form away, - While every word and action proved - Their rites were over one they loved. - Soon from the level of the ground, - There rose another silent mound, - To teach, beside that northern sea, - Its lesson of mortality. - - Death on that dismal northern main, - In binding with its silent chain - Forever their lamented mate, - Had freed me from a sterner fate. - Leaving my earstwhile hiding place, - I stood before them face to face; - Then in their own vernacular, - Gave proper salutation there. - 'Twas plain that they regarded me - As human salvage, which the sea - Had, in some evil moment, tossed - Upon that bleak and barren coast, - Like broken wreckage or debris, - Cast up by the capricious sea. - With frank but sympathetic eyes, - They watched me with no small surprise, - While I rehearsed without delay, - My story as a castaway. - - Repairing to the ship's long-boat, - Which soon was in the surf afloat, - I bade farewell to Russian soil - In language not intensely loyal. - They ministered to my distress, - From ample stores of food and dress, - Performed such acts of kindness then - As might beseem large-hearted men; - Nor was there aught perfunctory - In their solicitude for me; - Their acts were of their own accord, - Without suspicion of reward. - -[Illustration: - "The noble spruce and stately fir - Stood draped in feathery garniture." - - _See page 119._] - - Although possessed of little skill - In nautical affairs, to fill - [Blank Page] - A seaman's watch I volunteered, - As we toward Arctic waters steered, - Pursuant of the spouting whale; - I plied each task with rope and sail, - And ere we reached a harbor bar, - Was rated as a first-class tar; - By sufferance of as brave a crew - As ever sailed a voyage through, - The two succeeding years I passed - In northern seas before the mast; - Two years from that eventful day - We moored in San Francisco Bay. - I bade the sea farewell for aye, - Bade my deliverers good-bye, - With fervent pressure of the hand, - Then straight betook myself to land. - - * * * * * - - Seeking a home with freedom blest, - I've cast my fortunes with the West." - - -IX. CONCLUSION - - Concluding, he resumed his seat - Beside his brother, Russian Pete; - Yet ever and anon expressed - His views on points of interest, - And details, which this narrative - In its abridgment may not give, - As Dad McGuire and Uncle Jim - By turns interrogated him. - - To say his hearers listened well, - Were too self-evident to tell, - For some who dozed before he spake, - Woke up and then remained awake. - - As all the inclination felt, - To play a game, the cards were dealt; - The winners, it was understood, - To be exempt from chopping wood; - While he who made the lowest score - Must build the fire and sweep the floor. - Time spread his wings, the moments flew - Unheeded for an hour or two, - Until at length the measured stroke - Of twelve, in timely accents broke - From an old clock upon the shelf, - As old as Uncle Jim himself; - A good old clock, as old clocks go, - But usually too fast or slow, - But near enough the proper time - To serve the purpose of this rhyme. - - The honors passed to Russian Pete, - When Dad McGuire sustained defeat, - As mighty warriors often do, - In some Chalons, or Waterloo; - The fortunes of the final game, - Adding fresh laurels to his fame; - Then all abstained from further play, - And forthwith put the cards away. - - * * * * * - - 'Twas passing late, the dying fire - Served as the summons to retire, - And soon the gentle wand of sleep, - Which works the dream god's drowsy will, - Laden with slumbers soft and deep, - Passed over them and all was still. - - * * * * * - * * * * * - - The storm was over, far and near, - The heavens shone, so cold and clear - That nebulæ and satellites, - Unseen on ordinary nights, - Now filled the broad expanse of sky - With unaccustomed brilliancy; - The astral vacuums and voids, - Were filled with discs and asteroids; - Dissevering the firmament, - The Milky Way disclosed to sight - Its pearly avenue of white - With planetary crystals blent; - Transparently it shone, and pale, - As some celestial gauze or veil; - A silvery baldric o'er the gold - Of constellations manifold. - - A silence, undisturbed, prevailed, - The wind no longer moaned and wailed, - The elements had worked their will - And now were motionless and still; - From forest growth or underbrush - No whisper broke the solemn hush; - The tempest king on airy waves, - Retreated to his secret caves, - And chained the winds, which his behest - Had lately stirred to wild unrest. - - The clouds had vanished, not a trace - Remained upon the arch of space, - To interpose a curtain rude - Between earth and infinitude; - Pellucid as the vault o'erhead, - The snows a layer of