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 NEW YORK: 
 B A Y T N AND B U R D I C K ,. 
 
 29 ANX STREET. 
 
 1856. 
 
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 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S56, by 
 
 DAYTON AND BUEDIOK, 
 
 in tlie Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
 Southern District of New York. 
 
 DAVIKS AND KOBEKTS, 
 
 Ste:e(j| yjierR, 
 
 201 William Street, New York. 
 
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 Page 
 
 5 
 
 DEDICATION • 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE HOUR AND THE MAN 
 
 BORN HERO 
 
 GALLANT LOVES 
 
 THE NEBRASKA BISON-HUNT 
 
 THE DECISION ' 
 
 THE CHOICE 
 
 THE SOUTH PASS 
 
 , 47 
 
 FREMONT S PEAK ^' 
 
 TO " BROMUS," ON FREMONT's PEAK 
 
 THE CROSS ON ROCK INDEPENDENCE 
 
 THE CANON ." 
 
 7 
 9 
 
 14 
 15 
 18 
 30 
 39 
 43 
 
 51 
 
 54. 
 GO 
 
iv TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 P«ge 
 
 RUNNING THE CANON 07 
 
 THE STAND AT HAWk's PEAK 73 
 
 A NIGHT BY LAKE TLAMATH 78 
 
 BASIL LAJEUNESSE. A THRENODY 88 
 
 DEFEAT OF THE WAH-LAH-WAH-LAHS 91 
 
 THE RIDE OF ONE HUNDRED 101 
 
 CONQUEST ENDED 107 
 
 TO CAPTAIN J. C. FREMONT. FROM THE SPANISH. . 113 
 
 FAREWELL TO " SACRAMENTO" 116 
 
 THE PRAIRIE CAMP 121 
 
 SEQUEL TO THE PRAIRIE CAMP 132 
 
 THE OATH ] 36 
 
 BACKING OF FRIENDS 139 
 
 CROSSING THE WAHSACH 142 
 
 DEFERRED, NOT LOST 145 
 
 RESUME 149 
 
tJiitatijJH- 
 
 I SPEAK to you, TouNo Men ! for ye are strong. 
 And, being strong, ye should be merciful, 
 
 And -WISE -Trithal, to battle against wrong 
 That so the downfall of her citadel 
 
 Mar not the pillared fanes -where true hearts throng. 
 And sacred memories veiled in silence d^57-ell. 
 
 V 
 
 Gleams of a Life, like watchfires on our hills, 
 
 Throbs of a heart that dared what man may dare. 
 "Who conquered but to save, and bowed stern wills 
 
 By pity, teaching triumph to forbear — 
 These are my Song — our Hope — and the Despair 
 
 Of anarch Misrule ; — let them be to you 
 As glorious banners in the storm-rent air — 
 
 As pulses of new life, heroic, calm, and true. 
 
xtfixtt. 
 
 If any open this Volume who have not read some one of 
 the Lives of Fremont, the writer can only desire that 
 they Avould do so, first of all, and then return to these 
 pages with a witness, which will compel them to confess 
 that poetic enthusiasm has not carried him beyond the 
 record. 
 
 The Life of a public man is our possession, for good or 
 11; and where it seems preeminently for good, as with the 
 case in hand, there is something more than propriety in 
 making use of it. 
 
 It is believed that the passing of the momentary interest 
 which has brought the name of Frem()nt before us, will 
 not diminish the permanent value which it bears for all, 
 and especially for the young, who are just entering the 
 ranks in the rigid Battle of Life. 
 
 These Poems are offered at this time, not only for the 
 perennial excellence of the Subject, but equally for the 
 vital interest of the Moment. The crisis before us is one 
 which puts a new aspect on the whole political world. 
 The Scholar, the Poet, the Plowman, the Man of Business, 
 and the j\Ian of Leisure, have all an interest visibly at 
 stake; and all seem conscious of the vitality of that 
 interest. 
 
yiji PREFACE. 
 
