Chapter IX: Conclusion

Concluding, he resumed his seat
Beside his brother, Russian Pete;
Yet ever and anon expressed
His views on points of interest,
And details, which this narrative
In its abridgment may not give,
As Dad McGuire and Uncle Jim
By turns interrogated him.

To say his hearers listened well,
Were too self-evident to tell,
For some who dozed before he spake,
Woke up and then remained awake.

As all the inclination felt,
To play a game, the cards were dealt;
The winners, it was understood,
To be exempt from chopping wood;
While he who made the lowest score
Must build the fire and sweep the floor.
Time spread his wings, the moments flew
Unheeded for an hour or two,
Until at length the measured stroke
Of twelve, in timely accents broke
From an old clock upon the shelf,
As old as Uncle Jim himself;
A good old clock, as old clocks go,
But usually too fast or slow,
But near enough the proper time
To serve the purpose of this rhyme.

The honors passed to Russian Pete,
When Dad McGuire sustained defeat,
As mighty warriors often do,
In some Chalons, or Waterloo;
The fortunes of the final game,
Adding fresh laurels to his fame;
Then all abstained from further play,
And forthwith put the cards away.

* * * * *

'Twas passing late, the dying fire
Served as the summons to retire,
And soon the gentle wand of sleep,
Which works the dream god's drowsy will,
Laden with slumbers soft and deep,
Passed over them and all was still.

* * * * *
* * * * *

The storm was over, far and near,
The heavens shone, so cold and clear
That nebulæ and satellites,
Unseen on ordinary nights,
Now filled the broad expanse of sky
With unaccustomed brilliancy;
The astral vacuums and voids,
Were filled with discs and asteroids;
Dissevering the firmament,
The Milky Way disclosed to sight
Its pearly avenue of white
With planetary crystals blent;
Transparently it shone, and pale,
As some celestial gauze or veil;
A silvery baldric o'er the gold
Of constellations manifold.

A silence, undisturbed, prevailed,
The wind no longer moaned and wailed,
The elements had worked their will
And now were motionless and still;
From forest growth or underbrush
No whisper broke the solemn hush;
The tempest king on airy waves,
Retreated to his secret caves,
And chained the winds, which his behest
Had lately stirred to wild unrest.

The clouds had vanished, not a trace
Remained upon the arch of space,
To interpose a curtain rude
Between earth and infinitude;
Pellucid as the vault o'erhead,
The snows a layer of beauty spread,
Save where the genii of the storm
Had fashioned in fantastic form,
With alternating whirl and sift,
The pendent comb and massive drift.

The wilderness of ice and snow,
Transfigured with a mellow glow,
Received from the translucent skies
The stellar groups and galaxies;
A record of the starry waste,
By Nature's faultless pencil traced;
The vernal phalanxes of pine,
In cassocks clear and crystalline,
Seemed as a mirror, in whose sheen
The glimmering lamps of night were seen.
The replica of pearl and gem,
In heaven's twinkling diadem;
Golconda's treasury displayed,
On background of the forest shade.

Divested of their transient green,
By Autumn winds in wanton rage,
The aspen's leafless limbs were seen
Festooned with frosty foliage;
As fell upon their vestal white,
The placid moon's aspiring light,
The noble spruce and stately fir,
Stood draped with feathery garniture;
Configurated and embossed,
With lace and tapestry of frost,
In quaint and curious design,
The willows and the underbrush,
Were crystallized in silvery plush,
And shimmered in the cold moonshine.

* * * * *

The azure dome of space o'erhead,
With scintillating grandeur spread,
Looked down with cold inquiring eyes,
On earth with all her mysteries;
The while reflecting in their snows,
These glittering jewels of the night,
The mountains lay in calm repose,
Slumbering 'neath their robes of white.

[THE END]

DOLORES

I will sing of a quaint old tradition,
A legend romantic and strange,
Which was whispered to me by the pine trees
High up on the wild mountain range.
Far away in the mystical Westland,
From the mountain peaks crested with snow,
Glides Dolores, the river of sorrow,
Dolores, the river of woe.

Time was when this river of sorrow
Had never a thought to be sad,
But meandered in joy through the meadows,
With bluebell and columbine clad.
Her ripples were ripples of laughter,
And the soft, dulcet voice of her flow
Was suggestive of peace and affection,
Not accents of anguish and woe.

Long ago, ere the foot of the white man
Had left its first print on the sod,
A people, both free and contented,
Her mesas and cañon-ways trod.
Then Dolores, the river of sorrow,
Was a river of laughter and glee,
As she playfully dashed through the cañons
In her turbulent rush to the sea.

High up on the cliffs in their dwellings,
Which were apertures walled up with rocks,
Lived this people, sequestered and happy;
Their dwellings now serve the wild fox.
They planted the maize and potato,
The kind river caused them to grow,
So they worshipped the river with singing
Which blent with its musical flow.