beauty spread, - Save where the genii of the storm - Had fashioned in fantastic form, - With alternating whirl and sift, - The pendent comb and massive drift. - - The wilderness of ice and snow, - Transfigured with a mellow glow, - Received from the translucent skies - The stellar groups and galaxies; - A record of the starry waste, - By Nature's faultless pencil traced; - The vernal phalanxes of pine, - In cassocks clear and crystalline, - Seemed as a mirror, in whose sheen - The glimmering lamps of night were seen. - The replica of pearl and gem, - In heaven's twinkling diadem; - Golconda's treasury displayed, - On background of the forest shade. - - Divested of their transient green, - By Autumn winds in wanton rage, - The aspen's leafless limbs were seen - Festooned with frosty foliage; - As fell upon their vestal white, - The placid moon's aspiring light, - The noble spruce and stately fir, - Stood draped with feathery garniture; - Configurated and embossed, - With lace and tapestry of frost, - In quaint and curious design, - The willows and the underbrush, - Were crystallized in silvery plush, - And shimmered in the cold moonshine. - - * * * * * - - The azure dome of space o'erhead, - With scintillating grandeur spread, - Looked down with cold inquiring eyes, - On earth with all her mysteries; - The while reflecting in their snows, - These glittering jewels of the night, - The mountains lay in calm repose, - Slumbering 'neath their robes of white. - -[THE END] - - - - -DOLORES - - - I will sing of a quaint old tradition, - A legend romantic and strange, - Which was whispered to me by the pine trees - High up on the wild mountain range. - Far away in the mystical Westland, - From the mountain peaks crested with snow, - Glides Dolores, the river of sorrow, - Dolores, the river of woe. - - Time was when this river of sorrow - Had never a thought to be sad, - But meandered in joy through the meadows, - With bluebell and columbine clad. - Her ripples were ripples of laughter, - And the soft, dulcet voice of her flow - Was suggestive of peace and affection, - Not accents of anguish and woe. - - Long ago, ere the foot of the white man - Had left its first print on the sod, - A people, both free and contented, - Her mesas and cañon-ways trod. - Then Dolores, the river of sorrow, - Was a river of laughter and glee, - As she playfully dashed through the cañons - In her turbulent rush to the sea. - - High up on the cliffs in their dwellings, - Which were apertures walled up with rocks, - Lived this people, sequestered and happy; - Their dwellings now serve the wild fox. - They planted the maize and potato, - The kind river caused them to grow, - So they worshipped the river with singing - Which blent with its musical flow. - - This people, so artless and peaceful, - Knew nothing of carnage and war, - But dwelt in such quiet and plenty - They knew not what weapons were for. - They gathered the maize in its season, - Unmindful of famine or foe - And chanted their thanks to the spirits - That dwelt in the cañons below. - - But one evil day from the Northland - Swept an army in battle array, - Which fell on this innocent people - And massacred all in a day. - Their bodies were cast in the river, - A feast for the vultures, when lo! - The laughter and song of the river - Were changed to the wailing of woe. - - Gone, gone are this people forever, - Not a vestige nor remnant remains - To gather the maize in its season - And join in the harvest refrains; - But the river still mourns for her people - With weird and disconsolate flow, - Dolores, the river of sorrow, - Dolores--the river of woe. - -[Illustration: - "From the mountain peaks crested with snow."] - - - - -GREAT SHEPHERD OF THE COUNTLESS FLOCKS OF STARS - - - Great Shepherd of the countless flocks of stars, - Which range the azure province of the sky, - Who marked the course for Jupiter and Mars, - Nor leads the comet from its path awry; - Though flaming constellations at Thy call - Pass into being, or created, fall; - Thou, who hast caused the firmament to be, - In humbler pathways, Father, lead Thou me. - - Thou, who hast framed the eagle's wing to soar - Above the verdant prospects of the plain; - Whose law hath shaped the pebbles on the shore, - The stately forests and the bearded grain; - Whose hand hath formed the silvery satellite - To shed her tender moonbeams o'er the night; - Thou who hast placed the islands in the sea, - With that same Wisdom, Father, lead Thou me. - - - - -THE RUINED CABIN - - - There's a pathos in the solemn desolation - Of the mountain cabin sinking in decay, - With its threshold overgrown with vegetation, - With its door unhinged and mouldering away. - There's a weird and most disconsolate expression - In the sashless windows with their vacant