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 1891 
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 
 
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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
The Vision of Misery Hill 
 
 A LEGEND OF THE SIERRA NEVADA 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS VERSE 
 
 MILES I' ANSON 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY HARRY FENN 
 
 AND OTHERS 
 
 .XlLtb* 
 
 I 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK LONDON 
 
 27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD ST. 27 KING WILLIAM ST., STRAND 
 
 Sin Knickerbocker $)ress 
 1891 
 

 K^V6 
 
 Copyright, 1891 
 
 BY 
 
 MILES I'ANSON 
 
 ICbe Iknicfterbocfcer press, tttew JSorft 
 
 Electrotyped, Printed, and Bound by 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 To my fellow-miners of California and the Pacific 
 Coast I inscribe this little book of verse, in memory 
 of Auld Lang Syne and the land that hath so glamoured 
 us ; for though the themes herein are few that touch 
 your peculiar life and environment, they were born of 
 the high Sierras, and the desert solitudes near and far, 
 during the arduous years and lonely hours of a gold- 
 seeker's life. 
 
 Not in self-confidence, however, does the writer present 
 these desultory utterances to you, but conscious how lit- 
 tle of worth there is here to warrant the offering, — how 
 little indeed of aught to portray such an experience and 
 communion with Nature. 
 
 The writer has no thought of touching any popular 
 chord in these conceits, nor hope beyond pleasing a few 
 here and there ; and so, 
 
 " With a heart for any fate " — 
 
 as befits the Prospector — whatever of adverse judgment 
 or of failure may greet this venture, will fall lightly upon 
 him, as upon one inured to long-familiar loads. 
 
 The Author. 
 
 Newark, New Jersey, 
 June, 1891. 
 
 iii 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 THE VISION OF MISERY HILL 
 REFLECTIONS ON A FOSSIL SHELL 
 WHERE ALICE IS . 
 THE RAINY SEASON 
 love's PRESAGE . 
 
 TO ANE THE CYNIC SOUGHT 
 THE OWL 
 
 mammon's IN MEMORIAM 
 A VERNAL INVOCATION 
 LINES TO FLORENCE 
 COUNSEL FROM SOL. SLOWBOY 
 THE DEVIL'S WELL 
 INGERSOLL . 
 FLIGHT BEYOND FAITH 
 DOUBT .... 
 THE CREED OF HOPE . 
 THE GOSPEL o' GAMMON 
 
 I 
 
 34 
 45 
 47 
 5° 
 5i 
 54 
 56 
 
 67 
 
 68 
 
 69 
 
 74 
 88 
 
 90 
 
 9 1 
 97 
 
VI 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PROGRESS — LIBERTY — DELUSION 
 
 HER DAYS OF JOY 
 
 FRANK FORESTER . 
 
 ENCHANTMENT 
 
 IN ALTAS SIERRAS 
 
 THE FINAL REBELLION 
 
 IN MEMORIAM — CAPTAIN WEBB 
 
 UTTERANCE OF THE DESERT 
 
 THE ETERNAL SIEGE 
 
 ON HEARING A DESERT SONG-BIRD 
 
 HIS EPITAPH TOM BLOSSOM OF ARIZONA 
 
 NIGHT-FALL ON THE YUBA . 
 
 tage 
 I02 
 
 107 
 
 IO9 
 
 II I 
 
 I 12 
 
 II 9 
 
 126 
 
 131 
 
 133 
 I40 
 
 142 
 
 144 
 
 ^^ 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i tom bowers mined on misery hill " . . 2 
 1 a hand he saw stretched like a claw " . 26 
 ' he speeds o'er realms that seem accurst " 76 
 'a stranger at the devil's well " . . 84 
 
 'how rang our joyful peal" . . . .114 
 night-fall on the yuba ... 144 
 
THE VISION OF MISERY HILL: 
 
 A LEGEND OF PIKE CITY, IN THE SIERRA NEVADA. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 Tom Bowers mined on Misery Hill, 
 All round it and across it, — 
 
 Pursued for years with stubborn will 
 His theories of deposit. 
 
 Tom's mind was fashion'd in the mould 
 
 Of positive conviction, 
 That clutch'd belief with rigid hold, 
 
 And scouted contradiction. 
 
 His mission was (he had no doubt) 
 To trace the primal sources 
 
 Of all the gold once mined about 
 The flats and water-courses ; 
 
2 THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. 
 
 And though the gold he gatherVl there 
 
 Was hardly worth the gaining, 
 " Whar this kem from " — thus reason'd Tom- 
 Thar must be more remaining." 
 
 u 
 
 And so he tunnell'd and he sluiced, 
 He ditched and delved and drifted, 
 
 Till all the ground for acres round 
 Was fairly search 'd and sifted ; 
 
 Till all the gulches and the slopes 
 With prospect-holes were pitted, — 
 
 Sad graves, alas, of cherish'd hopes 
 That one by one had flitted ! 
 
 But tho' his work so futile seemed, 
 None knew his faith to falter ; 
 
 The miner tribe might jeer and gibe, 
 His views they ne'er could alter. 
 
 The miner tribe might jeer and gibe,— 
 He held the tribe mistaken ; 
 
 The hidden lode was real to him 
 As daily beans and bacon. 
 
"TOM BOWERS MINED ON MISERY HILL 
 
THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. 
 
 Thus faith, tlio' but a dream, is blest 
 
 To all who toil or suffer ; 
 Such faith, I hold, is more than gold, 
 
 And all that wealth can offer. 
 
 And so in many a lone ravine 
 Far lost to human neighbors, 
 
 Self -banished to his solitude 
 
 Some digger lives and labors ; — 
 
 The gnome of certain hills or streams 
 
 Renowned in golden annals, 
 That seeks, in monomaniac dreams, 
 
 His hidden veins and channels. 
 
 So, cabin'd on a lone divide 
 Between the creek and canyon, 
 
 Tom lived and wrought, nor ever sought 
 A partner or companion ; 
 
 Nor yearned he for the outer world, 
 
 Its busy strife and clamor ; 
 This vagrant independent life 
 
 Had spell'd him with its glamour, 
 
THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. 
 
 And love of nature. — Thus he grew 
 
 A man of lonely habit, 
 That all the secret coverts knew 
 
 Of grizzly, grouse, and rabbit. 
 
 But ne'er a thing on foot or wing 
 Had cause to flee or fear him ; 
 
 The friendly quail beset his trail, 
 The chipmonk gambol'd near him. 
 
 His presence frighted not the hare, 
 Nor stopt the grouse's drumming ; 
 
 The shyest creature lurking there 
 Scarce startled at his coming ; 
 
 Thus bold by frequence of his step, — 
 His coming and his going ; 
 
 Or theirs some finer sense, mayhap, 
 To know beyond our knowing : 
 
 For peradventure every soul 
 
 Hath some distinctive essence, — 
 
 Some fine, far-reaching aureole 
 Of good or evil presence, 
 
THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. 
 
 Impalpable to grosser sense, 
 
 And visual cognition, 
 That wakes with subtle influence 
 
 The watch-dog — Intuition. 
 
 And so he lived through fleeting years, 
 
 Of worldly life unwitting, 
 With phantom hope still beckoning, 
 
 With fortune ever flitting ; 
 
 With few to know and none to share 
 His daily hopes and sorrows, 
 
 Till time and toil had blanch'd his hair, 
 And ploughed his face with furrows. 
 
 Time was, when to this plodding gnome 
 Came missives sad and tender, 
 
 With news of far-off friends and home, 
 And tokens of the sender : 
 
 These urged him back to ties of old, 
 To love grown weary-hearted ; 
 
 And their cessation sadly told 
 Of hope or life departed ; 
 
THE VISION- OF MISERY HI LI. 
 
 For many a year had joined the past 
 Since loving heart had spoken ; 
 
 Neglect had conquer'd faith at last, — 
 The final link was broken ! 
 
 O ! you who wander far a- west 
 With high ambition burning — 
 
 Remember aye the loving breast 
 That pines for your returning ! 
 
 Wait not the prize ye may attain 
 On some too-late to-morrow, — 
 
 Go now, and cheer that heart again, 
 Ere life is closed in sorrow ! 
 
 Though ties were sunderd, home resign'd 
 
 For this lone sanctuary, 
 Tom was no hater of his kind, 
 
 No cynic solitary ; 
 
 But promptly as the Sunday came 
 He ceased his usual labors, — 
 
 Left solitude and issued thence 
 To meet his mining neighbors. 
 
 CD O 
 
THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. J 
 
 He donn'd his better clothes that day ; 
 
 He baked and washed and mended, 
 And to " The Camp " some miles away 
 
 O'er hill and canyon wended, 
 
 To take a social glass or two, 
 
 To bandy joke and query, 
 And ask of aught discover'd new, 
 
 And air his ancient the'ry 
 
 About the " lead " of Misery Hill- 
 Show where old Jenkins struck it, 
 
 And where he 'd find the channel still, 
 With nuggets by the bucket. 
 
 And warming to his theme — perhaps 
 Misled with mock attention — 
 
 Chalked on the floor impromptu maps 
 To aid their comprehension. 
 
 Then some would wink and say, " I pass ! " 
 
 Some gibe him, rudely jolly, 
 While others roared, with lifted glass : 
 
 " Here 's luck to Bowers' Folly ! " 
 
THE VISION OF MISERY HIIL. 
 
 Torn wisely took but little heed 
 Of such good-natured banter ; 
 
 He knew their worst of word and deed 
 Was born of the decanter. 
 
 Yet, on occasion, held his ground 
 Against some trenchant joker ; 
 
 Mayhap made answer — pointing round 
 The bar and games of poker : 
 
 " Well, boys, some folks air out o' plumb, 
 And p'raps my head aint level ; 
 
 But what 's the end o 1 keerds an' rum ? — 
 The boneyard and the devil ! " 
 
 So passed the years with little change 
 Or luck for Tom's behoovement ; 
 
 But punctual in his narrow range 
 As planetary movement, 
 
 He kept his even-gaited way, 
 
 Still full of hope and vigor, 
 Till one tempestuous winter day 
 
 The gaunt familiar figure 
 
THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. g 
 
 Came not to camp, and wonder grew 
 To know what hap delayed him ; 
 
 Snow blocked the trail and fierce the gale, 
 But this had never stayed him. 
 
 And when the morrow brought him not, 
 
 Nor yet the day succeeding, 
 Ten men of brawn, next day at dawn, 
 
 With stout Jim Brandon leading, 
 
 Broke trail through drifting snows across 
 
 The wintry desolation, 
 O'er rugged steep and canyon deep 
 
 To Tom's lone habitation ; 
 
 Where he, the guest of solitude, 
 Had dwelt full many a winter ; 
 
 Whence issued now no welcome smoke, 
 No voice to bid them enter. 
 
 The hearth was cold, and knew no more 
 The back-log brightly burning ; 
 
 An outward track led from the door, 
 But there was none returning ! 
 
IO THE VISION OF MISERY HIIL. 
 
 And save his cat, that greeted them 
 With mews and wistful purring, 
 
 No sign of life was round the place, 
 Nor other creature stirring. 
 
 So thence the moody cavalcade 
 The trail and footprints follow VI ; 
 
 And mocking winds sole answer made 
 Whene'er they paused and hallo'd. 
 
 And fierce the wintry tempest blew ; 
 
 The rugged way grew steeper ; 
 The guiding traces fainter grew 
 
 In snow-drifts gath'riug deeper; 
 
 While oft with vibrant shock and sound, 
 
 Like mountains rent asunder, 
 Some giant pine, liurl'd earthward, drown'd 
 
 The canyon's muffled thunder. 
 
 And grimmer lines marked every face 
 With deeper doubting, fearing, 
 
 As grew the thought that he they sought 
 Was past all help and hearing. 
 
THE VISION OF MISER Y HILL. 1 1 
 
 Then up the slopes of Grizzly Run, 
 And thence by Deadwood Hollow 
 
 To Misery Hill they toiled, and still 
 The trail was plain to follow; 
 
 Till up a deep and narrow cleft 
 Where beetling banks impended, 
 
 There led the track, and then, alack ! 
 All trace abruptly ended ! 
 
 For there where Tom had lately toiled, 
 The treach'rous bank had slidden ; 
 
 And well they knew what there from view 
 That merciless mass had hidden ! 
 
 And all stood silent and aghast, — 
 Each face the story speaking ; — 
 
 Poor Tom had struck the " lead " at last 
 Beyond all earthly seeking ! 
 
 Then tenderly and tearfully 
 
 Those rugged men exhumed him ; 
 
 And tenderly and carefully 
 
 Thence bore him and entomb'd him, 
 
12 THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. 
 
 Upon a little bed-rock knoll 
 Beneath the waving spruces, 
 
 To dream no more of fabulous ore, 
 Of channels, drifts, and sluices. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 Thenceforth for years the Bowers Claim 
 Was neither worked nor wanted ; 
 
 Tom's diggings had an evil name ; 
 Some vowed the Hill was haunted. 
 
 Nay, one who cross'd the Hill at night- 
 Belated in the murk there — 
 
 Swore roundly that he saw a light, 
 And heard Old Tom at work there ! 
 
 But others jeered and ridiculed 
 This tale of things uncanny ; 
 
 Declared him fuddled or befool'd, 
 And branded him " A granny." 
 
THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. 1 3 
 
 Howbeit, miners shunn'd the ground 
 
 As worthless or ill-fated, 
 And so for many a season round 
 
 'T was bann'd and unlocated. 
 
 But passing years brought certain change, 
 And paying claims grew fewer : 
 
 Prospecting took a wider range ; 
 Old claims were left for newer : 
 
 And so it happ'd that once again 
 The ghostly Hill should waken 
 
 From deathful trance that one, perchance, 
 Might earn his beans and bacon. 
 
 Jim Brandon, thriftless as of yore, 
 
 And now a chronic debtor, 
 Forsook the claim that paid no more, 
 
 And, delving 'round for better, 
 
 Strayed o'er the trail to Misery Hill, 
 
 One drowsy day in summer ; 
 Sat on the banks and mused awhile 
 
 In retrospective humor ; 
 
14 THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. 
 
 Viewed all the work of fruitless years, — 
 Tom's sluiceways, shafts, and ditches, — 
 
 The fatal cave and sudden grave 
 That closed his dream of riches ; 
 
 And o'er the acres ravaged there 
 
 By that assiduous toiler, 
 Beheld how Nature's kindly care 
 
 Had followed the despoiler, 
 
 To hide and heal each grievous wound 
 
 By pick and torrent riven ; 
 To fill the shafts and cave the drifts 
 
 His hands had vainly driven. 
 
 Young pines and firs in vernal ranks 
 
 The naked bed-rock shaded ; 
 The creeping chickweed draped the banks 
 
 And all the cuts invaded ; 
 
 And many a slope of soil bereft, 
 
 New vegetation nourished : 
 The spruce grew there and everywhere 
 
 The manzanita flourished. 
 
THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. I 5 
 
 Jim thought — This ground is very poor, 
 
 No doubt ; but why pass by it 
 Like other fools ? — He had the tools, 
 
 And so resolved to try it. 
 
 He tested well the likely ground, 
 
 And in the bottom gravel 
 Of Tom's last cut a prospect found, 
 
 Which, past all doubt or cavil, 
 
 Would yield him half an ounce a day, — 
 " Leastwise," he mused, "it oughter " ; 
 
 So clear'd for use the cumber' d sluice, 
 And dug a ditch for water. 
 
 And things went better soon with Jim ; 
 
 He paid his debts, grew jolly, 
 And laugh'd with those who christen'd him 
 
 "The Heir to Bowers' Folly." 
 
 But tho' so free and, as a rule, 
 
 Good-natured and compliant, 
 Who wrong'd or play'd him for a fool 
 
 Might 'rouse an angry giant. 
 
1 6 THE VISION OF MISERY HILL, 
 
 And so it proved — for Jim of late 
 Much temper had been showing 
 
 Against some wight who, in the night, 
 Had set the water flowing 
 
 Through every sluice on Misery Hill, 
 And which despite plain warning 
 
 How he might fare who trespass'd there, 
 Was running every morning. 
 
 And when much bolder trespass still 
 
 Upon the claim he noted, 
 His words, I wot, grew strong and hot, 
 
 And cannot here be quoted. 
 
 A joke 's a joke, thought Jim, but this 
 Was push'd beyond all warrant ; 
 
 And whether done in spite or fun 
 Not yet to him apparent. 
 
 And vain his search in track or clue 
 
 To find the raider hinted, 
 For, save his own, no foot was shown 
 
 Upon the Hill imprinted. 
 
THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. 1 7 
 
 Then, as the rogue so deftly came, 
 Shunn'd daylight, and was wary, 
 
 Jim made resolve to watch the claim 
 All night, if necessary. 
 
 So, broaching to his cabin-chum — 
 
 Doc Sanders — his intention, 
 With caution to keep strictly mum, 
 
 Nor give it hint or mention 
 
 To any soul in camp or town, — 
 Not e'en to boon companions, — 
 
 He took his trusty rifle down 
 And slipped across the canyons, 
 
 By devious ways and round about, 
 To trap the rogue that trickt him, 
 
 And stealthy as a Pawnee scout 
 Who would surprise his victim. 
 
 Jim's courage had been often tried ; 
 
 He faltered at no trifle ; 
 No man more quick with axe or pick, 
 
 None handier with the rifle. 
 
1 8 THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. 
 
 All ghostly tales to him were jokes, 
 And spirits sheer delusion ; — 
 
 "They '11 do fer fools and women-folks," 
 Was Jim's concise conclusion. 
 
 Too full of strife his nomad life, 
 Too hedged with hard conditions, 
 
 For metaphysics or the sway 
 Of ancient superstitions ; 
 
 All he had ever chance to learn 
 
 Was rude and necessary ; 
 And " his " was Jits' n, " hers " was hern, 
 
 In Jim's vocabulary. 
 
 And so he strode to Misery Hill, 
 With hope intenser growing 
 
 To catch the wight that every night 
 Had set the water flowing. 
 
 But as one stalking wary game 
 May neither haste nor loiter, 
 
 So travell'd he, till near the claim, 
 Then paused to reconnoitre, 
 
THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. 1 9 
 
 And saw — or was 't a trick of sight \ — 
 
 A strange, uncertain glimmer 
 Upon the Hill, — a lambent light, 
 
 Now brighten, now grow dimmer; — 
 
 Such gleam as night on tropic seas 
 Shows in each wave upturning ; 
 
 Such light as lives in mouldering trees, 
 Or glowworm bluely burning. 
 
 The nearer hills lay in eclipse 
 Beneath the mountain masses ; 
 
 Beyond, the white Sierra tips 
 Shone o'er the shadowVl passes. 
 
 He heard within the tamaracks 
 The night-wind's eerie crooning ; 
 
 Fi'om bars and falls at intervals 
 The Yuba's deep bassooning. 
 
 And every pine grew full of moan ; 
 
 The moon was in the crescent ; 
 A " Notice " on a hemlock shown 
 
 In letters phosphorescent. 
 
20 THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. 
 
 " A mining notice ! — Urnph," growl'd Jim, 
 " He wants a little fun here ; — 
 
 He '11 get it '' (and his face grew grim) 
 " Before Jim Brandon 's done here ! " 
 
 With bated breath he read the name 
 
 In lambent letters shining : 
 " Ij Thomas Bowers, hereby claim 
 
 This ground for placer mining ! ' 
 
 Then dash'd his hand in sudden ire 
 To rend the lie there written ; — 
 
 His hand fell from the words of fire 
 As if with palsy smitten ! 
 
 For this, in sooth, was something weird, — 
 A sense of fear flash'd o'er him ; 
 
 The mystic words had disappeared, — 
 The tree stood blank before him ! 
 
 " A trick ! " he muttered through his teeth, 
 As o'er the brushwood striding 
 
 He sought around, above, beneath, 
 To find the culprit hiding ; 
 
THE VISION OF MISER Y HILL. 2 [ 
 
 But nothing living found or heard, 
 
 Save here and there a cricket, 
 Or barking fox, or frightened bird 
 
 That fluttered in the thicket ; 
 
 Or haply, from his lonely height 
 
 On pine-tree's lofty column, 
 An owl awoke the drowsy night 
 
 With utterance deep and solemn. 
 
 Then o'er the hill Jim crept alert, 
 
 No sound or sign discerning 
 Of him he sought, but overwrought 
 
 With futile, passionate yearning, 
 
 Beat every covert far around, 
 Through every thicket peering, 
 
 Until again the higher ground 
 And mystic hemlock nearing — 
 
 Was 't fancy ? or the rising wind 
 Through forest branches blowing ? 
 
 That surely meant to ears attent 
 The sound of water flowing ! 
 
22 THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. 
 
 And lo, again in lines of flame 
 Upon the tree was shining, — 
 
 "I, Thomas Bowers, hereby claim 
 This ground for placer mining ! ,: 
 
 Then while he stood with lisfning ear 
 
 The mystery to unravel, 
 Up from the cut came sharp and clear 
 
 A pick-stroke in the gravel. 
 
 Ay, there again ! — his breath came quick ;■■ 
 So ! there the scamp was lurking ! 
 
 The rushing sluice and ringing pick 
 Proclaimed a miner working ! 
 
 As nimbly as a catamount 
 
 Jim crouch'd to watch and listen ; 
 
 You might have seen the savage sheen 
 Within his eyeballs glisten ! 
 
 Then to the bank edge, creeping slow, 
 And through the brackens gazing, 
 
 He something saw that changed to awe 
 The wrath within him blazing. 
 
THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. 2$ 
 
 An eerie shape — too grim and lank 
 
 To be a living creature's — 
 Full in the moon beneath the bank 
 
 Upturned its ghastly features ; 
 
 Moved lips that uttered not a sound, 
 
 And raised a warning finger ; 
 Jim fain had fled, but sudden dread 
 
 Impeird him there to linger. 
 
 Was this a phantom of the cup ? 
 
 A dreamers horrent vision I 
 Nay, fancy never conjured up 
 
 So real an apparition ! 
 
 Too well he knew that grizzly beard, 
 
 That visage wan and shrunken, 
 Those eyes that flamed with lustre weird 
 
 From sockets deeply sunken ! 
 
 But while he gazed, transfixed and dazed, 
 
 Upon the phantom figure, 
 His finger half instinctively 
 
 Reach'd out and touch'd the trigger. 
 
24 THE VIS 10 AT Ob MISERY HILL. 
 
 The hammer fell . . . there came a yell 
 That sent a spasm through him ! 
 
 And from the gulf the spectre sprang 
 With pick and shovel to him ! 
 
 He tarried not, but fled the spot 
 Where all was now unravel I'd ; 
 
 His iron-shodden miner shoes 
 Struck fire as fast he travell'd. 
 
 He bounded lithely, wing'd with fear ; 
 
 His legs were ne'er so limber ; 
 He cleared the ditches like a deer, 
 
 He leapt the fallen timber ; 
 
 And round the echoing: rim of ni^ht 
 
 His hasty steps resounded ; 
 Three hollow clanks rang on the planks 
 
 As o'er a bridge he bounded. 
 
 Then down the ridge to Bloody Gulch 
 He madly dash'd and doubled, 
 
 Plunging with mighty strides across 
 Its torrent red and troubled ; 
 
THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. 2$ 
 
 And up the hill where Burke's old mill 
 
 Stood naked, roof and rafter, 
 Wherefrom a startled owlet shrill'd 
 
 His wild, hysteric laughter, — 
 
 That seemed an impish hue and cry 
 
 To Jim's excited fancy ; 
 And things he knew so strangely grew, 
 
 By some dread necromancy, 
 
 That every stump within his path 
 Rose gorgon-like to hound him, 
 
 And ancient oaks in ghostly wrath 
 Waved arms and gibber'd round him. 
 
 Solve you the riddle why this man 
 
 Should flee in coward panic, 
 Who scarce had thought or fear of aught 
 
 Celestial or satanic ; — 
 
 This nomad, trained in border war, — 
 
 A desperado branded, 
 Who track'd the grizzly to his lair, 
 
 And slew him single-handed. 
 
26 THE VISION OF MISERY IIIII. 
 
 But thus he s])ed in nameless dread, 
 How fast it little matter'd, 
 
 For close arear the thing of fear 
 With pick and shovel clatter'd. 
 
 At last the camp lights came to view 
 As, every sinew straining, 
 
 O'er Hoyt Divide he madly tied, 
 New strength and courage gaining. 
 
 But ah ! — just where his shadow fell, 
 Shown by the moonlight clearer, 
 
 A hand he saw stretch'd like a claw 
 That nearer drew and nearer ! 
 
 PART III. 
 
 It was a gala night in " Pike,' 1 — 
 A night of rout and revel ; 
 
 The " Dandy Jim " had made a strike 
 Upon the second level. 
 
" A HAND HE SAW STRETCH'D LIKE A CLAW " 
 
THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. 2J 
 
 Success had crowned the " Nip-and-tuck," — 
 
 The claim was now " a daisy " ; 
 And Gopher Sam had struck a vein 
 
 That set The Camp half crazy. 
 
 In Jimson's Tamarack saloon 
 
 The jubilation centr'd, 
 And from its door a mighty roar — 
 
 When later comers enter' d — 
 
 Shot forth a sudden bolt of sound, 
 
 That smote with mocking riot 
 The calm, majestic hills around, 
 
 The night's impressive quiet. 
 
 Such strife within ! such peace without ! 
 
 O man, thou errant creature — 
 The solemn hills return thy shout, 
 
 And bid thee back to Nature ! 
 
 So pure without ! so foul within ! 
 
 And ever the air grew thicker, 
 And louder rose the frantic din 
 
 As flowed the fiery liquor. 
 
28 THE VISION OF MISER Y HI LI. 
 
 For there the roystering revellers — 
 That all the week had fasted 
 
 From drink and play — had come to stay 
 While gold or credit lasted ; — 
 
 Had come from hills and river-bars, 
 From lone ravines and gorges, — 
 
 A hungry throng for dance and song, 
 And bacchanalian orgies. 
 
 And round the games the circles grew 
 Where favorite Poker spelM them, 
 
 Or Faro's fascination drew, 
 Or Spanish Monte held them. 
 
 And loudly buzzed the miner clan 
 Of sluicing, drifting, ditching ; 
 
 Pete had a dollar to the pan ; 
 
 Dick's bed-rock now was " pitching " ; 
 
 Tom Blossom still was " off the lead," 
 And barely earned his rations, 
 
 But yet, " by dad," he swore, he had 
 " The best of indications." 
 
THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. 2Q. 
 
 Ay, it was ever thus with Tom, — 
 And all his comrades knew it, — 
 
 He saw the prize before his eyes 
 But never quite got to it ! 
 
 And thousands light with fate, alas, 
 
 As luckless as poor Tom is ! 
 Whose lives are blossom full, but pass 
 
 Unknowing the fruit of promise ! 
 
 A troupe of dancing-girls that late 
 
 The Diggings had invaded, 
 Each with a graceless miner mate 
 
 Now waltzed and gallopaded ; 
 
 And up and down the bar-room whirPd 
 The rough, good-natured diggers. 
 
 While one forlorn flutina skiiTd 
 The tunes and timed the figures. 
 
 But where was Jim — Jim Brandon ? — he 
 Whose welcome aye was hearty 
 
 At spree or dance, and ne'er by chance 
 Had been an absent party ? 
 
30 THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. 
 
 The question 'rose and oft recurr'd 
 
 Between the games and dances, 
 Till much opinion had been heard 
 
 And each had aired his fancies ; 
 
 Till o'er Jim's absence, and his claim, 
 
 A few grew loud and heated, 
 When, from a quiet poker game 
 
 Where he had long been seated, 
 
 Doc Sanders rose, with glass in hand : 
 " Sho, boys ! — (hie) — let 's be jolly ! — 
 
 Whar's Jim? — well (hie) here's luck to him!- 
 He 's — gone to — Bowers' Folly ! " 
 
 The words he said had barely sped 
 
 When, hark ! a fearful clatter 
 Brought every reveller to his feet 
 
 To question — What's the matter? 
 
 A crash of tools, a shout, a thud 
 
 As of a body falling, 
 A yell that froze each hearer's blood — 
 
 So piercing and appalling — 
 
THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. 3 1 
 
 Came from without, and bold men felt 
 Their pulses strangely quicken ; 
 
 And some, as when the Banshee cries, 
 Stood dumb and terror-stricken. 
 
 And for the moment features flushed 
 With drink and play grew pallid ; 
 
 But some who dread nor quick or dead 
 Out from the bar-room sallied, — 
 
 Like men impatient of defence 
 When threat'niuj* foes beleaguer, 
 
 Who raise the port and madly thence 
 Make sortie swift and ea^er ; 
 
 These led the wondering rabble forth, 
 
 To find no dead or dying, 
 As that dread cry might well imply, 
 
 But on the roadway lying, 
 
 Jim Brandon's rifle — known to all, 
 
 And, by the flaring candles, 
 A pick and shovel, with " T. B." 
 
 Cut rudely in the handles ! 
 
32 THE VISION OF MISERY HILL. 
 
 What did it mean ? Was this the scene 
 
 Of tragedy or juggle ? 
 Some tracks were found as if the ground 
 
 Were tramp'd in desp'rate struggle — 
 
 And nothing more ! But what of Jim? 
 
 Nay, ask the sighing pines there ! 
 No trace was ever found of him 
 
 Beyond the tracks and signs there ! 
 
 Long years have passed, and over all 
 Young pines grow rank and vernal ; 
 
 And still the claim hath evil name 
 For sights and sounds nocturnal ; 
 
 And miners swear — tho' buried there 
 Beneath the waving spruces — 
 
 Tom Bowers still holds Misery Hill, 
 And nightly runs the sluices. 
 