This people, so artless and peaceful,
Knew nothing of carnage and war,
But dwelt in such quiet and plenty
They knew not what weapons were for.
They gathered the maize in its season,
Unmindful of famine or foe
And chanted their thanks to the spirits
That dwelt in the cañons below.

But one evil day from the Northland
Swept an army in battle array,
Which fell on this innocent people
And massacred all in a day.
Their bodies were cast in the river,
A feast for the vultures, when lo!
The laughter and song of the river
Were changed to the wailing of woe.

Gone, gone are this people forever,
Not a vestige nor remnant remains
To gather the maize in its season
And join in the harvest refrains;
But the river still mourns for her people
With weird and disconsolate flow,
Dolores, the river of sorrow,
Dolores--the river of woe.

GREAT SHEPHERD OF THE COUNTLESS FLOCKS OF STARS

Great Shepherd of the countless flocks of stars,
Which range the azure province of the sky,
Who marked the course for Jupiter and Mars,
Nor leads the comet from its path awry;
Though flaming constellations at Thy call
Pass into being, or created, fall;
Thou, who hast caused the firmament to be,
In humbler pathways, Father, lead Thou me.

Thou, who hast framed the eagle's wing to soar
Above the verdant prospects of the plain;
Whose law hath shaped the pebbles on the shore,
The stately forests and the bearded grain;
Whose hand hath formed the silvery satellite
To shed her tender moonbeams o'er the night;
Thou who hast placed the islands in the sea,
With that same Wisdom, Father, lead Thou me.

THE RUINED CABIN

There's a pathos in the solemn desolation
Of the mountain cabin sinking in decay,
With its threshold overgrown with vegetation,
With its door unhinged and mouldering away.
There's a weird and most disconsolate expression
In the sashless windows with their vacant stare,
As in mute appeal, or taciturn confession
Of a wild and inconsolable despair.

With its ridgepole bent and broken in the centre,
From its roof of dirt and weight of winter snows;
Where the only voice to greet you as you enter
Is the wind which down the crumbling fireplace blows;
Where the chipmunk chatters in loquacious wonder,
As unwonted steps invade his solitude;
Where the mountain rat secretes his varied plunder
In the chimney corners, primitive and rude.

Where the spider spins his web in grim seclusion,
To entrap the fly and vacillating moth;
From the rotten floor, in poisonous profusion
Spring the toadstools, with their foul and fungous growth.
Void of symmetry and semblance of equation,
Through the chinkless cracks, the silvery moon and stars
And the sun, at each matutinal invasion,
Shine as through a dismal dungeon's grated bars.

But no predatory hand in wanton malice
Hath in vandal hour this dereliction wrought,
But the hand which crumbles pyramid and palace,
The hand of Time with rust and ruin fraught;
Thus the proud or unpretentious habitation
Shall succumb to age and melancholy mould;
All are subject to the same disintegration,
For the occupant and house alike grow old.

AN IDYLL

I love to sit by the waterfall,
And list to its laughing story,
As it fearlessly leaps o'er the rocky wall,
From the mountain peaks stern and hoary;
Or watch the spray as the colors play,
When the glorious sunlight kisses,
And tints confuse into rainbow hues
To embellish the wild abysses.

I love the rose and the columbine,
Whose delicate beauty pleases;
I love the breath of the fragrant pine,
As it floats on the morning breezes;

I love the sound from the depths profound,
When the Thunder-God is bringing
His crystal showers, to the tinted flowers,
In their sweet profusion springing.

I love the lake in the mountain's lap;
Without a flaw or error
Recording the clouds, which the peaks enwrap,
And the trees, as a crystal mirror;
The wild delights of the mountain heights
Thrill my breast with a keen devotion,
As songbirds love the blue arch above,
Or the mariner loves the ocean.

THE BORDERLAND OF SLEEP

On the margin of the mystic shores of rest,
Where imagination mollifies the breast,
Where the fondest dreams their pleasant vigils keep,
In the vestibule of slumber, soft and deep,
Lies a neutral zone, salubrious and sweet,--
Where the realms of lethargy and action meet,--
'Tis the borderland of sleep.

Here the halcyon delights float by and fade,
Or the evil visions hover and invade;
Here the bosom entertains its secret guest,
With the silent plaint of agony suppressed,
As unwelcome thoughts rise from the dust and mould,
Of the vanished years in pantomime unrolled,
In this borderland of rest.

Neither wakeful, nor in sentient repose,
Nor in apathy, complete and comatose;
As when Lethe with her mild nepenthic surge,
Doth in chaos of forgetfulness submerge,
But a drowsy consciousness, a blend of dreams,
With reality's extravagant extremes;
Such the zone on slumber's verge.