stare, - As in mute appeal, or taciturn confession - Of a wild and inconsolable despair. - - With its ridgepole bent and broken in the centre, - From its roof of dirt and weight of winter snows; - Where the only voice to greet you as you enter - Is the wind which down the crumbling fireplace blows; - Where the chipmunk chatters in loquacious wonder, - As unwonted steps invade his solitude; - Where the mountain rat secretes his varied plunder - In the chimney corners, primitive and rude. - - Where the spider spins his web in grim seclusion, - To entrap the fly and vacillating moth; - From the rotten floor, in poisonous profusion - Spring the toadstools, with their foul and fungous growth. - Void of symmetry and semblance of equation, - Through the chinkless cracks, the silvery moon and stars - And the sun, at each matutinal invasion, - Shine as through a dismal dungeon's grated bars. - - But no predatory hand in wanton malice - Hath in vandal hour this dereliction wrought, - But the hand which crumbles pyramid and palace, - The hand of Time with rust and ruin fraught; - Thus the proud or unpretentious habitation - Shall succumb to age and melancholy mould; - All are subject to the same disintegration, - For the occupant and house alike grow old. - - - - -AN IDYLL - - - I love to sit by the waterfall, - And list to its laughing story, - As it fearlessly leaps o'er the rocky wall, - From the mountain peaks stern and hoary; - Or watch the spray as the colors play, - When the glorious sunlight kisses, - And tints confuse into rainbow hues - To embellish the wild abysses. - - I love the rose and the columbine, - Whose delicate beauty pleases; - I love the breath of the fragrant pine, - As it floats on the morning breezes; - - I love the sound from the depths profound, - When the Thunder-God is bringing - His crystal showers, to the tinted flowers, - In their sweet profusion springing. - - I love the lake in the mountain's lap; - Without a flaw or error - Recording the clouds, which the peaks enwrap, - And the trees, as a crystal mirror; - The wild delights of the mountain heights - Thrill my breast with a keen devotion, - As songbirds love the blue arch above, - Or the mariner loves the ocean. - - - - -THE BORDERLAND OF SLEEP - - - On the margin of the mystic shores of rest, - Where imagination mollifies the breast, - Where the fondest dreams their pleasant vigils keep, - In the vestibule of slumber, soft and deep, - Lies a neutral zone, salubrious and sweet,-- - Where the realms of lethargy and action meet,-- - 'Tis the borderland of sleep. - - Here the halcyon delights float by and fade, - Or the evil visions hover and invade; - Here the bosom entertains its secret guest, - With the silent plaint of agony suppressed, - As unwelcome thoughts rise from the dust and mould, - Of the vanished years in pantomime unrolled, - In this borderland of rest. - - Neither wakeful, nor in sentient repose, - Nor in apathy, complete and comatose; - As when Lethe with her mild nepenthic surge, - Doth in chaos of forgetfulness submerge, - But a drowsy consciousness, a blend of dreams, - With reality's extravagant extremes; - Such the zone on slumber's verge. - - - - -STELLAR NOCTURNE - - - Speeds the day in silent flight, on the sombre wings of night, - As the dying sunlight glimmers in the west; - Soon the shadows cease to creep, for the sun has gone to sleep, - And the scene is wrapped in somnolence and rest. - - From a solitary star, in the realms of space afar, - Faintly twinkling through the shadows of the night, - See the stellar force increased, till the scintillating east - Seems a galaxy of constellations bright. - - With its glittering display, see the gorgeous Milky Way, - Which in twain the vaulted universe divides, - As the bridal veil serene of some fair celestial queen, - Who, in jewelled state, o'er astral space presides. - - All the heavens seem in tune, and the vacillating moon - Bathes the landscape with her floods of silvery light; - Though the scenes of day are fair, naught in splendor can compare - With the grandeur of the firmament at night. - -[Illustration: - "High up on the cliffs in their dwellings, - Which were apertures walled up with rocks, - Lived this people, sequestered and happy; - Their dwellings now serve the wild fox." - - _See page 121._] - - - - -FATHER, AT THY ALTAR KNEELING - - - Father, at Thy altar kneeling, - Sin-defiled; - Seeking there the balm of healing, - To Thy Fatherhood appealing, - See Thy child. - - I am weary of transgressions; - I have sinned; - Prone to vice and indiscretion, - Vacillation, misimpression, - As the wind. - - Neither sins nor imperfections - I conceal; - Evil thoughts, impure reflections, - Faults in manifold directions, - Can I feel. - - I am tired of life's illusion, - I