 No mere political question ever has called out, nor per- 
 haps ever can call out, such an array of combined moral 
 and mental forces, as that which has already taken the 
 field for National Regeneration; and the tide seems only 
 at mid-flood. 
 
 If this writer could flatter himself that his effort would 
 in some degree swell the tide-waves of that setting flood, 
 and strengthen the force that would repel the aggressions 
 of Slavery, he could easily forego the hope of a permanent 
 value in his work, or any concern for the criticism of non- 
 combatant friends, who fancy that to crush the aggressive 
 element of Slavery touches not its vitality ; as if its very 
 essence was not aggression. 
 
 The success or failure of the present movement will not 
 reach the heroic worth of the subject, nor the permanent 
 character of the most of these Poems ; where the exigen- 
 cies of the case have crowded the task of a longer period 
 into some fourteen days— but to our Country the question 
 is of vast importance. The success which Freedom has a 
 right to expect, at the hands of her lovers, will be the 
 turning-point in the long history of her disasters — hence- 
 forth to become the story of her steady and unceasing 
 progress toward perfect victory. 
 
 In the faith that such is the crisis, and the hope that 
 these gleams from a noble life may add one I'ay to the new 
 dawn, they are flung out, and committed to their fate, by 
 
 2C|)e 5lut|)or. 
 
SIGNAL FIEES. 
 
 THE HOUR AND THE MAN. 
 
 There are times of bodeful peril, in the story of 
 
 a Land, 
 When the shadow of some awful doom reels, like 
 
 the dial-hand 
 Of Ahaz, back in darkness across its glory's path, 
 No more a sign of promise, but Jehovah's frown 
 
 of wrath. 
 
 As the earth's white blood sinks, curdling, from 
 
 veined fount and well. 
 When the cramps of earthquake spasms her in- 
 
 ward anguish tell, 
 
 1 
 
 # 
 
10 THE HOUE AND THE MAN. 
 
 So the full heart of a people, with a moment's 
 
 fearful hush, 
 Predicts the moral tempest and the passion's 
 
 whirlwind rush 
 
 Wo worth the hope of nations, if in. that awful 
 hour 
 
 They read not well the judgment signs that darkly 
 round them lower ; 
 
 And wo, if, when the storm is come upon the 
 drifting realm, 
 
 A brave right-hand, like iron, hold not the shud- 
 dering helm ! 
 
 No stripling's milky fingers, in tender nonage soft, 
 May nail the nation's banner where the tempest 
 
 howls .-ilMft ; 
 
 No graybeard's old and palsied hand, that shakes 
 his life-sands faster. 
 
 May grasp the helm, and o'er the waves ride reg- 
 nant, as their master ! 
 
 But the nerves of fiery Manhood, in many a dan- 
 ger tried. 
 
THE iroUE AND THE MAN. H 
 
 With the quick blood of young valor, to the calm 
 
 of years allied, 
 With the hero's eagle glances, and the sa^ge's 
 
 thoughtful face, 
 Mark the Leader called by Providence to peril's 
 
 lofty place. 
 
 W^e are drifting on the breakers, where the whiten- 
 ing water rolls. 
 
 And the beat of hearts prophetic as a solemn surf- 
 bell tolls ; 
 
 W^hile the yeasty wrath of millions that warring 
 passions urge. 
 
 Boils under, and breaks round us — a Maelstrom's 
 fickle surge. 
 
 « 
 Thank God! the land is rousing, like a giant from 
 
 its sleep ; 
 Heart leaps to heart responsive, " deep answering 
 
 to deep ;" 
 The pulses of Humanity have swelled the civic 
 
 veins, 
 And a cry of " Freedom !" thunders from the 
 
 mountains and the plains. 
 
12 THE nOUR AND THE MAN. 
 
 Thank God ! that while the Hour is struck, wc 
 
 have the living Man 
 To bear our eagle banner against the spoiler's 
 
 van, 
 Strong hand to wield the wavering helm, warm 
 
 heart, and coolest brain. 
 Heroic Sage, wise Hero — a crowned soul again ! 
 