STELLAR NOCTURNE

Speeds the day in silent flight, on the sombre wings of night,
As the dying sunlight glimmers in the west;
Soon the shadows cease to creep, for the sun has gone to sleep,
And the scene is wrapped in somnolence and rest.

From a solitary star, in the realms of space afar,
Faintly twinkling through the shadows of the night,
See the stellar force increased, till the scintillating east
Seems a galaxy of constellations bright.

With its glittering display, see the gorgeous Milky Way,
Which in twain the vaulted universe divides,
As the bridal veil serene of some fair celestial queen,
Who, in jewelled state, o'er astral space presides.

All the heavens seem in tune, and the vacillating moon
Bathes the landscape with her floods of silvery light;
Though the scenes of day are fair, naught in splendor can compare
With the grandeur of the firmament at night.

_See page 121._]

FATHER, AT THY ALTAR KNEELING

Father, at Thy altar kneeling,
Sin-defiled;
Seeking there the balm of healing,
To Thy Fatherhood appealing,
See Thy child.

I am weary of transgressions;
I have sinned;
Prone to vice and indiscretion,
Vacillation, misimpression,
As the wind.

Neither sins nor imperfections
I conceal;
Evil thoughts, impure reflections,
Faults in manifold directions,
Can I feel.

I am tired of life's illusion,
I would rest;
Leave its turmoil and confusion,
Fain would know the blest seclusion
Of Thy breast.

Through the shadows of the valley
As I speed,
Bid my faltering courage rally,
To resist each adverse sally;
Wilt Thou lead?

For I know that Thou art reigning
Over all;
With this confidence remaining,
Let me feel Thy Hand sustaining
Lest I fall.

DREAMS

A dream is the ghost of a fond delight,
An echo of former smiles or tears,
Wafted to us on the wings of night
From the silent bourne of the vanished years.

A dream is a perished joy, restored
From the mystical regions beyond our ken,
Which we fain would press as a thing adored,
To our breasts, ere it fades and is lost again.

A dream is a buried hope exhumed,
'Tis an iridescent thing of air,
Which mocks at the spirit, by fate entombed
In the catacombs of a mute despair.

A dream is a reflex view of life,
A blending of fancy with solemn truth,
A retrospection of mundane strife,
Old age re-living the scenes of youth.

Our dreams are but mirrors for our desires;
The proud ambition, the lofty aim
Achieved in our sleep, but the night expires
And the dull existence plods on the same.

A dream is a feeble ray of light,
A rift in the shadows through which we grope,
An evidence that eternal night
Can never extinguish the star of hope.

NOCTURNE

As fall the dews of slumber soft and deep,
On wilderness and populated town,
Bound by the sweet influences of sleep,
Proud reason abdicates her golden crown;
Dark Lethe, of oblivious renown,
Fain would I quaff from thy forgetful streams,
In willing thralldom would I lay me down,
To court the fair companionship of dreams,
And bask within their iridescent beams.

Or linger in the vestibule of sleep,
Where blow the winds of memory from the past,
Ere yet the languid shades of slumber deep
Have o'er the sense their dormant shadows cast;
Or muse upon the infinite and vast,
Till speculations various confuse,
And thought, unmerciful iconoclast,
With shattered images the path bestrews,
Yet leads to chaos of conflicting views.

Now vanish all remembrance of the day,
Complete immunity pervade the mind,
Let fond imagination hold her sway,
With rule uncircumscribed and unconfined;
Or soaring on the wings of fancy, wind
Through mystic realms of interstellar space,
Where visions of supernal beauty bind
The drowsy consciousness in sweet embrace;
But dreamland fades, and morning comes apace.

_See page 124._]

THE TRUE FAITH

That faith is true whatever it may be,
What ethics or traditions it may teach,
Whose whispers soothe the secret misery
And mollify with soft, persuasive speech.

That faith is true that lightens pain and care,
That false, which adds one burden to the load,
Whate'er its ornaments of psalm and prayer,
A travesty on reason and on God.

That faith is true that buoys the sinking breast,
When in the throes of some great agony,
That comforts the afflicted and distressed,
And reconciles the trembling soul to die.

That faith is true that when the chilling blasts
Of final dissolution overwhelm
Life's fragile bark, and shiver hull and masts,
Sees but the hand of Love upon the helm.

A FRAGMENT

The bard who versifies for hire,
When no exalted thoughts inspire,
Tho' rhyme and metre be exact,
Conveys a sense of something lacked;
When moved by no poetic fire,
He twangs a dull and tuneless lyre.

MORTALITY

_A Dissertation_

"If a man die, shall he live again?"--Job xiv. 14.