would rest; - Leave its turmoil and confusion, - Fain would know the blest seclusion - Of Thy breast. - - Through the shadows of the valley - As I speed, - Bid my faltering courage rally, - To resist each adverse sally; - Wilt Thou lead? - - For I know that Thou art reigning - Over all; - With this confidence remaining, - Let me feel Thy Hand sustaining - Lest I fall. - - - - -DREAMS - - - A dream is the ghost of a fond delight, - An echo of former smiles or tears, - Wafted to us on the wings of night - From the silent bourne of the vanished years. - - A dream is a perished joy, restored - From the mystical regions beyond our ken, - Which we fain would press as a thing adored, - To our breasts, ere it fades and is lost again. - - A dream is a buried hope exhumed, - 'Tis an iridescent thing of air, - Which mocks at the spirit, by fate entombed - In the catacombs of a mute despair. - - A dream is a reflex view of life, - A blending of fancy with solemn truth, - A retrospection of mundane strife, - Old age re-living the scenes of youth. - - Our dreams are but mirrors for our desires; - The proud ambition, the lofty aim - Achieved in our sleep, but the night expires - And the dull existence plods on the same. - - A dream is a feeble ray of light, - A rift in the shadows through which we grope, - An evidence that eternal night - Can never extinguish the star of hope. - - - - -NOCTURNE - - - As fall the dews of slumber soft and deep, - On wilderness and populated town, - Bound by the sweet influences of sleep, - Proud reason abdicates her golden crown; - Dark Lethe, of oblivious renown, - Fain would I quaff from thy forgetful streams, - In willing thralldom would I lay me down, - To court the fair companionship of dreams, - And bask within their iridescent beams. - - Or linger in the vestibule of sleep, - Where blow the winds of memory from the past, - Ere yet the languid shades of slumber deep - Have o'er the sense their dormant shadows cast; - Or muse upon the infinite and vast, - Till speculations various confuse, - And thought, unmerciful iconoclast, - With shattered images the path bestrews, - Yet leads to chaos of conflicting views. - - Now vanish all remembrance of the day, - Complete immunity pervade the mind, - Let fond imagination hold her sway, - With rule uncircumscribed and unconfined; - Or soaring on the wings of fancy, wind - Through mystic realms of interstellar space, - Where visions of supernal beauty bind - The drowsy consciousness in sweet embrace; - But dreamland fades, and morning comes apace. - -[Illustration: - "As it fearlessly leaps o'er the rocky wall - From the mountain peaks stern and hoary." - - _See page 124._] - - - - -THE TRUE FAITH - - - That faith is true whatever it may be, - What ethics or traditions it may teach, - Whose whispers soothe the secret misery - And mollify with soft, persuasive speech. - - That faith is true that lightens pain and care, - That false, which adds one burden to the load, - Whate'er its ornaments of psalm and prayer, - A travesty on reason and on God. - - That faith is true that buoys the sinking breast, - When in the throes of some great agony, - That comforts the afflicted and distressed, - And reconciles the trembling soul to die. - - That faith is true that when the chilling blasts - Of final dissolution overwhelm - Life's fragile bark, and shiver hull and masts, - Sees but the hand of Love upon the helm. - - - - -A FRAGMENT - - - The bard who versifies for hire, - When no exalted thoughts inspire, - Tho' rhyme and metre be exact, - Conveys a sense of something lacked; - When moved by no poetic fire, - He twangs a dull and tuneless lyre. - - - - -MORTALITY - -_A Dissertation_ - -"If a man die, shall he live again?"--Job xiv. 14. - - - Thou man of Uz,-- - The query which thy fevered organs framed, - Unanswered still re-echoes in our ears. - Thy desolate interrogating cry, - Born of affliction, grievous and extreme, - Bridging the gulf of fleeting centuries, - Finds our weak tongues as impotent as thine, - To voice reply in accents void of doubt. - Though in our breasts awakening response, - 'Tis but a repetition of thy plaint, - A faint reverberation of thy cry. - We peer into the darkness, but descry - Nor form, nor semblance, with our bootless gaze; - We call and list with ears attuned to hear; - No sound is wafted, and no glimmering ray - Breaks from that night, unlit by moon or star; - Nor gleam, nor spark, nor modicum of light - Is flashed from out the precincts of the tomb. - - Death is the final principle of life, - The culmination of vicissitude, - The silent archer, whose unerring shaft - Doth pierce at last the most unyielding breast; - The reaper after whose fell harvesting, - No gleaner bends nor follows in his wake. - The gold of Ophir, and