 Bold Nursling of the Mountains that rear the 
 
 brave and free, 
 Our nation's periled fortunes are, under God, with 
 
 thee ; 
 Our earthly hope is in thee by a rescued People 
 
 called. 
 Strong in their true hearts round thee, in a living 
 
 fortress walled. 
 
 Ah, wo ! if through our blindness, or the hope of 
 
 sin's reward. 
 We see not in thy coming the finger of the Lord ; 
 Then darker, and yet darker, along our downward 
 
 track. 
 Must gloom our night of ruin, till we strike the 
 
 solid black ! 
 
THE HOUE AND THE MAN. I3 
 
 But no ! a nation's fiat is going forth to-day, 
 
 " Thus far, oh, human bondage, and here thy 
 
 waves must stay ; 
 We have lifted up our banner, that, like a tongue 
 
 of flame, 
 Calls Fremont to the victory, with Freedom in 
 
 his name /" 
 
BORN LEADER. 
 
 Great souls are tlieir own fate, and but the stronsf 
 
 Are the pre-destined : in a conquerless 
 
 And wise Will works the magic of success ; 
 Toiler-high invites the lightning, 7noimtain-h'igh. 
 Soars above thunder in a cloudless sky, 
 
 And spreads below the mining sap of wrong. 
 
 Such is the Hero on whose brows belong 
 The regal wreaths of natural sovereignty, 
 
 Around whose footsteps well the springs of Song, 
 And whose calm paths are steep with majesty. 
 Climb there who will, they cannot hold him back ; 
 
 His eye is upward, and his foot is firm ; 
 He rears wronged Honor to his eagle track, 
 
 And dates anew old Right's expiring term. 
 
GALLANT LOVES. 
 
 We love the Lover who dares to love 
 
 High beauty by peril guarded ; 
 Your fabled Dragon, whose jaws are rough 
 With serrate fangs below and above, 
 Or the proud aire's wrath — a sterner stuff! 
 
 Has spurr'd him, but not retarded. 
 
 We love the Beauty whose heart is true 
 To a Hero yet unlaureled, 
 
 it 
 
 The old affection, to kindred due. 
 Still dear, but holier yet the new 
 That buoys her up — and has borne her through, 
 Though rival empires quarreled ! 
 
IQ GALLANT LOVES. 
 
 Our hearts throb luminous as a star, 
 To gladden " Lord UUin's Daughter ;" 
 
 Like his steed they leap with " young Lochinvar," 
 
 And exult as the Viking's keel afar 
 
 His foes' " black hulk," with a thunder-jar, 
 
 Drives down through the night-" black water." 
 
 But a better triumph earns the meed 
 
 Of his nobler praise, who, rather. 
 By the wise man's word, and the hero's deed, 
 Can twine with olive his Spartan reed, 
 And, led by Beauty, can conquer and feed 
 
 The Pride of an angry father ! 
 
 Then give us one cheer for old Romance, 
 
 Wild riding with wilder chases. 
 One round for the victor's spur and lance ; 
 But peals, redoubled to heaven's expanse. 
 With our Leader's name, till the white clouds dance ; 
 
 And a three-times-three for Jessie's ! 
 
 Ah, Beauty's eye in its love-light hath 
 
 Some gleam of a gift prophetic ; 
 She knew the valor that -dared the wrath 
 
GALLANT LOVES. IJ 
 
 Of Power and Honor, could find a path 
 To both, unawed by peril and scath, 
 Unallured by lights erratic. 
 
 By her own worth, which his worth could win, 
 
 She crowned him as very worthy ; 
 And thy Hearts, oh, grateful Land ! begin 
 To echo her voice, with a choral din, 
 With the old man's pride and her love mixed in 
 
 The shout that is pealing o'er thee ! 
 
 Ah, never may gallant loves know shame : 
 
 True-heart the true heart blesses, 
 We hail the Lovers with glad acclaim. 
 Whose white love conquers untouched of blame — 
 Then a double cheer for our Leader's name ! 
 