Thou man of Uz,--
The query which thy fevered organs framed,
Unanswered still re-echoes in our ears.
Thy desolate interrogating cry,
Born of affliction, grievous and extreme,
Bridging the gulf of fleeting centuries,
Finds our weak tongues as impotent as thine,
To voice reply in accents void of doubt.
Though in our breasts awakening response,
'Tis but a repetition of thy plaint,
A faint reverberation of thy cry.
We peer into the darkness, but descry
Nor form, nor semblance, with our bootless gaze;
We call and list with ears attuned to hear;
No sound is wafted, and no glimmering ray
Breaks from that night, unlit by moon or star;
Nor gleam, nor spark, nor modicum of light
Is flashed from out the precincts of the tomb.

Death is the final principle of life,
The culmination of vicissitude,
The silent archer, whose unerring shaft
Doth pierce at last the most unyielding breast;
The reaper after whose fell harvesting,
No gleaner bends nor follows in his wake.
The gold of Ophir, and the pearls of Ind,
The sapphires and the rubies of the East,
Or all the treasures, which the fabled Gnomes,
In subterranean vaults and passages
Have guarded, multiplied by countless sums,
With Euclid's most exalted numeral
In computation, as the multiple
Of least proportion, for the passing breath
Can purchase neither respite nor reprieve,
Nor can prolong it, by one feeble gasp.

Nor fragrant balm, nor sweet preservative,
Nor caustic alkaloid, nor bitter herb
From Nature's various dispensary,
Elixir, lotion, nor restorative,
Nor prophylactic nor catholicon
Nor pharmacy's most potent stimulant
Can long retard the swift but viewless flight,
Of that mysterious thing we call the Soul.
Nor exorcism, nor the mystic power
Of incantation, nor of talisman,
Nor words of solemn theurgy pronounced,
Can break or dissipate that pallid spell;
Nor necromancy, nor phylactery,
Nor touch of magic wand, nor subtle force
Of conjuration, nor of sorcery, prevails
Against the shadows of the tomb;
Nor all the baleful arts of witchery,
Nor amulet withstand the charm of death.

Yea, man who rules the passive elements,
Enchaining them to service at his will,
Himself to death must yield obedience.
Yea, man who, through all disadvantages
And obstacles, has hewed his way aloft,
From out the labyrinth of ignorance,
Who sways the sceptre over conquered realms,
Of latent energy and unseen force,
Without condition or conceding term,
Surrenders to that sombre potentate.

Nor can in earth's remotest solitude,
In forest depths or undiscovered isle,
In dismal cavern or secretive cave
Escape the mandate of that grizzly King.
Nor wing of eagle, nor the fabled wings
Of hippogrif, of such velocity
As clothes the lightning and the thunderbolt,
Outstrip in speed the shadowy wings of death.

We pass along an ever-travelled road,
Worn by the silent and continuous tread
Of throngs innumerable, of every clime;
The countless generations of the past,
The uncomputed hosts and multitudes
Who trod the earth in ages most remote,
And those whose pale emaciated forms
The generous earth hath recently received,
The myriads of every race and tongue
Who have preceded us, have sent no word
[Blank Page]
Of cheer or comfort from that silent strand,
And no directions for our timorous steps.

_See page 125._]

Grim Dissolution knows no favorites,
But in his multiplicity of shapes
Invades alike, with stern resistless step,
The squalid hovel with its noisome air,
And palace most replete with opulence;
Those of exalted station, and the hordes
To whom existence means but servitude,
Who see the golden sun arise and bring
No intermission from their ceaseless toil,
Who hope for respite only with the night;
Those who in dread reluctance shrank from death,
And those who neither knew nor cared the hour,
To life and death alike indifferent,
Or fain themselves would snap the fragile thread;
Mankind in all conditions and degrees
Of culture, affluence and penury,
Of multiform endowments and desires,
With differing talents and proclivities,
Yea, all varieties and types of men,
With pathways various and diversified,
Have found their paths converging at the grave.

Each, as the gathering shadows of the night,
In solemn chaos of unfathomed gloom,
Descend in sombre, melancholy pall,
And mark apace life's transitory eve,
Must quaff, alike, the bitter draught of death,
The one libation in which all who breathe
May in all equity participate.
Each, at the expiration of his span,
Has found the same relentless terminal,
And faltering on dissolution's brink,
With what of strength, or guilt or innocence
Did mark the tenor of his brief career,
Has passed up to the margin of the grave,
Then disappeared forever.

What is Death?
We know not, yet in verity we feel
That, though of most immediate concern,
And shrouded deep in sable mystery,
Though most abstruse, intangible and strange,
'Tis not of our volition and control!
It therefore proves, as life doth ever prove,
With all abundant plenitude of proof,
A Force superior to human strength,
And should afford no premises for fear.

[FINIS]