 J^3^ 
 
 
 33 
 
REFLECTIONS ON A FOSSIL SHELL. 
 
 [On the lofty slopes of Volcano Mountain, in Esmeralda, Nevada, 
 the writer chanced upon and prospected the shore-line of an ancient 
 sea, finding its argentiferous shales poor in precious metal, but rife 
 with fossil life-forms of the Silurian Age.] 
 
 Here in these dead and desert lands 
 Of Nature's rudest moods and shapes, 
 Of wrinkled peaks and weather'd capes 
 
 That loom from seas of burning sands, — 
 
 Where yet, as through unnumbered years, 
 The stealthy-footed Pah Ute prowls, 
 The lank coyote weirdly howls 
 
 His hunger-woes to savage ears, — 
 
 How puny seems this humanite, 
 That like a worm laborious creeps 
 Upon the Vulcan-bowldered steeps ! 
 
 See, far overhead in daring flight — 
 
 34 
 
REFLECTIONS ON A FOSSIL SHELL. 35 
 
 As if in utter scorn of him — 
 
 An eagle soar ; and leagues below, 
 Where solar heats concentr'd glow 
 
 On shimmering mesas vast and dim — 
 
 Look down through airy gulfs and trace 
 A filament as finely spun 
 As spider's web shine in the sun. — 
 
 Man's highest triumph over space, 
 
 Where he hath drawn the iron bands 
 O'er which his Van of Progress drives, 
 That bind in firm, fraternal gyves, 
 
 Far alien, antipodean lands. 
 
 From rocky spurs that run athwart 
 These drear Saharas of the West, — 
 Where, toiling in their madding quest, 
 
 The treasure-seekers grim and swart 
 
 » j 
 
 Disrupt the flinty strata — lo ! 
 
 By hammer-stroke from age-long night 
 This ancient shell leapt into light 
 
 With message of the Long Ago, — 
 
36 REFLECTIONS 0A r A FOSSIL SHELL. 
 
 When embryonic life began, 
 
 That forth in crude essayings crept ; 
 When Thought in lowly creatures slept, 
 
 Ere waking to its growth in Man. 
 
 How vain, O Science, thy computes 
 Of Time since roar of ancient seas 
 Awoke reverb'rant voice in these 
 
 Ensealed and silent con volutes ! 
 
 We sound the Past with idle guess, — 
 Reach o'er the gulf our yard-stick gauge ; 
 We prate of Epoch and of Age, 
 
 And dream we mete the measureless ! 
 
 Yet, while I held within my hand 
 
 This ancient creature's crumbling shell, — 
 Behold ! — as by some wizard spell 
 
 Old Time's tenebr'ous gulf was spann'd ! 
 
 And I beheld a scene of dread, 
 
 To sentient being ne'er shown before, — 
 The waste and inchoate world of yore 
 
 In awful desolation spread ! 
 
REFLECTIONS ON A FOSSIL SHELL. 37 
 
 Where o'er the dumb, pre-natal sleep 
 Of Nature hung the mists of morn, 
 And continents lay newly born 
 
 Upon the dark, perturbed deep. 
 
 No life above the sombre seas ; 
 
 Not yet a bird or beast — alas ! 
 
 Not yet the firstling blade of grass 
 Was born of Nature's alchemies ! 
 
 From zone to zone on shallow strauds 
 I heard the drear sea-surges beat ; 
 And through a nebulous winding-sheet 
 
 The sun cast o'er the lifeless lands 
 
 A weirdly-dim, penumbral light, 
 As when volcanic forces shroud 
 The firmament with ashen cloud, 
 
 And day seems glooming into night. 
 
 Strange power was mine ; at will I pass'd 
 Across the dreary seas and lands ; 
 I called aloud with lifted hands 
 
 Through soundless solitudes, aghast 
 
38 REFLECTIONS ON A FOSSIL SHELL. 
 
 At niy own voice, which seemed not mine, 
 But some lost creature's hopeless cry ; 
 Yet ne'er from pitiless earth or sky 
 
 Came life's response in sound or sign ! 
 
 So sped amain in sore affright 
 
 Through Day's dim-litten zones, and where 
 Tartarean fires with baleful glare 
 
 Illumin'd the sable breast of Night; 
 
 Where raged in sulphurous canopies, 
 Dread storms of elemental war, 
 And never light of moon or star, 
 
 Nor glimmer of the Pleiades 
 
 Proclaimed the peopled firmament ; 
 But muffled in her murky robe 
 Earth seemed a lost and wandering globe, 
 
 Of starless space sole habitant. 
 
 Still onward, urged by fear profound, 
 To blank horizons never past, 
 But ever opening void and vast 
 
 On Desolation's wider bound ! 
 
REFLECTIONS OAT A FOSSIL SHELL. 39 
 
 Where yet upon the plastic sphere 
 The shadow of the Maker's hand 
 Seemed moving, and from sea and land 
 
 Reverb'd His thunders to the ear ! 
 
 O Soul ! it were a fate accurst 
 To be the last upon the earth ! 
 But unto being of human birth 
 
 A fate more dread to be the first ! 
 
 To walk alone such world as this, 
 
 Still lifeless from the gulf of space, — 
 The far forerunner of his race, 
 
 So near creation's genesis ! 
 
 Thus ran my thought, and horror grew, 
 Till borne upon the sudden wings 
 Grim Fancy to a dreamer brings, 
 
 Out from that ancient world I flew 
 
 As from a nightmare's hideous thrall, 
 With joyful cry to be again 
 So near the cheery haunts of men 
 
 Upon my lofty mountain wall ; 
 
40 REFLECTIONS OAT A FOSSIL SHELL. 
 
 To be within the Human Age, 
 And part of that supernal plan 
 Which gives the ripened Earth to man, 
 
 And Life's supremest heritage. 
 
 How glorious seemed the earth and sky ! 
 It was a blessed thing to see 
 A wrinkled lizard near to me 
 
 With keen cognition in his eye ! 
 
 And e'en the bristling cactus, rife 
 
 With venom'd spines, benignant grew 
 To soul so grateful to renew 
 
 The joyful fellowship of life. 
 
 waif from Time's unmeasured sea ! 
 Are we that question sky and earth, 
 With mighty hope of higher birth, 
 
 By some far link allied to thee ? 
 
 Alas ! are these supernal powers 
 The fruitage of some soulless germ ? 
 Is that which animates the worm 
 
 A living force divine as ours ? 
 
REFLECTIONS ON A FOSSIL SHELL. 41 
 
 Creed answers nay, but Science saitli 
 
 Dumb predecessor such as this 
 
 May type the homely chrysalis 
 From which such beauty blossometh. 
 
 It better suits our faith and pride 
 To hold that, nobly-fashioned thus, 
 We leapt at Word Miraculous 
 
 Divinely-imaged, God-allied. 
 
 Yet surely miracle as great 
 
 Marks every growth of life and thought, 
 And all creative law hath wrought 
 
 From humble unto higher state. 
 
 Though fact with faith may not align, 
 Or prove a fin became a claw, 
 The claw a hand, beneath the law, 
 
 Is this creation less divine ? 
 
 Nay, though these riper faculties 
 Did blossom from no finer dust 
 Than this poor waif — yet shall we trust 
 
 That faiths are more than phantasies : 
 
42 REFLECTIONS OAT A FOSSIL SHELL, 
 
 That since one law supremely reigns 
 
 Alike for embryo and man, 
 
 No life is lost where it began, 
 But ever moves to higher planes. 
 
 And if there were no farther scope 
 For Him that built this house of lime, 
 And kindred life, through endless time, 
 
 A shadow falls upon our hope : 
 
 Then yonder lights in heaven's abyss 
 Are meteors in eternal gloom, 
 And Bein^ bears the awful doom — 
 
 Thou art this thing, and only this ! 
 
 Yea, all is blank, inscrutable ! 
 
 A gulf behind, a gulf before, 
 
 And Life is cast for evermore 
 In rigid mould, immutable ! 
 
 What do we peril if we look 
 
 Through God's domain with microscopes ? 
 
 Shall some dread Finis bar our hopes 
 Who seek His ways beyond The Book ? 
 
REFLECTIONS ON A FOSSIL SHELL. 43 
 
 Fear not ! for every seeker knows 
 How vain the Ultimate is sought, — 
 How vaster to the flight of thought 
 
 God's universe forever grows. 
 
 But whoso leaves the land before 
 He knows the port to which he sails, 
 May drift despairing in the gales 
 
 And restful harbor find no more ! 
 
 So, anchor by the faith thou hast, 
 Secure within thy placid pond, 
 While doubters roam the deeps beyond, 
 
 Or sink with shatter'd helm and mast. 
 
 And this mute witness of the time 
 
 When Earth was creeping through the haze 
 
 Of newness to these riper days 
 Of life and growth, and thought sublime, 
 
 May teach us, though his lips be dumb, 
 To trust in faith the kindly Power 
 That shaped us to the present hour 
 
 And limns the higher life to come ; — 
 
44 REFLECTIONS ON A FOSSIL SHELL. 
 
 That Nature, — working out the plan 
 Whose boundaries we are fain to set,- 
 Works onward, not senescent yet, 
 
 Nor all her powers exhaust in Man. 
 
 And while Polemics hold debate 
 On God's creation, — thus, or so, — 
 Suffice it thou and I to know — ■ 
 
 Not how, but that He Does Create, 
 
WHERE ALICE IS. 
 
 Come with me, O charming maid, 
 To the forest's vernal shade 
 
 Where no strife or malice is, 
 And no cares of life invade ; — 
 
 Peace shall reign where Alice is ! 
 
 Come and seek the Dryad's home 
 
 In the wildwood trellises ; 
 Or by ocean's roar and foam 
 Blithely let ns live and roam ; — 
 Joy shall reign where Alice is ! 
 
 Come where lilies, blossoming, 
 
 Lift their fragrant chalices 
 To each living, loving thing 
 Pulsing with the life of Spring ; 
 Love shall reign where Alice is ! 
 
 45 
 
46 WHERE ALICE IS. 
 
 So like Elfin king and queen, 
 Monarchs of a blest demesne, 
 
 Throned in leafy palaces 
 Love and Joy and Peace, I ween,. 
 
 Shall be mine and Alice's ! 
 
 
 *«&■ 
 
THE RAINY SEASON. 
 
 In deeper shadows fell the gloom 
 Within the lonely cabin's room 
 
 Where two old miners fared ; 
 One sat against the chimney side 
 In silence, while the embers died, 
 
 And one for sleep prepared, — 
 Still chattering blithely to his dumb, 
 Disheartened, melancholy chum, 
 Of better days and luck to come 
 
 With dawn of the Rainy Season. 
 
 He called his mate — yet brooding there 
 Beside the hearth's departing glare — 
 
 " Ho, comrade ! wake and hear 
 The roaring pines and stormy blast 
 Proclaiming summer o'er at last, 
 
 The rainy season near ! 
 
 47 
 
48 THE RAINY SEASON. 
 
 The rain, the rain, the blessed rain, 
 That brings the harvest to the plain, 
 And yellow gold from gulch and vein : 
 Hurrah for the Rainy Season ! 
 
 " Though grub be scant, and credit gone, 
 And claims have petered one by one — 
 
 Away with doubt and fear ! 
 We Ve built the flume and dug the ditch ; 
 The gravel in Red Ravine is rich ; 
 
 And hark ! — the rain is here ! 
 The rain, the rain, the joyful rain 
 Now beats the cabin roof amain 
 Till every shingle rings again : 
 
 Hurrah for the Rainy Season ! 
 
 " Cheer up ! — we '11 strike the channel yet ! 
 And Bill, old boy, you can't forget 
 
 Our ups and downs together, 
 Through many a hardship, many a miss ; — 
 But you — you never gave up like this, 
 
 Nor flinched at work or weather ! 
 
THE RAINY SEASON. 
 
 And now the rain, the bounteous rain 
 Is pouring down on peak and plain, 
 Till ranch and mine rejoice again : 
 Hurrah for the Rainy Season ! 
 
 49 
 
 " Come, partner, shake your gloomy mood, 
 Nor longer o'er misfortune brood, 
 
 But let the past be past ; 
 D' ye hear the tempest shake the door ? 
 The canyon's rising waters roar ? 
 
 Success is near at last ! " — 
 But ah ! he called his mate in vain, 
 For Death had come before the rain ! 
 And Bill would never respond again, 
 
 Nor toil in the Rainy Season ! 
 
LOVE'S PRESAGE. 
 
 sad-eyed mother, dropping tears 
 
 O'er cherub cheek and rosy limb ! 
 Thy loving fears forebode the years 
 
 That reach remorseless hands for him ! — 
 For him, sweet babe, that from his nest 
 
 Looks wonder at thy sudden grief, 
 Nor dreams his rest upon thy breast 
 
 Shall be, ah me, so passing brief ! 
 
 But time will take, for ill or good, 
 
 Each darling from the mother's knee ; 
 And soon thy bud of babyhood 
 
 Must blossom to depart from thee ! 
 Yet, though he roam to farthest clime, 
 
 Though grief and shame his steps attend,- 
 Though red with crime, thy lore sublime 
 
 Will find and fold him to the end ! 
 
 50 
 
TO ANE THE CYNIC SOUGHT. 
 
 thou, wbase honest nature spurns 
 The guilty wage that baseness earns, 
 The gainful lie, the fat returns 
 
 O' fraud and wrang, — 
 For thee, puir saul, a bardie mourns 
 
 In heart and sang ! 
 
 Thy tender conscience is a gift 
 Forbidding hope o' warldly thrift ; 
 Och ! better thou wert sense bereft, 
 
 Or black mischance 
 Had cast thee, Pariah-like, adrift 
 
 On life's expanse ! 
 
 Integrity 's a fossil weed 
 To a' this modern Mammon greed, — 
 A thing lang dead to ken and need 
 Ayont the name : 
 51 
 
52 TO ANE THE CYNIC SOUGHT. 
 
 The paukie tongue and pliant creed 
 Are wealth and fame ! 
 
 Nae wonner, friend, that hands recoil 
 Frae sawing sticks and tilling soil, 
 When ane wi' knackit to despoil 
 
 A bank or twa, 
 May snap his thumbs at honest toil 
 
 For ance and a' ! 
 
 And Justice — hoot ! the venal minx 
 Can see as weel 's a hungry lynx ! 
 Attend her coort when siller clinks 
 
 For Croesus' sins, 
 And mark the hizzie's nods and winks 
 
 While siller wins ! 
 
 But when your paltry fingers itch — 
 Wee pi If ring rogue or famished wretch- 
 Tak tent ! — she '11 hound ye to the ditch 
 
 Whase theft a crust is ! 
 Gae steal a million, man, and clutch 
 
 The scales o' Justice ! 
 