 And three times three for Jessie's ! 
 
THE NEBRASKA BISON HUNT. 
 
 In the Camp of the bold Pathfinder 
 
 The morning fires are burning, 
 And bearded men, knelt round them, 
 
 The beechen spits are turning ; 
 A savory steam is clouding 
 
 The keen air of the dawn ; 
 Their eager nostrils snufT it in, 
 And white through the shaggy moustache grin 
 The expectant teeth of the Creole man. 
 And the wiry, swart Canadian, 
 
 Around the camp-fires drawn. 
 
 From the far-ofT western mountains 
 The winds come, hissing and cold, 
 
 iS 
 
THE NEBRASKA BISON HUNT. 19 
 
 Though over the eastern levels run 
 The fluid fires of a July sun, 
 Across the prairie, sere and dun, 
 Flashing in purple and gold. 
 
 Sun-rayed, the bright Helianthus 
 
 Is turning toward its God, 
 And its million golden blossoms 
 
 To the rising Splendor nod. 
 The clumps of the tough Artemisia, 
 
 With their wiry twigs intwined. 
 Turn white like the ocean breakers, 
 
 In the ruffling western wind, 
 And a healthful odor of camphor and fir, 
 Is loosed by the silvery leaflets' stir. 
 That fills the air as a censer of myrrh 
 
 In the gorgeous fanes of Ind ; 
 The weary voyageurs drink the balm, 
 And the breath they breathe is full and calm, 
 
 With the vigor it leaves behind. 
 
 Far off, in the glow of the sunrise. 
 
 In threads of a hazy blue, 
 The smoke of the Pawnee wio-wams 
 
20 TUE NEBRASKA BI80N HUNT. 
 
 Has dimmed their homeward view ; 
 But their hearts are with their Leader, 
 
 Whom the Mountain Spirits call 
 To find the Path of Empire 
 
 Across their rocky wall ; 
 And their faces are set westward 
 
 To the ever-deepening wild, 
 Where the serpent lurks in wood and fen, 
 With savage beasts and savage men. 
 And cataracts thunder down the glen. 
 Where winds their path on slippery jags. 
 Round cavernous pits, over toppling crags, 
 
 And down the rocks in ruin piled. 
 
 Rich " humps" of the roasted bison, 
 
 Before that hungry crew, 
 With cans of the fragrant " Java," 
 
 Have vanished like the dew. 
 With the first blush of the dawning, 
 
 The young Day's virgin glow, 
 They had loosed the picketed horses, 
 
 And let the oxen go 
 To graze by the Sliallow River, 
 
 And drink of its lim[>id flow. 
 
THE NEBRASKA BISON HUNT. 21 
 
 Now hark, to the voice of the Leade 
 
 They joyfully obey — 
 " My lads ! I have seen the promise 
 
 Of a gallant ride to-day ; 
 Ho ! saddle the fiery hunters, 
 
 My lightning-shod Proveau, 
 And a brace for my brave riders, 
 
 We'll charge the buffalo ! 
 Keep watch and ward, my trusty men, 
 For the steeds may break to the herd agen. 
 Or meet, anear some woody glen, 
 
 The Pawnee Loup's lasso. 
 
 " Come on ! my gallant Maxwell ; 
 
 I hear the sullen roar 
 Of a herd that darkens all the plain, 
 A murmur as of the windy main 
 
 Far off on a rocky shore : 
 Come on ! my true Kit Carson ; 
 
 I've lads more brawny and tall. 
 But the crack of that trusty rifle 
 
 Proclaims the victim's fall. 
 We three will ride together, 
 
 Hurled on that grazing herd, 
 
22 THE NEBRASKA BISON HUNT. 
 
 Like a triple bolt of thunder 
 From the talons of Jove's Bird. 
 
 " Charge over the broad Nebraska, 
 With scarcely the fetlocks wet ; 
 And slowly up against the gale, 
 That else might whisper them the tale 
 Of a coming foe, we'll take the trail, 
 And spot the fairest yet !" 
 