the pearls of Ind, - The sapphires and the rubies of the East, - Or all the treasures, which the fabled Gnomes, - In subterranean vaults and passages - Have guarded, multiplied by countless sums, - With Euclid's most exalted numeral - In computation, as the multiple - Of least proportion, for the passing breath - Can purchase neither respite nor reprieve, - Nor can prolong it, by one feeble gasp. - - Nor fragrant balm, nor sweet preservative, - Nor caustic alkaloid, nor bitter herb - From Nature's various dispensary, - Elixir, lotion, nor restorative, - Nor prophylactic nor catholicon - Nor pharmacy's most potent stimulant - Can long retard the swift but viewless flight, - Of that mysterious thing we call the Soul. - Nor exorcism, nor the mystic power - Of incantation, nor of talisman, - Nor words of solemn theurgy pronounced, - Can break or dissipate that pallid spell; - Nor necromancy, nor phylactery, - Nor touch of magic wand, nor subtle force - Of conjuration, nor of sorcery, prevails - Against the shadows of the tomb; - Nor all the baleful arts of witchery, - Nor amulet withstand the charm of death. - - Yea, man who rules the passive elements, - Enchaining them to service at his will, - Himself to death must yield obedience. - Yea, man who, through all disadvantages - And obstacles, has hewed his way aloft, - From out the labyrinth of ignorance, - Who sways the sceptre over conquered realms, - Of latent energy and unseen force, - Without condition or conceding term, - Surrenders to that sombre potentate. - - Nor can in earth's remotest solitude, - In forest depths or undiscovered isle, - In dismal cavern or secretive cave - Escape the mandate of that grizzly King. - Nor wing of eagle, nor the fabled wings - Of hippogrif, of such velocity - As clothes the lightning and the thunderbolt, - Outstrip in speed the shadowy wings of death. - - We pass along an ever-travelled road, - Worn by the silent and continuous tread - Of throngs innumerable, of every clime; - The countless generations of the past, - The uncomputed hosts and multitudes - Who trod the earth in ages most remote, - And those whose pale emaciated forms - The generous earth hath recently received, - The myriads of every race and tongue - Who have preceded us, have sent no word - [Blank Page] - Of cheer or comfort from that silent strand, - And no directions for our timorous steps. - -[Illustration: - "I love the lake in the mountain's lap." - - _See page 125._] - - Grim Dissolution knows no favorites, - But in his multiplicity of shapes - Invades alike, with stern resistless step, - The squalid hovel with its noisome air, - And palace most replete with opulence; - Those of exalted station, and the hordes - To whom existence means but servitude, - Who see the golden sun arise and bring - No intermission from their ceaseless toil, - Who hope for respite only with the night; - Those who in dread reluctance shrank from death, - And those who neither knew nor cared the hour, - To life and death alike indifferent, - Or fain themselves would snap the fragile thread; - Mankind in all conditions and degrees - Of culture, affluence and penury, - Of multiform endowments and desires, - With differing talents and proclivities, - Yea, all varieties and types of men, - With pathways various and diversified, - Have found their paths converging at the grave. - - Each, as the gathering shadows of the night, - In solemn chaos of unfathomed gloom, - Descend in sombre, melancholy pall, - And mark apace life's transitory eve, - Must quaff, alike, the bitter draught of death, - The one libation in which all who breathe - May in all equity participate. - Each, at the expiration of his span, - Has found the same relentless terminal, - And faltering on dissolution's brink, - With what of strength, or guilt or innocence - Did mark the tenor of his brief career, - Has passed up to the margin of the grave, - Then disappeared forever. - - What is Death? - We know not, yet in verity we feel - That, though of most immediate concern, - And shrouded deep in sable mystery, - Though most abstruse, intangible and strange, - 'Tis not of our volition and control! - It therefore proves, as life doth ever prove, - With all abundant plenitude of proof, - A Force superior to human strength, - And should afford no premises for fear. - -[FINIS] - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Passing of the Storm and Other -Poems, by Alfred Castner King - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PASSING OF THE STORM *** - -***** This file should be named 42422-8.txt or 42422-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/4/2/42422/ - -Produced by D Alexander, Mary Akers and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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