TO ANE THE CYNIC SOUGHT. 53 
 
 This life 's a game that maist beginners 
 Maun learn thro' dool and scrinipit dinners, 
 While sleekit knaves the trumps and winners 
 
 Full-handed haud, 
 And praising fools and fellow-sinners 
 
 Their tricks applaud. 
 
 But thou, wha toils in honest ways, 
 May moil and hunger a' thy days, 
 And fleech and snool for bread an' claes 
 
 On supple knee, — 
 Nae wardly prize nor fellow praise 
 
 For sic as thee ! 
 
 Yet, friend, I '11 wad my aith upon 't — 
 Though scouted here and pinched wi' want — 
 There is for thee a place ayont 
 
 Auld Charon's beck, 
 Where Peter waits to ca 1 thee saunt, 
 
 And lift the sneck ! 
 
THE OWL. 
 
 He loves Lis lonely ivied nook 
 
 Far up the old gray wall, 
 Whence his unlidded eyes may look 
 
 Unseen, yet seeing all ; 
 He loves the moon's uncanny light ; 
 He hoots his joy when starless night 
 
 Hath draped her dannest pall ; 
 But like a guilty soul, doth shun 
 The searching eye of noonday sun ! 
 
 By graveyard paths and haunted ways, 
 When half the world 's asleep, 
 
 He sees with fixed, unf earful gaze 
 The shapes of evil creep ; 
 
 Or from his ancient oak espies 
 
 The fateful tryst, the sacrifice, 
 The lost that walk and weep : 
 
 54 
 
THE OWL. 55 
 
 bird, that sittest grim and still, 
 
 1 fear thou art colleagued with ill ! 
 
 And thou dost typify to rue 
 
 His nature, stern and grim, 
 Whose heart ne'er melts in sympathy, 
 
 Whose eyes no tears bedim ; 
 Who sits aloof with stony stare 
 While sorrow darkens to despair, 
 
 And Misery pleads to him ! 
 But wrapped in self, as with a cowl — 
 " Tu-whit ! tu-hoo ! " — what cares the owl ! 
 
MAMMON'S IN MEMORIAM. 
 
 AT THE CEMETERIES, " LONE MOUNTAIN," SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 O strong young empire, marching free ! 
 At last by this Hesperian sea, 
 The bivouac-halt is blown for thee. 
 
 Thy tents are pitched, thy march is done ; 
 Behind thee lies the guerdon won ; 
 Before, the sea and setting sun. 
 
 Here, where Pacific's thunderous waves 
 Resound from headland cliffs and caves — 
 Behold a hundred thousand graves ! 
 
 The fallen of an army, these, 
 That swarmed from Earth's antipodes, 
 From northern lands and tropic seas ; 
 
 56 
 
MAMMON'S IN MEMORIAM. 57 
 
 From every clime and race enrolled ; — 
 An army of the strong and bold, 
 Recruited at the cry of " Gold ! " 
 
 And lo ! as if by fairy planned, 
 A city crowns the hills of sand, 
 And fleets blow in from every land. 
 
 Here sweep the winds from western zones, 
 Fog-laden, voiceful with the moans 
 Of surges round the Farallones, 
 
 That landward run their course of fate — 
 Alas, like many a soul elate, 
 Here fallen at the Golden Gate ! 
 
 O sea, that blows such doleful breath 
 O'er all these acres sown with death ! — 
 What is 't thy sorrowing spirit saith ? 
 
 Sweet Peace is here, and Strife is dumb ; 
 The turmoils of the city come 
 No louder than the beetle's hum : 
 
58 MAMMON'S IN MEMORIAM. 
 
 But Sorrow cometh here to slied 
 Her secret tears, and kindly spread 
 Fresh flowers above her sainted dead. 
 
 For her thy wild sea-pipers blow 
 Their coronachs, and loud and low 
 Sound every chord of human woe ! 
 
 O realm of peace, and death, and flowers ! 
 How dear to thought in vagrant hours 
 Thy labyrinthine paths and bowers ! 
 
 What joy, these spring-in-winter days, 
 To flee the world's soul-fettering ways 
 And dream within thy brambly maze ! 
 
 To watch the rabbits play, and hear 
 The friendly quail afar and near, 
 From shadowy thickets piping clear ! 
 
 Here let us walk, for all the air 
 Is sweet with shrubs ; exotics rare 
 Their aromatic burdens bear ; 
 
MAMMON'S IN MEMORIAM. 59 
 
 And man and art with nature vie 
 To mask with pleasance from the eye 
 The coffined host that round us lie. 
 
 One coverlet o'er all is spread 
 That sleep within this common bed, 
 And class, and caste, and pride are dead ! 
 
 — Are dead ? Nay, to the dead alone : 
 For Wealth still barriers from her own 
 The pauper and the poor unknown ; 
 
 Still bans them to the wastes and holes, 
 And proudly from her templed knolls 
 O'erlooks the dust of common souls ! 
 
 Here soars the high memorial shaft 
 To base success and worldly craft, 
 By Flattery duly epitaphed ; 
 
 And yonder, through acacia blooms, 
 A regal mausoleum looms 
 Superbly o'er the stately tombs, 
 
60 MAMMON'S IN MEMORIAM. 
 
 Bronze-gated and with gilt aflame. — 
 Draw near, and read what honored name 
 Great deeds have bruited into fame. 
 
 Is this the shrine of one who fought 
 For others' weal, or nobly wrought 
 To broaden human life and thought ? 
 
 Sleeps here some laurel'd bard or sage ? 
 Some patriot heart that cast the gage 
 To tyrants and redeemed his age ? 
 
 Or one who, sceptered with the pen, 
 Still holds in deathless love and ken 
 His kingship o'er the minds of men ? 
 
 Nay, friend, none such ! yet o'er this mould 
 The blazoned tablet might have told, 
 u Here lies a king — the king of Gold." 
 
 A king not born to regal state, 
 But, sooth, a puissant potentate 
 And arbiter of human fate ; 
 
MAMMON'S IN MEMORIAM. 6 1 
 
 Whose glamoured subjects madly ran 
 
 To serve, or trumpet in Lis van — 
 
 " Behold, O world, this self-made man ! " 
 
 Whose dire Mephistophelian art 
 Taught multitudes the gamester's }:>art, 
 And snared them in the gilded mart ! 
 
 For well he knew the ruling trait — 
 This king ! — and how to operate 
 His fool-traps set with golden bait ! 
 
 Alike to shrewd and simple showed 
 The road to wealth (a royal road !) 
 That led through his Bonanza Lode. 
 
 And thousands entered, thousands fell ! — 
 Alas ! alas ! and proved it well — 
 The very Arch-fiend's road to hell. 
 
 The loiterers that gather here 
 Come not to honor or revere, 
 Nor bless these ashes with a tear ; 
 
62 MAMMON'S IN MEMORIAM. 
 
 But to all fellow-feeling lost, 
 With critic eyes appraise the cost 
 Of shrining this ignoble dust. 
 
 Saith one : " Here rests the busy brain 
 Of him that plann'd with might and main, 
 Insatiate still in greed of gain ; 
 
 "Who, reaping past his utmost need, 
 Gave back the liberal Earth no seed 
 Of fruitful thought or noble deed ; 
 
 " Whose thrift was like the deadly blight 
 
 Of some portentous parasite, 
 
 Grown rank on stolen life and light ! " 
 
 Another : " Ay, here Mammon died 
 And built his fane, wherein are pride 
 And sordid lust self- glorified ! 
 
 " Here worldly honors, thickly sown 
 In pomp, and art, and chisel'd stone, 
 Are his — who lived for self alone ; 
 
MAMMON'S IN MEMORIAM. 63 
 
 " While all around us modest Worth, 
 Through life-long failure, dole and dearth, 
 Returns unmarked to mother Earth ! 
 
 " The wealth that shrines this worthless clay 
 Might show Despair the cheerful day, 
 And flight the hunger-wolf away 
 
 " From many a wretched chimney-side 
 
 Where Penury sits hollow-eyed, 
 
 And famished mouths the crumbs divide ! r 
 
 Oh, shall a specious Latin phrase 
 Forbid reproach of evil ways, 
 And death beguile us into praise ? 
 
 Nay, let the truth or nought be said ! 
 He adds no honor to the dead 
 Who carves a lie above his head ; 
 
 Else shall our lives and graves attest 
 That honor lies in lucre-quest, 
 And to be base is to be blessed ! 
 
64 MAMMON'S IN MEMORIAM. 
 
 If Death's alembic purifies 
 
 From earthly dross, and souls grown wise 
 
 Survey their past with sadden'd eyes ; — 
 
 Or, flitting from some higher sphere, 
 
 On loving missions hover near 
 
 To watch our lives, to warn and cheer, — 
 
 This soul, transfigured from the vault, 
 Would bid the glozing chisel halt 
 And blazon his besetting fault. 
 
 O dust of life so desolate ! 
 
 Nor sculptured stone nor brazen gate 
 
 Can rank thee with the good and great ! 
 
 Nay, though thy pride and wealth out-bid 
 The builder of the pyramid, 
 Oblivion guards thy coffin-lid ; 
 
 And yon poor Nameless wrapped in sod,— 
 O'er whom the wind-sown grasses nod, — 
 Is nearer unto man and God ! 
 
MAMMON'S /AT MEMORIAM. 65 
 
 But hadst thou rightly understood 
 The bonds of human brotherhood, 
 How blest thy life had been for good ! 
 
 Not thine the honorable spoil 
 The useful arts may yield to toil 
 From mart and workshop, sea and soil : 
 
 O scorner of the honest bread ! — 
 Thou, like a bird that beaks the dead, 
 On human frailty grossly fed ! 
 
 Thy arts robbed Plenty of her store, 
 Drove Thrift to beggary, nor forbore 
 To prey on Want, and grasp for more ! 
 
 Thy arts turned joy to hopeless grief ; 
 Made life-long probity a thief, 
 And mad self-murder blest relief ! 
 
 So stands the record ; — read it, knaves, 
 In cells where dread unreason raves ; 
 In blighted homes and early graves ! 
 
 5 
 
66 MAMMON'S IN MEMORIAM. 
 
 So stands the record, deeply scored 
 In living hearts ! And his reward ?- 
 This stone-heap, and a futile hoard. 
 
 Pause here, ye whose eager grip 
 Lets not the miser'd treasure slip 
 Till death revokes your stewardship ! 
 
 Break, break in life your maramon-gyves ! 
 Nor hope to sanctify base lives 
 With liberal gold when death arrives. 
 
 Alas ! the late post-mortem gift 
 Can never the sordid soul uplift 
 To earthly love or heavenly shrift \ 
 
 pjpn 
 
A VERNAL INVOCATION. 
 
 Soar, skylark, to the azure dome, 
 And call the truants back that roam ; 
 
 From southward groves, O bluebird, hasten ! 
 Come, robin, unto thy northern home. 
 
 Pour forth your blithest roundelay, 
 O birds, to incense-breathing May ! 
 
 And o'er the quicken'd zones rejoicing, 
 Hail Nature's new resurrection day. 
 
 Now once again the woodlands ring 
 With song, and wondrous blossoming 
 
 From Winter's tenebrific slumber 
 Proclaims the miracle of the Spring. 
 
 So, Soul, when thy worn garment lies 
 In graveyard mould, mayst thou arise, 
 
 And from the dust benignly blossom 
 To glorious life in heavenly skies ! 
 
 67 
 
LINES TO FLORENCE. 
 
 There comes with Summer's bloom and leaf, 
 A joyful thing that gayly speeds 
 On goi'geous wings through flowery meads, 
 
 Un vexed with care or grief ; — 
 
 A bright and dainty fugitive 
 
 That nought unclean contaminates, 
 Nor sullied with the lusts and hates 
 
 That mar the lives we live. 
 
 Be thine, dear child, such lot as this, — ■ 
 Not idle, but as free from care 
 As this bright blossom of the air, 
 
 As sinless in thy bliss ! 
 
 68 
 
COUNSEL FROM SOL. SLOWBOY. 
 
 My plodding friend, break loose and send 
 Your treadmill bonds to blazes ! 
 
 Go kick your heels in clover fields, 
 And roll among the daisies ! 
 
 Let day-books go to Jericho ! 
 
 De'il take the price of tallow ! 
 Yon grassy banks will rest your shanks, 
 
 And let your brain lie fallow. 
 
 The wise are they who every day 
 
 Enjoy life as it passes, 
 And carol still through good or ill ; 
 
 The rest, I fear, are asses ! 
 
 Now, let us see — you 're forty-three, 
 And though your eye still twinkles, 
 
 Old Time and Care have touched your hair, 
 And sketched the coming wrinkles. 
 
 6 9 
 
70 COUNSEL FROM SOL. SLOW BOY. 
 
 'T is time to rest from lucre-quest — 
 
 " Too poor ? " nay, that 's mere gammon ! 
 
 You Ve ample wealth for peace and health, 
 And moderate love of Mammon. 
 
 " Your business ? " — tut ! you 're in a rut 
 
 Worn deep in self-delusion, 
 And year by year trot round in fear 
 
 Of ruin and confusion. 
 
 But after you and I are through 
 With profits, debts, and taxes, 
 
 The world, no doubt, will turn about 
 As usual, on its axis ; 
 
 And when we 're gone some other one 
 
 Will do as well as we did, — 
 For time and Fate, O friend, but wait 
 
 To fill our shoes when needed ! 
 
 " Your children ? " — well, there 's lazy Belle, 
 Tom (junior), Maude, and Jerry ; 
 
 But why should they have all the play, 
 And you the work and worry ? 
 
COUNSEL FROM SOL. SLOW BOY. J I 
 
 Yet, day by day you plod away, 
 
 Ignoring soul and body, 
 While Belle (vain lass !) is at her glass, 
 
 And Tom — is at his toddy ! 
 
 And thus, old friend, the shadowed end 
 
 Appeals and bids you ponder ! 
 Is 't wise to slave and scrimp and save 
 
 That idle heirs may squander ? 
 
 Wealth got by will is rife with ill — 
 
 Ay, worse than want to many ! 
 Make children earn, and thereby learn 
 
 The worth of every penny. 
 
 That 's why I say, Go forth and play, 
 
 Enjoy life while it passes, 
 Thus saving less for idleness, 
 
 May save your lads and lasses. 
 
 Let 's look ahead. — When you are dead 
 
 Then comes the usual jangle ; 
 Unheard-of heirs contend for shares, 
 
 And hungry lawyers wrangle. 
 
72 COUNSEL FROM SOL. SLOWBOY. 
 
 One wife we knew, nor dreamed of two, 
 But death brings strange surprises, 
 
 And now, to claim your honor'd name — 
 Lo, number two arises ! 
 
 Blackmail, of course ! tho' something worse 
 
 Is hinted — but, no matter, — 
 Wealth always draws the hawks and daws 
 
 To peck the dead, and chatter ! 
 
 Your intellect was doubtless wrecked, — 
 
 A fact more sad than funny ! 
 For it is found they 're seldom sound 
 
 Who die and leave much money ! 
 