 Right over the broad Nebraska, 
 
 With scarcely the fetlocks wet, 
 They dashed, and slowly up the plain. 
 With steeds impatient of the rein. 
 Drew nigh, some vantage-ground to gain 
 Ere to the hills the startled train 
 In a roarino- flood-tide set. 
 
 O 
 
 By Heaven ! it was a goodly view 
 That opened on their sight ! . 
 
 As far as eye could pierce the blue, 
 
 From all that waving plain, it drew 
 A terrible delight ! 
 
 One boundless sea of murmurinjr life 
 
THE NEBEASKA BISON HUNT. 
 
 Along the prairie lay, 
 With here and there a whirl of strife, 
 
 Of the shaggy bulls in fray — 
 An eddy of battle, roaring loud 
 Above the hum of the moving crowd, 
 
 With the white dust for its spray. 
 
 Far to the north the dusky tide 
 
 Rolled on the purple hills ; 
 And thronging down the river-side, 
 It seemed the river itself they dried, 
 As it crept, along its channel wide, 
 In a thousand trickling rills. 
 
 They paused but a breathless moment 
 
 Before that grand array. 
 When rang the voice of the Leader 
 
 So proudly they obey — 
 '' Hurrah ! the deep tide wavers ! 
 
 They have snuffed the coming foe ; 
 Like billow on heaving billow, 
 
 Their refluent surges flow. 
 Far off they have caught the terror, 
 
 And louder, and more loud, 
 
 23 
 
24 THE NEBEASKA BISON HUNT. 
 
 Swells up the sea-like murmur, 
 As toward the hills they crowd. 
 
 Now pick your game, Kit Carson ! 
 Yon huge dun cow is mine ; 
 
 Now, gallant Maxwell, pick your game ; 
 
 With a ringing yell, and a rush like flame, 
 We'll break the roaring line !" 
 
 Untouched by the goading rowels. 
 
 With only the rein let go, 
 Like the plunge of a swooping eagle 
 
 Flew fiery-eyed Proveau. 
 Kit Carson's snorting charger 
 
 Rained down his hoofs like hail ; 
 But the steed of gallant Maxwell 
 
 Blazed by like a comet's tail! 
 
 For a moment, as an army 
 
 Charged fiercely front and flank. 
 
 The dense mass reeled and wavered, 
 From suroing rank to rank ; 
 
 In a moment, gulfing inward, 
 .They bared a narrow pass. 
 
 Where, as the bold pursuers rushed, 
 
THE NEBRASKA BISON HUNT. 
 
 25 
 
 'The shaggy brutes, together crushed, 
 
 Rolled bellowinof on the srrass — 
 Brute over brute piled on the plain, 
 As away, like a desert hurricane, 
 " Swept all the roaring mass ! 
 A rumbling earthquake shook the ground, 
 Where the cloudy path of their multitudes wound, 
 And the clash of their horns was like the sound 
 Of a battle-field, when swords rebound 
 
 From bucklers and helms of brass. 
 
 Upright for a single moment. 
 
 The Leader's figure proud, 
 Was seen, with his leveled rifle, 
 
 In a dusty thunder-cloud. 
 The fire of his deadly rifle 
 
 Rang down the wild retreat, 
 And the dun cow, fierce and shaggy, 
 
 Lay lifeless at his feet. 
 But a\vay like a hungry tiger — 
 
 His nostrils snorting flame, 
 And his eyeballs fiercely flashing — 
 
 That Hunter charged the game. 
 The wild bulls turned to gore him, 
 
26 THE KEBEASKA BISON HUNT. 
 
 With their dust and anger blind, 
 But lightly over them with a bound, 
 He bore his rider, safe and sound, 
 Or eagerly on, like a swift bloodhound. 
 For a better prey he swept away, 
 
 And left them far behind. 
 Oh, a gallant steed was fleet Proveau, 
 Who knew his Rider as heroes know 
 The Demigods they meet below — 
 
 By a sympathy of mind ! 
 