 And so your will, though drawn with skill, 
 
 Provokes a mighty rumpus, 
 And experts swear, and courts declare 
 
 You clearly were non compos. 
 
 Then, when at last the strife is past, 
 
 And wrangling ends in revel, 
 Belle weds some fraud and goes abroad, 
 
 And Tom goes to — the devil ! 
 
COUNSEL FROM SOL. SLOW BOY. 
 
 And ere again the suniiner rain 
 Brings daisies to the meadow, 
 
 Some wiser chap has won, mayhap, 
 Your still attractive widow ! 
 
 And so I say, Be wise to-day, — 
 Enjoy life's cheery phases, 
 
 And carol still through good or ill, 
 And roll among the daisies ! 
 
 73 
 
 ^_ 
 
THE DEVIL'S WELL. 
 
 PRELUDE. 
 
 They passed the threshold in their prime, 
 Three stalwart sons were they, 
 
 That from their lowly cottage door 
 One morn at break of day, 
 
 With tearful eyes but hopeful hearts, 
 Rode westward and away. 
 
 And there were two left desolate 
 
 Within the village lane, — 
 A wretched pair that gazed adieu 
 
 Through Sorrow's blinding rain, 
 And cried aloud, " God bless our boys, 
 
 And guide them home again ! " 
 
 Then months grew into years, and Death 
 Came with his summons stern ; 
 
 74 
 
THE DEVIL'S WELL. 75 
 
 And one who stood within the lane 
 
 Left one alone to mourn ; 
 And long the widow'd mother sighed — 
 
 " O sons of mine, return ! r 
 
 Low sinks the fierce and fervent sun, 
 Where mountains looming vast 
 
 On Arizona's torrid plains 
 Their giant shadows cast ; 
 
 And from a dark arroyo's mouth 
 A horseman rideth fast. 
 
 Why spurs this courier o'er the waste 
 
 Thus at the close of day, 
 With rifle poised and eye alert 
 
 As if for sudden fray ? 
 He bears the Mail to lonely camps 
 
 A hundred miles away. 
 
 But wherefore sweeps his searching eye 
 The scene so wild and drear, — 
 
j6 THE DEVIL'S WELL. 
 
 So silent all and desolate 
 
 The peace of death seems here ? 
 
 Sure, nought but guilt or coward heart 
 Could dream of danger near. 
 
 No craven he : that rugged form 
 
 In tawny buckskin dight, 
 Bears heart within as bold and true 
 
 As e'er did ancient knight ; 
 That hand the fierce Apache slew 
 
 In many a bloody fight. 
 
 And well he knows the treach'rous peace 
 Who rides here undismayed, — 
 
 Knows life must hold the citadel 
 With ready shot and blade 
 
 For lurking outlaw, savage guile, 
 And deadly ambuscade. 
 
 He speeds o'er realms that seem accurst 
 
 By some malignant ban, 
 Where savage Nature scorns the weak, 
 
 And leagued with savage man, 
 
HE SPEEDS O'ER REALMS THAT SEEM ACCURST" 
 
THE DEVIL'S WELL. J7 
 
 Maintains a rigorous reign, and he 
 May keep his life who can. 
 
 Where bleaching bones of man and beast 
 
 Mark Slaughter's cruel sway, 
 And graveless lie the fallen dead 
 
 To feast the birds of prey, 
 Or mummy there in desert air 
 
 And grimly waste away. 
 
 But scathless he had lived and fought 
 Through scenes of blood and woe, 
 
 While one ill-fated brother fell 
 In ambush years ago ; 
 
 The other roams for vengeance yet, 
 And death to the savage foe. 
 
 His broncho is a trusty beast, 
 
 That ne'er was known to fail 
 In wind or speed when urgent need 
 
 Bade flight upon the trail ; 
 Nor ever flinched at rifle-shot, 
 
 Or shied at sudden assail. 
 
7$ THE DEVILS WELL. 
 
 And all her rider's will she knows, 
 Each word and touch obeys ; 
 
 Can keep the trail in blackest night 
 Through wild, untravelled ways 
 
 And shun the yucca's bayonets, 
 The mesquite's thorny maze. 
 
 The giant cacti guard him round 
 Like warders weird and grim, 
 And in the fad in g- lio-ht afar 
 
 o o 
 
 On yonder western rim, 
 Loom up in shadowy shapes that lift 
 Portentous arms to him. 
 
 He marks the crescent moon go down ; 
 
 He sees the northern star 
 Rise o'er the verge, and lurid gleams 
 
 From mountain heights afar 
 Where savages by camp-fires brood 
 
 On deeds of death and war. 
 
 So speeds he on while sombre Night 
 Enfolds the mountains higher 
 
THE DEVIL'S WELL. 79 
 
 With grateful veil till all is gloom, 
 
 Save where the far-off spire 
 Of lofty Bab 'quivari lifts 
 
 A finger-point of fire. 
 
 Oh, bless'd is night that brings respite 
 
 From Sol's consuming glow, 
 Where ills beset the traveller 
 
 More fell than savage foe, 
 And never the precious rain may fall, 
 
 Nor cooling stream may flow ! 
 
 Yea, bless'd to him who madly rides 
 
 Beneath the dark'ning sky, 
 To cross the leagues of drouth and death 
 
 That yet before him lie, 
 With eyes aflame, and blistered lips 
 
 That tell of the canteen dry \ 
 
 Yet forward under mortal need 
 
 And duty's high demand, 
 Beyond the solemn noon of night 
 
 He rides the lonely land, 
 
80 THE DEVILS WELL. 
 
 Hinged with the soundless firmament 
 And silent wastes of sand. 
 
 And now lie reins Lis jaded beast 
 
 Lest she be overdone, 
 For long the way, and desolate, 
 
 Ere yet the goal be won, 
 And man and horse must drink or fall 
 
 Before to-morrow's sun. 
 
 But if he reads the land aright, 
 And all the signs that guide, 
 
 There lies a pool (of evil fame) 
 Within an hour's ride 
 
 That must be sought and found to-nigh t,- 
 To-night whate'er betide ! 
 
 Brief time he halts to mark his course, 
 Where, looming in the West, 
 
 Grim El Diablo cleaves the sky 
 With black, serrated crest, 
 
 And hides the darksome Devil's Well 
 Within his rushed breast. 
 
THE DEVI US WELL. 8 1 
 
 A pool ill-omened as the name 
 
 By desert nomads given, 
 Yet unto many a hapless soul 
 
 Athirst and frenzy-driven, 
 That black lagoon hath proven blest 
 
 As benison from heaven. 
 
 But oh ! a savage cul de sac, 
 
 As desert legends tell ! 
 Of murder foul and massacre, 
 
 And tortures as of hell ; 
 And men aver a savor still 
 
 Of blood is in the Well ! 
 
 Then on through narrowing defiles, 
 Where mighty cliffs hung sheer 
 
 Above the rough and rubbled way 
 He pressed in hope and fear, 
 
 Until his horse with sudden neigh 
 Announced the water near. 
 
 And soon within embattled buttes — 
 The birth of Vulcan powers 
 
 6 
 
82 THE DEVIL'S WELL. 
 
 That ramparted a barren swale 
 
 With splinter'd walls and towers — 
 
 He found the pool and camped thereby 
 Until the morning hours. 
 
 A bowlder screened him from the wind 
 That through the basin swept ; 
 
 And while his broncho, tethered near, 
 Sole guard and vigil kept, 
 
 And cropped the scanty grama grass, 
 Her master soundly slept. 
 
 Yet waking once, he heard the beast 
 
 Thrice whinny, as in fear; 
 She spied some hungry w^olf, perchance, 
 
 Or puma prowling near, 
 But never a sound of danger fell 
 
 Upon his listening ear. 
 
 And so he turned to sleep again, 
 As one would turn a page ; 
 
 He only heard the night-wind's low 
 Susurrus in the sage, 
 
THE DEVIL'S WELL. 83 
 
 And eerie sounds of solitude 
 There voiced from a^e to me. 
 
 And such the power of habitude, 
 When need and suffering ceased, 
 
 Couched there within the sun-warm sand, 
 Unf earing man or beast, 
 
 He slumbered sound as a cradled babe 
 Till light broke from the East ; 
 
 Then 'woke, — but not as sluggards wake, 
 With yawn and drowsing air ; — 
 
 Like warrior on the battle morn, 
 Or wild beast in his lair, 
 
 He springs from sleep with faculties 
 Full-armed to do and dare. 
 
 But who is here ? — what presence this 
 That greets his waking sight ? — 
 
 A stranger at the Devil's Well 
 Hath lodged near him o'er night, 
 
 And draped and huddled grimly sits 
 Between him and the li^ht ! 
 
84 THE DEVIL'S WELL. 
 
 Sits yonder by a bowlder braced, 
 And swathed from top to toe 
 
 In tattered blanket, void of sign 
 To mark him friend or foe, 
 
 Nor stirs, — it is the wind that waves 
 The tatters to and fro ! 
 
 Then rose the scout and searchingly 
 The wrapt intruder scanned, 
 
 And, rifle poised, the summons sent — 
 " Ho, stranger, show your hand ! ' 
 
 But never a sign the stranger gave 
 To menace or demand. 
 
 Thereat, advancing warily, 
 
 With battle in his eye, 
 Again he cried in louder voice — 
 
 u Speak ! stranger, or you die ! ' ; 
 But rigid yet the stranger sat 
 
 Vouchsafing no reply. 
 
 Then to the muffled shape he strode, 
 The wind-worn blanket raised ; — 
 
"A STRANGER AT THE DEVIL'S WELL" 
 
THE DEVIL' S WELL. 85 
 
 There sat a grim and shrivell'd thing 
 That held him horror-dazed ! — 
 
 A semblance of himself that grew 
 In likeness as he gazed ! 
 
 Ay ! in that stark cadaver there 
 
 So shrunk and hollow-eyed, 
 His last, lost brother's lineaments 
 
 Too surely he descried, 
 Whose battle wounds and riven scalp 
 
 Bore witness how he died. 
 
 But hark ! strange sounds arise, and see — 
 
 The bristling yuccas stir ! 
 The cacti shake, — away ! away ! 
 
 Mount horse and drive the spur ! — 
 The red fiends rise with shot and yell, 
 
 And vengeful arrows whirr ! 
 
 Like hounded panther forth he sprang, — 
 
 But ah ! e'en while he slept, 
 Strange hands had cut the lariat, 
 
 And moccasin'd foes had crept 
 
86 THE DEVIVS WELL. 
 
 Between him and escape, and now 
 From circling ambush leapt ! 
 
 Then rose his courage with the need, 
 
 The peril instant weighed, 
 And prone behind a hammock stretched, 
 
 Such stern defence essayed, 
 That death flew hotly to the foe 
 
 Around his barricade. 
 
 In vain, brave heart ! — No single arm 
 May vanquish a hundred foes ! 
 
 And though beneath his deadly aim 
 The savage life-blood flows, 
 
 From every rock and dune he sees 
 The merciless circle close ! 
 
 Then rang the Apache cry, and then, 
 
 With simultaneous yell, 
 Down on that doomed and dauntless man 
 
 Like famished wolves they fell, 
 And half a hundred eager blades 
 
 Drank blood at the fateful Well ! 
 
THE DEVIL'S WELL. 
 
 87 
 
 A silence falls upon the hearth, 
 
 And shadows darker grow 
 Where yet that aged mother waits, 
 
 In piteons hope and woe, 
 The three brave sons who left her heart 
 
 Such age-long years ago ! 
 
 Still, day by day, her poor old eyes 
 Peer out through the window-paue, 
 
 To watch the postman's daily round, — 
 To w 7 atch, alas, in vain, 
 
 For tidings of the lost and dead 
 That never shall come again ! 
 
INGERSOLL. 
 
 "An atheist laugh 's a poor exchange 
 For Deity offended.'" — Burns. 
 
 What cloth the witty giber give, 
 
 fellow- mortal, unto thee ? 
 Some golden rule whereby to live ? 
 
 Some anchor in futurity ? 
 Nay, nay — not his the power 
 To lighten life or cheer one dying hour ! 
 
 But words and mockeries are his, 
 
 In lucre-seeking widely sown ; 
 He saps belief with subtleties, 
 
 And to the hungered gives a stone ! 
 O soul, not of the scoffer 
 Seek thou what hope and faith alone can offer ! 
 
 88 
 
FLIGHT BEYOND FAITH. 
 
 Appalled I view the desolate goal 
 And triumph of the daring soul, 
 
 That 'round his barren peak's eternal frost 
 Soars, eagle-like, in solitude of mind, 
 Beyond the genial faiths of all his kind, — 
 
 To man's sublimest hope sublimely lost ! 
 
 Seek ye that will, in wildering flights, 
 The deities of Olympian heights, 
 
 Or chase the phantom lights beyond our line ; 
 Enough for me the simple joys that grace 
 This blest and bloomful atom hung in space, 
 
 To live in love, and die in hope divine. 
 
 8 9 
 
DOUBT. 
 
 Doubt, thou art the ruthless robber-chief 
 That desolates our fanes and fairy lands ! 
 That murders Hope, and with remorseless 
 hands 
 Destroys our precious hoardings of Belief, 
 Which but for thy grim wrack, O vandal thief, 
 Had still supplied the hunger' d soul's de- 
 mands ! 
 So now, like travellers whelm'd in desert 
 sands, 
 Bereft our blessed solacements of grief, 
 We toil forlorn o'er life's unbeaconed waste ! 
 
 Alas ! the riches flown we may regain ; 
 The shatter' d ship may haply reach the shore; 
 Lost loves and friendships all may be replaced: 
 But one lost treasure we shall mourn in vain, — ■ 
 O soul ! thy vanished faith returns no more ! 
 
 90 
 
THE CREED OF HOPE. 
 
 Why question ye the deathless creed, 
 
 So sweet to all our mortal need, 
 
 So blest of highest thought and deed ? 
 
 Or pridefully in judgment sit 
 On this and that of Holy Writ 
 To controvert or scoff at it ? 
 
 Oh, blighting as the simoon's breath 
 To verdure is the voice that saith 
 The final goal of Life is Death ! 
 
 Woe worth the Goth that would destroy 
 The simple faith — so fraught with joy ! — 
 Of childhood in its tale and toy ! 
 
 Or who would change our boon to bane 
 With bitter "Truth" — pronouncing vain 
 Our mortal cry to live again ! 
 
 91 
 
92 THE CREED OF HOPE. 
 
 Thy vaunted Truth is Dead Sea fruit ! 
 Give Faith some pledges absolute 
 In her despoilment, or be mute. 
 
 Can Science tell us of the soul ? 
 Nay — ask the darkly-delving mole 
 The problems of the Northern Pole ! 
 
 Vain hope, alas, that e'er her scouts 
 Shall spy our future whereabouts, 
 And certify all hopes or doubts ! — 
 
 That e'er her quest in earth and sky 
 Shall bring our hearts the full reply 
 To solace and to satisfy ! 
 
 Life's mysteries lie thick about ; 
 
 But oh, cast not contentment out 
 
 For vain half-knowledge, harrowing doubt ! 
 