 At home in the thickest perils, 
 
 The dauntless Mountaineer, 
 With a hand that never trembled 
 
 From the fiery flask, nor fear. 
 Sent death to the plunging monsters 
 
 Along his wild career, 
 Till, imaware, from either hand, 
 Hushed, from the cloud-enveloped band, 
 A fierce twain, terrible and grand. 
 
 Full on his front and rear! 
 Reeled the wild charger, vaulting high, 
 With something like a human cry 
 When terror blends with agony ; 
 
THE NEBRASKA BISON HUNT. 27 
 
 V 
 
 Shunning the deadly thrust, 
 Aside he plunged from either wound, 
 And horse and rider, with one wild bound, 
 
 Went headlong to the dust ; 
 While dashing together as rock to rock, 
 The mad brutes met with a stunning shock. 
 
 And rolled in death on the gory sod, 
 
 A double prize, by the gift of God, 
 To the periled rider just. 
 
 Up rose the Guide from his stirrup freed. 
 Up rose, with a leap, his treacherous steed, 
 And dashed away, with a frighted speed, 
 Where the choking cloud and the sullen roar 
 Were all that told, in a moment more. 
 His path, and theirs who had gone before. 
 
 " By Heaven !" cried Maxwell, leaping 
 From his game to his courser fleet, 
 
 " I'll bring you a steed. Kit Carson, 
 You stand but ill on feet !" 
 
 Awav, awav, like a shooting star. 
 
 He flashed and dashed, with a " Hip ! hurrah !" 
 
 Right after the trembling thunder-jar. 
 
28 THE KEBKASKA BISON HUNT. 
 
 A moment seen, then lost, afar 
 
 In the dust-cloud rolling black ; 
 x\nd ere the first-drawn bison's hide 
 In the blazing sun grew crisp and dried, 
 Slowly over the brown hill-side, 
 By the glittering rein to his saddle tied. 
 He brought the fugitive back. 
 
 In the Camp of the bold Pathfinder 
 Was food enough that day, 
 
 And the voyageurs felt their Leader 
 A Power in their perilous way. 
 
 Where danger itself was a pastime, 
 And the battle of Life a play ! 
 
 We have called him for our Leader 
 In the charge on a fiercer foe. 
 
 That forth to the shallow Nebraska 
 Rolls on, with a darker flow. 
 
 Than ever rolled the sea-like swell 
 Of the herded buftalo ! 
 
 On the bounding pulse of a People's heart. 
 
THE NEBEASKA BISON HUNT. 29 
 
 We'll bear him to his nobler part, 
 
 As on his proud Proveau ; 
 And the charging cry of our host shall be 
 One long, loud shout, from sea to sea, 
 " Free men, Fremoxt and Victory ! 
 
 Charge ! and God speed it so !" 
 
THE DECISION. 
 
 The Explorer's tents stood, Jim by night, 
 Beneath the guns of Laramie, 
 
 Whose guarded walls of gleaming white, 
 
 The last defense of civil right, 
 Clove the rod sea of savagery. 
 To bare a pathway for the free. 
 
 Through thick'ning perils, day by day, 
 
 Along the broad Nebraska's side, 
 The hardy band had kept their way, 
 That toward the gates of sunset lay. 
 Where far and wide, in hoary pride. 
 High Heaven the Titan hills defied. 
 
THE DECISION. . 31 
 
 An atom, on the Prairie's sea, 
 
 Whose rocky shore no eye could span, 
 Where savage wolf, and Wolf-Pawnee, 
 Like rav'ning sharks roved, fierce and free — 
 With loaded wain, mule, horse, and man. 
 Slow moved the westering caravan. 
 
 Still lengthening out, a thousand miles 
 
 Of hill and rock and desert track. 
 To wife's caress, and infant's smiles. 
 To vine arcades, and garden aisles. 
 
 Stretched far aback, behind the black 
 
 Night bastions of this bivouac. 
 
 " Return !" the home-bound Hunter cried. 
 