 Nor madly make a guide of one 
 
 Who, when his own faith-light is gone, 
 
 Cries from the darkness — " Follow on ! — 
 
THE CREED OF HOPE. 93 
 
 " Your systems teem with wrong and ruth, 
 And false your faiths and creeds, forsooth ! 
 But follow ;— I have found The Truth ! " 
 
 Nor grope with the materialist 
 
 In pseudo-scientific mist 
 
 To prove that God doth not exist ; — 
 
 That dumb, insensate forces wrought 
 
 Dead matter into life and thought, 
 
 And marvellous systems — meaning nought ! 
 
 Such myope only followeth 
 
 A mockery to doubt and death : 
 
 But farther-seeing broadens faith ; 
 
 And those star-measuring souls that soar 
 
 Beyond Orion's glowing core 
 
 See God in Nature, more and more. 
 
 He learns with loss who scans his bliss 
 Through microscopes, or tests a kiss . 
 By ultimate analysis ; 
 
94 THE CREED OF HOPE. 
 
 What gives thee joy, and stirs the blood 
 And seemeth good — believe it good, 
 Nor doubt till all be understood. 
 
 Could ever trilobite foreken 
 
 The saurian, or such creature, then, 
 
 Thro' cycles vast see apes and men, — 
 
 Could ever embryo foresee 
 
 Its far evolvement — then might we 
 
 Have prescience of eternity, — 
 
 Behold through crude, incarnate vision 
 The coming marvels of transition, 
 The perfect soul and life elysian. 
 
 Yet, as the eaglet in his cell 
 Hath dreamful stirrings that forei 
 His broader life beyond the shell, 
 
 So stirred are we ; and so we say — • 
 Thus far we fare upon the way 
 From darkened life to dawn of day. 
 
THE CREED OF HOPE. 95 
 
 How oft, bereft of blessed sight, 
 Men walk at noon in utter night, 
 Unconscious of the glorious light ! 
 
 The suns arise, the suns descend, 
 But, void the sense to apprehend, 
 Their lives are sunless to the end ! 
 
 So, things that creep may ne'er descry 
 The vistas opening to the eye 
 And farther ken of things that fly. 
 
 And if some island-savage stand 
 
 Upon his sea-girt rim of sand 
 
 And say : " There is no other land,' 1 — 
 
 To him there is no more ; — to him 
 The sea- world stretches vast and dim, 
 And ends at the horizon rim. 
 
 His universe is what he sees, — 
 Scarce wider than the chimpanzee's, 
 In narrow round of tropic trees. 
 
g6 THE CREED OF HOPE. 
 
 But light there is, though men ma}' grope 
 In darkness, and to faith and hope, 
 Fair lands beyond the visual scope. 
 
 If from mere animalculum 
 
 This marvel grew — Doubt, be dumb, 
 
 Nor idly gauge the growth to come ! 
 
 Nor say, in Time's eternal flight 
 We cannot rise to higher height : 
 The powers unknown are infinite ! 
 
 Since Nature's kindly alchemy 
 Restores in ways we cannot see, 
 The fallen leaf unto the tree ; — 
 
 Since germs are quicken'd from the mire, 
 And lowly life hath mounted higher, 
 O Man, why may'st thou not aspire ! 
 
THE GOSPEL O' GAMMON. 
 
 ADDRESSED TO A SOCIALISTIC PREACHER. 
 
 I hear ye Ve fought an unco' fight 
 Wi' ghouls that strangle Human Right, 
 Through grewsome shades o' doot and night, 
 
 And wrang and ruth, 
 And find, at last, the bleezing light 
 
 O' blessed Truth. 
 
 In sic a cause, God speed ye, sir, 
 But, bonnie Truth — leuk weel at her ! 
 For mony a glaikit worshipper, 
 
 Syne Adam fell, 
 Has been her sole discoverer — 
 
 As weel 's yersel ! 
 
 And och ! she 's proved a jinky jade 
 To countless devotees betrayed ! 
 
 7 97 
 
98 THE GOSPEL O" GAMMON, 
 
 And mony a tragic escapade, 
 
 And hellish clamor, 
 Wi' faggot-fire and bluidy blade 
 
 Attest her glamour ! 
 
 Ye may be wise, but O ye ken, 
 
 Fause lights hae dazed much wiser men ! 
 
 And folk assert — and say 't again — 
 
 That ye 're pursuin' 
 A jack-o'-lantern ower the fen 
 
 O' moral ruin ! 
 
 But is it true ye hae the plan 
 To equalize your brither man, — 
 End a' oppression, social ban, 
 
 And war and pillage, 
 And gie to each his bit o' Ian' 
 
 For peaceful tillage ? 
 
 And that ye merge in broader faith 
 The narrow creed o' Nazareth ? — 
 Proclaiming, while sic want and skaith 
 Puir bodies bear, 
 
THE GOSPEL O' GAMMON. 99 
 
 We needna speer ayont the breath 
 Hoo sauls may fare ? 
 
 If true, guid sir, it is the chief 
 
 O' human gospel and belief ! 
 
 Thraw up your hats, ilk tramp and thief, 
 
 For creed sae canty ! — 
 The Grace o' God is bread and beef, 
 
 And Heaven is Plenty ! 
 
 But, sir, sic change frae auld to new 
 May close the pulpit and the pew, 
 And ruin a' the preacher crew, 
 
 I 've sair misgiving ! 
 And what will puir auld Satan do 
 
 To earn his living ? 
 
 Sad thocht to grieve and gie us pain ! 
 
 But loss is aft oor highest gain ; 
 
 And when the De'il perceives hoo vain 
 
 His auld pursuit is, 
 Hech, man ! ye baith may then attain 
 
 Mair useful duties ! 
 
IOO THE GOSPEL 0' GAMMON. 
 
 Advice is aften oot o' place, 
 
 Yet, here 's a bit that fits the case : 
 
 If blether could redeem the race 
 
 Your power is ample ; 
 But try the force o' Christian grace, 
 
 And guid example. 
 
 Ye rail at Wealth wi' fine pretence, 
 While slave yersel to carnal sense ; 
 Ye eat the food of Opulence, 
 
 And wear his raiment, 
 But frae the dole o' Indigence 
 
 Exact the payment ! 
 
 Ye ne'er hae lightened Labor's ways, 
 Nor eased Privation's dreary days 
 Wi' a' this reek and verbal haze ; 
 
 But — De'il ma care ! — 
 Ye gain what Toil to Gammon pays, 
 
 If naething mair ! 
 
 O souls, whase lot sae unco drear is ! 
 Nae Babble-jack's ingenious theories, 
 And theolosfic whiommleeries 
 
THE GOSPEL 0' GAMMON. 1 01 
 
 Can gie relief, 
 Nor hush the harrowing misereres 
 O' Want and Grief ! 
 
 It 's nae in law to mend oor greeds ; 
 It 's nae in catch-the-penny creeds, — 
 It 's nae in braw, new-fangled breeds 
 
 O' priests and preachers, 
 To lift frae dool and grievous needs 
 
 Oor fellow-creatures. 
 
 Self-seeking is the damning blot 
 Upon our happiness and lot, — 
 The ruling sin lang syne begot 
 
 In Adam's fa' ; 
 Ye '11 find it in the peasant's cot, 
 
 As weel 's the ha' ! 
 
 And this, the universal shame, 
 Begrimes us a' wi' equal blame : 
 Sae, let us scan the way we came, 
 
 And, faith ! we '11 find 
 Reform maun rule in ilka hame 
 
 To lift mankind ! 
 
PROGRESS-LIBERTY— DELUSION. 
 
 0, Progress ! thou hast bred the greed 
 That grasps beyond our farthest need, — 
 
 Runs riot through rich heritages 
 And robs the Earth of future seed ! 
 
 Thy name inspires the madding host, — 
 Its shibboleth, its highest boast ; 
 
 And round the world the battle rages 
 Of Selfism, to the uttermost. 
 
 We waste the lands ; we delve and plan 
 As if, forsooth, our little span 
 
 Must compass all of man's achievement, 
 And nought be left to coming man ! 
 
 Yea, in the name of Progress, we 
 Would sweep the Earth from sea to sea 
 As with a locust plague and ravage, — 
 Despoiling all posterity ! 
 
 I02 
 
PROGRESS— LIBERTY — DEL US/ON. 103 
 
 And in the name of Freedom — lo, 
 The bomb and dagger, war and woe ! 
 
 Fawkes lives a^ain, — the hissing fuses 
 Threat doom alike to friend and foe ! 
 
 Peace ! thou whose nature seems posses t 
 With some dread spirit of unrest, — 
 
 Whom frenzy leads, or base ambition, 
 To strike whatever is wisest, best ; 
 
 O rager at the common lot, 
 
 Who prates of Right and knows it not, — 
 
 Who fires the evil blood of nations 
 With serpent tongue, assassin plot, — 
 
 Know, Leveller, by God's decree 
 While e'er an Alp o'er- tops the sea, 
 
 Some men shall serve and some be sovereign j 
 The kingly soul the king will be. 
 
 Ne'er blight him with thy voice malign 
 W 7 ho toils content in field or mine ; 
 
 Nor quicken in him the restless devil 
 That murders Peace in hearts like thine ! 
 
1 04 PR OGRE SS — L IBER T Y—DEL USION. 
 
 Nor glorify this fevered reign 
 Of freedom thro' our fair domain, 
 
 Till we have won content with freedom, 
 And wrought our lives to higher plane. 
 
 Though each of Nature's bounty shares, 
 And all have voice in State affairs, 
 
 A fate austere adjusts the balance 
 With widening duties, wants, and cares ! 
 
 So was it when that fateful pen 
 Proclaimed our helots equal men ; — 
 
 New masters rose in needs despotic, 
 And forged their fetters o'er again. 
 
 But Freedom still (ye cry) is fair, 
 And ills that follow light to bear, 
 Where merit wins exalted office, 
 And toiler ranks with millionaire. 
 
 Ay, so the Sirens sing to you 
 From Plymouth Rock, where we outgrew 
 Old bonds and fled the old oppressors ; 
 O God, that we could flee the new ! 
 
PROGRESS — LIBER T Y — DEL US ION. 1 0$ 
 
 What boots it that our later lords 
 
 Rule not with mailed hands and swords ? 
 
 Still thralls are we of venal masters, 
 Of babble-craft and Mammon hoards. 
 
 Alas, in our Utopian West, 
 Success howe'er attained is best ! 
 
 An arrant knave may wear the ermine, 
 And office-honor is a jest ! 
 
 Behold the want, the greedy strife, 
 The office-hungry harpies rife, 
 
 The slaughters, lynchings, strikes and riots, 
 The scorn of law and human life ! 
 
 Wherefore these ills that Europe knows — 
 All crimes, all Misery's plaints and woes, — 
 
 These crowded prisons, thronged asylums — 
 If human weal with freedom grows ? 
 
 Nay, while we blare on every wind 
 The fallacies of men still bind, 
 
 And cry the ballot-panacea 
 For all the ills that curse our kind, 
 
IC»6 PROGRESS — LIBERTY — DELUSION. 
 
 The baser brood of equal rule 
 Degrades the family, State, and school, 
 
 Siuks wise authority in chaos, 
 Exalts the ruffian, rogue and fool ! 
 
 O peoples reared in greater stress, 
 How little of our lives ye guess ! 
 
 No happier we with larger bounty, 
 Nor is our sum of suffering less ! 
 
 So learn with us, vexed souls afar — 
 Who deem our lot your guiding star — 
 
 That happiness is not conditioned 
 On what we have, but what we are. 
 
 Beware the change not understood ; 
 Beware the ills in guise of good ; — 
 
 The verbal guile and base self-seeking 
 That prompt to violence, hate, and blood ! 
 
HER DAYS OF JOY. 
 
 Adown the lane with beaming eye 
 
 She hastens at the school-bell summons, — 
 
 A child-mind in a form well-nigh 
 Full-statured as a woman's. 
 
 The glow of youth is in her flesh ; 
 
 Her cheeks with robust health are redden'd ; 
 She looks on life with senses fresh, 
 
 And feelings all undeaden'd. 
 
 And, as when in a theater 
 
 On fairy scenes the curtain rises, 
 So Nature now unveils to her 
 
 New pleasures and surprises ; — 
 
 Opes wide a wondrous world to view, 
 As roseate as a morn in summer ; 
 
 And all seems bright, and pure, and true 
 To this entranced new T -comer ! 
 
 107 
 
108 HER DAYS OF JOY. 
 
 Now from her winsome lips the song 
 Of inward joy spontaneous bubbles ; 
 
 Now, garrulous with a weighty throng 
 Of childish thoughts and troubles, 
 
 Holds serious parley with herself 
 
 O'er problems grave ; — a moment after, 
 
 With hop-and-skip, the wayward elf 
 Peals forth her merry laughter ! 
 
 O happy girl ! enjoy thy years 
 
 Of pleasance in this vale of glamour ! 
 
 Long be thy woes but April tears 
 And puzzlements of grammar ! 
 
 And heart-free from the worldly lore 
 That saddens life some period later, 
 
 Be thine the joys that bless no more 
 The wiser and the greater ! 
 
FRANK FORESTER. 
 
 [Lines written in a copy of "The Roman Traitor," found at a 
 solitary miner's cabin in Grouse ravine, Sierra, California, 1881.] 
 
 O friend of yore, long lost to Life and Time ! 
 Whose tragic fate in manhood's mellow prime 
 So grieved our hearts ! — I meet thee here again 
 In this strong-living spirit of thy pen ! — 
 Yea, in these forest solitudes that rise 
 On high Sierras to Hesperian skies, 
 Hear tuneful ^Eolus chanting in the trees 
 Thy own beloved " Cedars' " symphonies, — 
 As when, lang syne, in peace thou didst abide 
 By far Passaic's low-susurring tide ! 
 For Nature speaks upon this Western verge, 
 From wood and mountain, desert sand and surge, 
 With self-same voice as where the airs of morn 
 Pipe through the Orient palms and day is born ; — 
 Brings unto him who climbs the alpine height, 
 
 109 
 
110 FRANK FORESTER. 
 
 Or cleaves with humming shrouds the polar 
 
 uight, — 
 Who sits 'neath English oaks, or lists the sound 
 Of canyon'd Colorado's gulf profound — 
 Some message from the ghostly crypts of yore, 
 Some touch of home and loved ones seen no more ! 
 
 I tread with thee the forum and the camp ; 
 
 Hear clash of arms and legionaries' tramp ; 
 
 See in a Cicero attributes divine 
 
 A fiend incarnate in a Catiline, 
 
 And doughty Romans, famed in classic story, 
 
 Resurgent rise in all their shame or glory ! 
 
 Through generations yet thy work shall plead 
 Sweet Virtue's cause to all who rightly read ; 
 Shall show how joyless all, how vile and vain 
 The lives that yield to Passion's frenzied reign ; 
 And how — tho' daring Heaven and Hell and 
 
 Fate- 
 Guilt meets his doomful Nemesis soon or late ! 
 
 God rest thee, friend ! and whatsoe'er of fault 
 Thy sad life knew, rest with thee in the vault ! 
 
ENCHANTMENT. 
 
 Who harbors Love within his breast, 
 
 Though born to toil and low estate, 
 Is by the glamour of his guest 
 Beyond the rich and high-born blest, 
 And greater than the great. 
 
 The proud distinctions born of earth 
 Are levelled at the rosy shrine ; 
 
 Love knoweth nought of caste or birth ; 
 
 Love asketh only love and worth 
 To bless with gifts divine ! 
 
 O Love can ope the cottage latch 
 
 To grander realm than ancient Rome ! 
 And lift the lowly roof of thatch 
 With subtle sorcery, till it match 
 Saint Peter's mighty dome ! 
 in 
 
IN ALTAS SIERRAS. 
 
 Once more, O hills sublime ! 
 For blest surcease of cares 
 And sweet, inspiring airs, 
 
 Your peaceful heights I climb. 
 
 Here, from the haunts of men, — 
 Out from the rutted lives 
 And marts where baseness thrives, 
 
 I walk unthralled again. 
 
 My lordly pines once more 
 Breathe welcome all and each, 
 And loving arms out-reach 
 
 To him well known of yore. 
 
 Again, prone at your feet, 
 I list the airy choirs 
 Sing in your vernal spires 
 
 Old anthems grand and sweet. 
 
 112 
 
J IV ALT AS SIERRA S. \ \ 3 
 
 And O ! my spirit thrills 
 
 With far-off sound that comes 
 Like roll of muffled drums 
 
 From out the chasm' d hills ; — 
 
 From canyon deeps profound, 
 From gulch and river-bar, 
 The roar comes faint and far 
 
 Of waters seaward bound, — 
 
 That icy bonds let loose 
 
 To toil for miner hands 
 
 In golden veins and sands, 
 In mill, and flume, and sluice, 
 
 Till flows each tawny flood 
 
 With wreck of hills replete, 
 
 But rich in future wheat, — 
 From ravage bearing good. 
 
 That sound hath brought again 
 Through Time's encroaching haze 
 The past, supernal days, 
 
 When life was young, and when, 
 
114 IAT ALTAS SIERRAS. 
 
 With men strong-limbed and bold, 
 I ranged this stransre, new land 
 To win with venturous hand 
 
 The Ages' garner'd gold ; — 
 
 What time the camp-fires gleamed 
 On bar and mountain slope, 
 And all with mighty hope 
 
 Of boundless treasure dreamed. 
 
 How sweet the simple fare ! 
 
 How sound the niiHitlv rest ! 
 
 Was ever toil so blest, 
 Or life so free from care ! 
 
 And when, with dam and wheel, 
 We laid the bed-rock bare 
 And spied the treasure there — 
 
 How rang our joyful peal 
 
 O'er Yuba's rushing tide ! 
 Yea, till each rocky shore 
 Out-voiced his ancient roar, 
 
 And all the hills replied ! 
 
•'HOW RANG OUR JOYFUL PEAL 
 
IN AITAS SIERRAS. I I 5 
 
 O peerless days no more ! 
 
 O mountains throned eternal ! 
 
 forests vast and vernal ! — 
 Where are the men of yore ? — 
 
 The lion-hearted band 
 That broke this solitude 
 With shout and ravage rude, 
 
 With pick and axe and brand ? 
 
 "Gone ! " roars the yellow river; 
 " Gone ! " si^h the hills sublime, 
 And " Gone ! " the forests chime, 
 
 With solemn voice, " forever ! ' ; 
 
 Here, drowsing in the copse, 
 
 1 watch the dainty quail 
 Trip shyly o'er the trail 
 
 With timid starts and stops ; 
 
 Behold the startled hare 
 
 Rise in the chaparral, — 
 
 A great-eyed sentinel 
 Demanding, " Who goes there ? " 
 
Il6 IN ALTAS SIERRAS. 
 
 And search with baffled sight 
 The azure gulfs of sky, 
 Whence comes the guttural cry 
 
 Of cranes in north ward flight, — 
 
 That to the pilot bird 
 
 Now singly make response, 
 Now fanfare all at once, 
 
 As if his note had stirred 
 
 Some common memory then, — 
 Perchance of pleasures shared 
 When last they met and paired 
 
 By Borean lake and fen. 
 
 As higher yet I climb — 
 Lo, mighty hills are knolls ! 
 And all the land unrolls 
 
 In billowy leagues sublime. 
 
 The forests halt and fail, 
 
 Save where, beyond the lines, 
 Some daring picket pines 
 
 Creep upward to assail 
 
IN ALT AS SIERRA S. WJ 
 
 The citadels of frost ; 
 
 And now a husk profound 
 Engulfs all separate sound, 
 
 And life and earth seem lost. 
 
 In solitude alone, 
 
 la silence most intense, 
 Breaks on the soul and sense 
 
 That mighty monotone 
 
 Beyond all power of word, — 
 The deep, eternal bass 
 Of Nature through all space, — 
 
 The voice of cosmos heard. 
 
 I stand in mute amaze, 
 
 And reverent eyes upturn 
 
 To icy peaks that burn 
 Beneath the solar blaze 
 
 As with celestial fires ; — 
 
 That stand like gods in scorn 
 Of all things baser born, 
 
 And all earth-born desires. 
 
n8 
 
 IN ALT AS SIERRAS, 
 
 O peaks majestical ! 
 
 Speak from your glorious heights 
 
 Inspire to noble flights 
 Souls prone to fail and fall, 
 
 Until they soar with you 
 From all the moils below, — 
 Pure a3 your driven snow, 
 
 In heaven's unsullied blue ! 
 
THE FINAL REBELLION. 
 
 Fair Earth seems foul with weeds 
 To you, alas, whose lives are narrowed in the 
 gyves 
 Of stern coi*poreal needs ! 
 
 To you whose prisoned souls, 
 As with a web of fate, strong-meshed and in- 
 tricate, 
 Grim Circumstance controls. 
 
 The blessed sunlight gleams 
 But dimly through your drear, aberrant atmos- 
 phere, 
 As in distempered dreams ; 
 
 And all the sweets of Earth — 
 God's bounty unto all — to some unfairly fall 
 Who know not want or worth. 
 
 119 
 
120 THE FINAL REBELLION. 
 
 On you no fortune waits 
 With gifts not earned or just ; — 1 t is yours to 
 gnaw the crust 
 Unknown beside her gates ; 
 
 Till, haply, strong to rise, 
 Ye breach with desp'rate lance the walls of 
 Circumstance, 
 And grasp her chary prize. 
 
 But though ye may not reach 
 Good Fortune's rampart-wall, — though hapless 
 myriads fall 
 And perish in the breach, — 
 
 Is this your neighbor's sin ? — 
 The guilt of social law ? Nay, friend, mayhap 
 the flaw 
 Lies nearer, — look within ! 
 
 There spy th' ignoble bent 
 That rules our selfish, lives, — makes Lazarus 
 grown to Dives 
 A baser malcontent. 
 
THE FINAL REBELLION. 121 
 
 Not lie who lords the soil, 
 But luxury aud taste, false want, unthrift and 
 waste 
 Keep us in bonds to Toil. 
 
 The fault is mine and thine ; 
 For every willing hand may crop the liberal 
 land 
 Of plenteous bread and wine, 
 
 But too gregarious grown, 
 And warped with cultured needs, ambitions, 
 habits, greeds, 
 To nobler life unknown — 
 
 We turn with coward hearts 
 From Labor's peaceful lines, from prairie-lands 
 and pines, 
 To moil in crowded marts, 
 
 And rutted channels tread, 
 Where throngs in frantic strife are narrowing 
 hope and life 
 To Beggary's dole of bread. 
 
122 THE FINAL REBELLION. 
 
 Then, stirred by evil tongues — 
 That serve but to incite some mad crusade, or 
 right 
 Some wrong with greater wrongs — 
 
 We hail the reckless rule 
 Of men who only seek to prey upon the 
 weak 
 And fatten on the fool ; — 
 
 Who sow the demon seed 
 Of chaos, claim the Earth for worthlessness and 
 worth 
 By equal title-deed, 
 
 And prompt unbridled power 
 To raze the fabrics wrought through centuries 
 of thought, 
 In some phrenetic hour. 
 
 No system in our ken, — 
 No law, can make us wise, or just, or equalize 
 The diverse moulds of men, 
 
THE FINAL REBELLION. 1 23 
 
 Nor lift the la^srard soul : 
 He who would rise aud wiu must grow the 
 power within, 
 Or miss his highest goal. 
 
 Equality 's a dream 
 Whene'er the word implies none o'er the mass 
 shall rise, 
 No man may be supreme ; 
 
 For his is all our gain, 
 Whom high, peculiar gifts, fair chance or fitness 
 lifts 
 Above the common plane. 
 
 When men from lusts are free, 
 And none distinction seek, — when Chimborazo's 
 peak 
 Is levelled to the sea, — 
 
 When toil hath equal yield 
 From rich and barren land, and all the wheat- 
 ears stand 
 Full-level in the field, — 
 
124 THE FINAL REBELLION. 
 
 Then may your social plan, 
 babblers, rule the Earth, and from unequal 
 worth 
 Uplift the equal man ! 
 
 But, though some hands still reap 
 What other hands have sown, shall all be over- 
 thrown 
 And toppled to the deep ? 
 
 Nay, though we splinter thrones, 
 Sweep Earth with sword and name, we change 
 but in the name 
 Our despots and our drones. 
 
 And while our Sirens sing 
 The lullaby of fools — lo ! frantic Demos rules, 
 Or Croesus is the king ! 
 
 Not thus shall justice come — 
 Not with the barricade and fratricidal blade, 
 With dynamite and bomb ; 
 
THE FINAL REBELLION, 1 25 
 
 Nor shall privation cease 
 While swords still arbitrate, and reason yields 
 to hate — 
 For Plenty comes of Peace. 
 
 Yet, ours the rebel's part : 
 Up, Rebels, then, and smite the nearest foes of 
 Right 
 That lurk in every heart ! 
 
 So let the fight begin, — 
 Put Self and Greed to rout, then shall the Earth 
 without, 
 Grow fair to fair within ! 
 
 
IN MEMORIAM. 
 
 [Capt. Mathew Webb, the famous English swimmer, perished in the 
 Whirlpool Rapids, Niagara, July 24, 1883.] 
 
 I. 
 
 O Niagara ! what of him — 
 Sturdy-hearted, strong of limb, — 
 
 Who, in such ill-fated hour, 
 For a transitory glory, 
 For a J>age in human story, 
 
 Dared thy power, 
 And through raging rapids flying 
 Rued too late his rash defying ? 
 
 Nought to thee, O black abhorrent, 
 Pitiless torrent, 
 
 Is the Dead within thy keeping ! 
 Nor the breaking hearts in Hull, 
 Nor the tears so pitiful, 
 
 Wife and little ones are weeping ! 
 126 
 
IN MEMORIAM. 1 27 
 
 Nought to thee the pigmy creatures 
 That for profit, fame, or pleasure, 
 Come to view thy awful features, 
 
 Creep around thy seething edges, — 
 Come to scan thee and to span thee 
 With their puny human measure 
 From the battle mented ledges ! 
 
 Nay, though direst doom had hurl'd 
 All the millions of the world 
 
 Into thy abysm, 
 And a universal woe 
 Wailed to Heaven from below, — 
 
 Thou, O mighty cataclysm, 
 Still wouldst thunder ! 
 Shaking all above and under, — 
 Stern as death and Nature's forces, 
 Void of mercies and remorses ! 
 
 11. 
 
 Said the boatman, with a quiver, 
 As he held his dory steady 
 
128 IN MEMOKIAM. 
 
 On that mad, tumultuous river, 
 
 For the swimmer, stript and ready — 
 (While the dory shook and trembled 
 With a terror undissembled !) 
 Said the boatman to the swimmer — 
 And his eyes grew strangely dimmer 
 
 As he grasped the manly hand — 
 " Give it up, and come to land ! 
 
 O forego this mad endeavor — 
 Think of children, think of w r ife ! 
 
 For I tell thee never, never — 
 Never yet passed living mortal 
 Through the Whirlpool's dreaded portal 
 Breathing still the breath of life ! " 
 
 But the swimmer shook his head, 
 Sadly, as with grave misgiving 
 
 — " He who fears will fail" he said ; 
 
 Pressed the hand that fain had stayed him,- 
 
 Plunged from human power to aid him, — 
 Plunged from all that joys the living, 
 
 To oblivion and The Dead ! 
 
 1 0" ' 
 
IN MEMORIAM. 1 29 
 
 III. 
 
 Daring swimmer, madly scorning 
 
 Timely warning, 
 
 And the loving heart that pleaded 
 
 All unheeded ! — 
 
 In that last supreme endeavor, 
 
 Ere thine eyes were closed forever, — 
 
 When thy limbs were in the toils, 
 And the deadly Whirlpool held thee 
 
 Like a python in its coils, — 
 
 With the vision of despair 
 Through the fury-driven foam — 
 
 Didst thou see an empty chair 
 In thy far-off English home ? — 
 Did thy strong heart falter then, 
 
 Seeing Love awaiting there 
 One who ne'er should come again ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 Man of iron thews and will, 
 Stranger to fatigue and fear, 
 
130 IN MEMORIAM. 
 
 All thy matchless strength and skill 
 
 Failed thee here ! 
 And thy story shall be written, — 
 " He, the sturdy -hearted Briton, 
 
 Who with dolphins might have sported, 
 Or consorted 
 
 With the sea-horn Amphitrite — 
 
 Goddess mighty ! — 
 
 He who, %ohen the winds made frantic 
 
 The Atlantic, 
 
 Swam the Channel surges over, 
 
 Clear from Dover, — 
 
 In the deathful swirl and suction 
 
 Of thy maelstrom, Niagara, 
 
 Met destruction ! " 
 
UTTERANCE OF THE DESERT. 
 
 If thou hast heard, 
 
 In Arizonan solitudes 
 And lonely lands uninastered yet of man, 
 The eerie swish and whisper of the wind 
 
 In all its moods 
 Through sage and cereus, till thy soul was stirred 
 With thought of Thought ere conscious life 
 
 began, 
 And glimpsed the gulf Eternity behind 
 This prideful atom and his little span 
 That boasts the birth and boundary of mind, — 
 Oh, then thy spirit caught 
 
 The voice sublime 
 
 Of utmost space and time, 
 And all that sound may syllable to thought ! 
 
 And haply then — 
 
 Far gazing o'er the desert sands, 
 
 131 
 
132 UTTERANCE OF THE DESERT. 
 
 Where, like a wraith of Hunger, travel-sore 
 The lean coyote limps, and cacti lift 
 
 Their wrinkled hands — 
 Thy fancy saw this deathful realm again 
 Re-peopled with the myriad life of yore, — 
 Heard murmuring multitudes in dune and drift 
 Recount the tale of Time for evermore, 
 Till thou didst question, — Was this wondrous 
 gift ^ 
 Of mind inborn with man ? 
 