 His ranks in savage battle torn ; 
 " On desert wilds our steeds have died. 
 Our brothers fallen by our side, 
 
 Our Leader, borne in death, we mourn ; 
 
 Back, ere your widows wail forlorn !" 
 
 " Wau<rh ! Long Knives ! to your lodges back ! 
 But once the Bell-snake's* warning rings ; 
 
 * " Serpent a Sotmettes," the Eattlesnake. 
 
32 '^'^^ DECISION. 
 
 No grass along your further track ; 
 
 Your beasts will fall, your pulses slack, 
 By dusty springs, where lurks and stings 
 The serpent with invisible wings !" 
 
 The wily Indian's snaky eye 
 
 Ran down the lines, with such a smile 
 As bodes no good — who dashing by, 
 Spoke thus, and waited no reply ; 
 A little while, and many a mile 
 Concealed that riddling Priest of guile. 
 
 " Alas !" the terror-smitton cried, 
 
 " For us there will be life no more ; 
 A sea of peril, far and wide. 
 Surrounds our band, on every side. 
 And all before without a shore, 
 ^ It darkens, red with human gore !" 
 
 " Return ! beloved of God and man, 
 Tempt not too far a jealous Fate !" 
 
 In sooth the very Braves began 
 
 To feel that timid flutter fan 
 
 Their hearts, with great Designs elate, 
 To thoughts that owned them desperate. 
 
THE DECISION. 33 
 
 Not so the Leader ! calm and stern, 
 And star-like in his deep blue eye, 
 Fixed Resolution seemed to burn, 
 Where even the weakest heart might learn 
 A courage high, that dared to die 
 For Duty, but would never ily. 
 
 " Return who will return, I go !" 
 
 He said, and Westward tossed his hand. 
 
 " No limbs that quake before a foe. 
 
 No timid heart of forest doe, 
 
 Shall shame the Band that opes the grand 
 Rock portals of this Western Land ! 
 
 " Return who will return ! but you 
 
 Who march with me, for life or death, 
 Strike tent and harness ! ere the dew 
 Quit yonder blooms of red and blue." 
 Light moment hath a little breath. 
 Against a Hero's heart and faith ! 
 
 They shout ! they leap ! no time to sit. 
 
 No thought to turn again, nor stop ; 
 
 Down fall the tents like birds alit, 
 
 2* 
 
34 
 
 THE DECISION. 
 
 And steeds are champing at the bit ; 
 One parting sup, the <*' stirrup-cup," 
 Then to the river, on, and up ! 
 
 " Hold, Brothers ! lo, the speaking Leaf." 
 And round the Leader of our band 
 
 Rushed many a tall and stalwart chief, 
 
 With greeting thus abrupt and brief, 
 
 And outstretched hand, which meant command, 
 Though tempered with their smiling bland. 
 
 Adorned with gaudy paint and plumes, 
 
 And arrows of the Porcupine, 
 Their garments, rank with musky fumes, 
 Had taxed no palpitating looms — 
 
 Yet tall and line, they seemed divine 
 
 As swav V 'jods of Woden's line. 
 
 Chief ot the chiefs, in silence sat 
 
 Breaker-of- Arrows, stout and grim, 
 Black-Night thick browed, and Otter-Hat 
 The vain, and Bull's-Tail, plumed with that. 
 In south, to him, as fair and trim 
 As " Horsetails" to the Musselim ! 
 
THK DECISION. 35 
 
 " Return," the White Leaf said, " return ! 
 These Chiefs your onward march forbid. 
 Their Braves have gone to scalp and burn, 
 And none may 'scape their vengeance stern : 
 As well the kid might hope to thrid 
 The lair-paths where the wolves are hid." 
 
 " Wot God," a hoary Sachem said, 
 
 " We love you well, and are right glad 
 To greet you, but upon your head 
 May fall the blood your kinsmen shed ; 
 The time is bad, our warriors, mad, 
 Will bide no check, till blood be had. 
 