 Or did it live, 
 
 A formless fugitive, — 
 Free tenant of the void since time began ? 
 
THE ETERNAL SIEGE. 
 
 Stern war is waged on every hand, 
 
 All round the world on reef and strand, — 
 
 The battle of the Sea and Land. 
 
 I stood at night where evermore 
 The great sea-dragons rush and roar 
 Snow-white with wrath upon the shore, 
 
 When, from the turmoil of the foes, 
 And thunder-shock of battle blows, 
 An overmastering voice arose ; 
 
 As when profoundest forces shake 
 
 The earth till mountains roar and quake, 
 
 Thus to the Land the Ocean spake : 
 
 " I rage within thy seaward caves ; 
 Thy headlands topple to my waves ; 
 Thy islets sink in briny graves ! 
 
 133 
 
134 THE ETERNAL SIEGE. 
 
 " Behold the doomful hieroglyphs 
 
 My surfs unbridled hippogriffs 
 
 Are carving on thy crumbling cliffs ! " 
 
 Then from a vast portentous cloud, 
 That draped the hills with sable shroud, 
 A Land-Voice rumbled hoarse and loud : 
 
 " Vain boaster, cease ! My rampart mocks 
 Thy rage through time and tempest shocks ; 
 The centuries scoff thee from the rocks ! 
 
 " These fertile fields, — yon blooming plain, 
 That waves its grateful sea of grain, 
 Are risen from thy dark domain ; 
 
 " And these my mountains, that of yore 
 Thou didst engulf and triumph o'er, 
 Defy thee now for evermore ! 
 
 " O robber Sea, thy boast is brief ! 
 I master and despoil the thief : 
 Seest thou the rising coral-reef ? 
 
THE ETERNAL SIEGE. 1 35 
 
 " There all thy wrath shall die in calms, 
 Thy thunders yield to drowsy psalms 
 Of tropic airs in cocoa-palms ! " 
 
 The Sea (in scorn) — " Thy hopes are vain 
 As his whose weak, unbalanced brain 
 Outweighs grave loss with trivial gain. 
 
 " Prate not of centuries to me ! 
 
 Time wields no sceptre o'er the Sea ; — 
 
 Go babble to eternity ! 
 
 " But Time is wearing thee apace, — 
 Yea, I behold thee shrink, I trace 
 The furrows deep'ning on thy face ! 
 
 " O dotard ! — never a stream may now, 
 Wind blow, drop fall, nor flake of snow, 
 But leagues with me to lay thee low ! 
 
 " Thus, might and Nature mark thee doomed ! " 
 Awhile the sullen breakers boomed 
 Triumphant, till the Land resumed : 
 
1 36 THE £ TERN A L SIEGE. 
 
 " To reason with the passion-blind 
 Is vexing to the balanced mind, 
 And vain as buffeting the wind. 
 
 " Thou wilt discern, when rage is spent, 
 Thy leaguers are my allies sent 
 To build the future continent. 
 
 " And vain, O Sea, thy vaunted might, 
 Who moves subservient day and night — 
 The vassal of a satellite ! " 
 
 As if a thousand cannon spoke 
 
 In simultaneous battle-stroke, 
 
 The thunder-shotted answer broke : 
 
 " Peace, slave ! The very worms that crawl 
 Upon thee hold thee basely thrall 
 But dread my potence, one and all ; 
 
 " And though my humor it may please 
 To spare thy master-mite, and breeze 
 His cockle-fleets o'er friendly seas, - 
 
THE ETERNAL SIEGE. I 37 
 
 " No vassal to thy lord am I ; 
 
 Who dares my sovereign will shall die ! '* 
 
 There was a pause, then came reply : 
 
 "A sovereign, sooth ! Thou may'st o'erwhelm 
 
 Some hapless mariner at the helm 
 
 Who trusts him to thy treacherous realm ; 
 
 " But, subject to the Master-hand, 
 The mite thou scornest holds command 
 As suzerain over Sea and Land. 
 
 11 And though thou bury him from sight 
 In sunless caves where Death and Night 
 Keep vigil, — yet in thy despite, 
 
 " And Nature's, he shall live, I wot, — 
 
 Shall rise to his diviner lot 
 
 When thou, insensate Sea, art not ! 
 
 " Yon sea-less orb within the skies — 
 Whose image on thy bosom lies — 
 Bids thee look up, reflect, be wise ; 
 
138 THE ETERNAL SIEGE. 
 
 " la that drear moon, O Sea ! behold 
 Thy own predestined fate foretold 
 When this fair Earth hath waxen cold 
 
 " Within her God-appointed place, 
 And sunward turns her shrivell'd face — 
 A cinder'd planet, dead in space ! 
 
 " Like meagre cup to thirsty lips 
 Thou shalt be drained, till sunken ships 
 Uplift their spars from thy eclipse ! " 
 
 There fell an instant hush, as when 
 
 In mortal onset warring men 
 
 Take breath for life or death, — and then 
 
 A terrible turmoil shook the Sea ; 
 
 The billows rose prodigiously 
 
 And hurled their hissing spume to me. 
 
 The sea-mews, skurrying in affright, 
 Screamed thro' the black, tempestuous night ; 
 The waves o'ertopped the beacon -light. 
 
THE ETERNAL SIEGE. 
 
 J 39 
 
 Then, while the battle-din rose higher, 
 
 I fled the scene «o dread and dire, 
 
 And sought my peaceful hearthstone fire, 
 
 In faith that the Almighty Will 
 
 Decrees our final welfare still 
 
 Through Nature's utmost wrack and ill ; 
 
 And walking forth at dawn, beheld 
 The foes yet warring as of eld, 
 Relentless, and with wrath unquell'd. 
 
 
 ^0 
 
 T 
 
ON HEARING A DESERT SONG-BIRD. 
 
 O desert songster, piping clear ! 
 
 How doth thy joyful carol cheer 
 
 This heart that fate hath banished here ! 
 
 Such song, I ween, hath rarely stirred 
 These wastes, that erstwhile only heard 
 The croak of some ill-boding bird, 
 
 Or wolf -cry, or despairful wail 
 
 Of winds that breathe their eerie tale 
 
 O'er peak and bluff, and sandy swale. 
 
 O friend unseen ! what chance or choice 
 Hath brought thee here with dulcet voice 
 To bid the wand'rer's soul rejoice .? 
 
 Art thou, poor bird, an exile too, 
 From fairer lands where blossoms grew '( 
 From loved ones, lost to heart and view ? 
 
 140 
 
ON HEARING A DESERT SONG-BIRD. 141 
 
 Nay, nay, thine is a kinder fate 
 Than mine, for thou dost sing elate, 
 As one still happy with his mate ! 
 
 And love so thrills thy little breast, 
 This barren realm 's an Eden blest 
 That holds thy lowly desert nest ! 
 
HIS EPITAPH: 
 TOM BLOSSOM, OF ARIZONA. 
 
 O mate, that roamed with, me 
 From Shasta's mighty shadow 
 To where the Colorado 
 
 Down-thunders to the sea ! — 
 
 Thou, tried as men are tried 
 In regions wild and sterile 
 Who meet the common peril, 
 
 By courage glorified, — 
 
 Now voiceless as the dead ! 
 
 O brave, ill-fated rover ! 
 
 If life's long tramp is over, 
 Be this above thee said : 
 
 142 
 
HIS EPITAPH. 143 
 
 " Here lieth one at rest 
 
 Who paltered not, nor quailed, 
 Whatever ills assailed, 
 
 But bravely did his best ; 
 
 " Who, true to every friend, 
 
 Met squarely fate and foe, 
 
 Met frontward every blow 
 Unflinching to the end ! 
 
 " And triumphs o'er the past ; 
 For though the earthly treasure 
 Ne'er blessed him, who shall measure 
 
 The prize he gains at last ! " 
 
NIGHT-FALL ON THE YUBA. 
 
 On yon Sierras' high embattled crest, 
 
 The dying Day looks fondly from the west ; 
 
 And lo ! the rugged buttes in glory loom — 
 
 Far, blessed isles upon a sea of gloom, 
 
 Whose black and soundless tide, upwelling 
 
 higher, 
 Engulfs anon the summit's lingering fire. 
 
 Full soon the rising anthem of the pines 
 Drowns all the stir of far-down camps and 
 
 mines ; 
 The sharp, assiduous axe is stilled at last ; 
 The crash of timber and the sullen blast 
 Shock earth no more, and but the river peals 
 His resonant roar, with shriek of miners' wheels. 
 All sounds of life grow fainter with the light, 
 Till Nature's voice pervades the hush of night. 
 
 144 
 
NIGHT-FALL ON THE YUBA 
 
NIGHT-FALL ON THE YUBA. 145 
 
 Gleams through the curtain'd gulf a tawny 
 
 thread, 
 Where brawls the Yuba o'er his rocky bed : 
 The solemn diapason of his flow 
 Thus rose and fell ten thousand years ago ! — 
 Nay, through undreamed eternities of years, 
 Resounded thus unheard of living ears ! 
 
 O Yuba ! who shall measure thy abyss 
 With gauge of Time ? — declare the genesis 
 Of that first feeble rill, whose gathering force 
 Carved on the seaward slope thy wayward course, 
 Through cycles deepening under ceaseless law 
 By flood and avalanche, by frost and thaw, 
 Till thus, through mountains cleft to misty deeps, 
 Now seen, now lost, thy sinuous torrent sweeps? 
 Not thou, O man ! for on this brink sublime, 
 One pendulum beat counts all historic time ; 
 Here shrinks thy day and record unto nought, 
 Where awful Age looms visible to thought ! 
 
 No chance catastrophe, no sudden shock, 
 Broke way through these abysmal miles of rock ; 
 
 10 
 
I46 NIGHT-FALL ON THE YUBA. 
 
 Here Nature worked in calm, majestic ways, 
 Nor haste nor passion knew, nor lapse of days. 
 Her seeming wrath, tho' fraught with dire 
 
 distress, 
 Is fury only to our feebleness, 
 That broader growth in knowledge of her law- 
 Shall make benignant, and divest of awe. 
 As stern as we, whose casual touch and breath 
 Are grewsome shocks or hurricanes of death 
 To tiny creatures, — storms calamitous 
 To life unseen as Nature's are to us. 
 A falling leaf destroys the spider's bridge ; 
 A rain-drop proves a maelstrom to a midge, — 
 Yea, life may perish if a zephyr blow — 
 Such trifles whelm the little ! Even so 
 To giant beings of some farther sphere 
 Might seem the powers that most appall us here. 
 
 So she that knows not Time, with patient will 
 Wrought here the gorge and reared the mighty 
 
 hill- 
 Gnawed down by age-long inch thy rocky bed, 
 O Yuba, while thy torrent seaward sped ; 
 
NIGHT-FALL ON TILE YUBA. 1 47 
 
 Till, from the stubborn matrix shattered loose, 
 A stream of gold bestrewed thy mighty sluice, — 
 The last residuum holden from the sea 
 Of comminuted mountains borne through thee ; 
 A gift beyond the dream of Avarice 
 From lost, primeval ages unto this, 
 And spied but yesterday. — When fled thy reign, 
 O Solitude ! and o'er this wild domain — 
 Where, erstwhile, sounds of elemental war, 
 The land-slip's thunder and the torrent's roar, 
 The scream of eagle vaulting down the sky, 
 The owl's grave note, the puma's thrilling cry, 
 Alone stirred Echo from his ancient lair — 
 Brake suddenly upon the startled air, 
 The clamor of a strange, unwonted strife, 
 And hither flowed, in frenzied streams of life, 
 The late-come beings that overs warm the globe, 
 Make Nature vassal and her secrets probe. 
 
 Here, where the mountain buttress grandly 
 
 sweeps 
 From sunlit summits sheer to sunless deeps ; — 
 Where skulks the grizzly, and the hare and quail 
 
148 NIG/IT-FALL ON THE YUBA. 
 
 Unfearing haunt the seldom-trodden trail, 
 That through the matted manzanita opes 
 A devious way to higher, bleaker slopes ; — 
 Where evermore, from streams and forest-seas, 
 Rise solitude's eternal symphonies, — 
 Scarp'd in the lofty ridge's narrow crest 
 A human frame hath found its final rest. 
 
 Long fallen lies the rude-built cairn of stone, 
 By winds and forest prowlers haply strown ; 
 The shattered head-board crumbles in decay ; 
 All record of the dead hath passed away. 
 Yet he may live in memory ; — some may weep 
 For this lone tenant of the weather'd heap, — 
 Reach hands imploring toward the western sun 
 For sign of him ere ebbing life be done ! 
 
 Though of his name and nation, life and death, 
 No tongue doth tell, no record answereth, 
 Yet, to the musing eye this much is shown : 
 He was a man, to man's full stature grown 
 When only men of strong, adventurous mould 
 Here led the van in strenuous quest of gold. 
 
NIGHT-FALL ON THE YUBA. 1 49 
 
 He came, perchance, as those forerunners came, 
 To spy new lands, with golden dreams aflame ; 
 Perchance embitter'd by some social ban, 
 Fled here to Nature from his fellow-man; 
 And in the strife with Nature, or in strife 
 With man more stern, untimely closed his life. 
 
 There is a pathos in these relics here 
 To stir the spirit and invoke a tear ; 
 For kindly Pity turns the human heart 
 To all who strive and fall, and lie apart, 
 In ways remote, in ocean's sounding caves, 
 Beyond humanity in lonely graves ! 
 Oh, not yet lost to us are ye that lie 
 Beneath the sea or under alien sky ! — 
 On Mexic plain, in deadly Darien swamp- 
 In desert sands, or far Nor- western camp ! 
 Nor you, brave hearts, long battling for the 
 
 goal, 
 Whose icy barrows guard the fateful Pole ! 
 
 But sorrow not for him who takes his rest 
 So grandly urned on this Sierran crest ; 
 
I50 NIGHT-FALL ON THE YUBA. 
 
 For what were organ-peal and cannon-boom, 
 The pageantry of woe, the blazon'd gloom 
 Of vaulted abbey and imperial tomb, 
 Or all the burial pomp the great secure, 
 To this Unknown's majestic sepulture ! 
 Nay, every child of Nature here would cry — 
 As thus inurned he lieth, let me lie, 
 'Mid hymning pines, and vaulted with the sky ! 
 
 Day's after-glow departs from yonder west, 
 And warns away, O Dead, thy living guest ! 
 The far lights beckon, and he takes again 
 The downward trail to travell'd ways of men. 
 Good-night to thee, O Nameless of the height ! 
 He leaves thee here to Solitude and Night, — 
 For yet life's duties call ; when these are o'er, 
 He would return and journey hence no more. 
 
 THE END. 
 
Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 Treatment Date: Sept. 2009 
 
 PreservationTechnologies 
 
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