 " Go to our father's house in peace, 
 
 And tell him we are poor and bare- 
 That in good gifts this hate will cease, 
 For he is rich in all increase. 
 
 And in his care our tribes shall fare. 
 As fits the sire whose sons we are." 
 
 So spake the Chief in wiles expert, 
 
 And thus our dauntless Heart replied : 
 " Small sway your reverend lips assert. 
 
36 TUE DECISION. 
 
 If whom you love your oiDn dare hurt ! 
 We ask a guide, and are denied ; 
 What love is that — too weak to ride ! 
 
 " We v^ill not hear your double tongue ; 
 
 Ye are our father's sons no more ; 
 We heard your evil fame, among 
 The dove-cotes, by the swallows sung ; 
 And now with gore, it darkens o'er 
 Our vision, redder than before. 
 
 " Our youths are tutored to obey ; 
 
 We hear the words our Old Men speak ; 
 They bade us track descending Day 
 Across the mountain's rocky way, 
 His bed to seek — and you, too weak 
 To ride or rule, what boots your check ? 
 
 " We've thrown our bodies to the gales, 
 
 And we will not turn back, nor swerve ! 
 And many a lodge will ring with wails. 
 And many a youth sleep on their trails. 
 If once they nerve our hands, to serve 
 The vengeance evil deeds deserve. 
 
THE DECISION. 37 
 
 " If fall we must, as fall we may, 
 
 Your grief will join the loud ' Alas !' 
 
 Our father's wrath, in one red day, 
 
 Will sweep your villages away, 
 
 A smoking mass, like prairie grass. 
 When the swift tires of autumn pass !" 
 
 He spoke, and down the ready line 
 
 A cheer of answerinnc courage ran. 
 The faintest heart's-blood flashed like wine, 
 As the waved hand's advancing sign 
 Led off the van — and, horse and man, 
 On moved the westerinfj caravan. 
 
 The gloomy Chiefs, with silent awe, 
 And hearts that inly cheered the Brave, 
 
 His dauntless mien and action saw. 
 
 And felt his fiery soul as law : 
 
 Ere day's spent wave its shores could lave, 
 Sped to his camp the Guide they gave ! 
 
 Thus he unlocked the Mountain Gate 
 And the proud trophy of Success 
 
38 THE DECISION. 
 
 Wrung from the niggard hand of Fate, 
 Till jealous nations named him Great ; 
 And reahns no less, shall rise, to bless 
 His memory, in the wilderness ! 
 
THE CHOICE. 
 
 / 
 
 Heaven's horologe points forward on its way, 
 To-morrow's sunrise brings not back to-day. 
 The hour once struck shall never strike agen, 
 For laairard nations nor the souls of men. 
 
 "&»' 
 
 Once in a life, it may be once alone, 
 Comes the stern fiat, " Do, or be undone !" 
 The hour, the moment, when a single word 
 Will strike the doom-bell, once forever heard 
 That rings a Hero to his golden crown. 
 Or to oblivion tolls the Dastard down. 
 
40 THE CHOICE. 
 
 Whatever sod his after steps may beat, 
 They tread the pathway of that hour's defeat, 
 Or, through the windings of unfathomed time. 
 
 To the full measure of its triumph climb. J 
 
 i 
 
 No seeming fortune's momentary smile. 
 
 That crowns his brow with sunshine for a while, 
 
 Though giddy fools rush in with joys elate 
 
 To catch the golden droppings of his fate. 
 
 Shall ripen laurels at a glorious goal, 
 
 For him once branded " Craven," in his soul. 
 
 No seeming failure's supercilious frown, 
 That dims the daystar of his first renown, 
 Till his dark path is veiled in utter gloom. 
 Where boding ravens croak the words of doom- 
 While hearts of fear, and base-born parasites, 
 Fly from the dark, and flit round lower lights — 
 Can stain the splendors of his aureole. 
 Once written " Hero" on his living soul. 
 
 Since the bright stars that chronicle our fates 
 Only right forward swing their golden gates, 
 And souls, once gone on their returnless track, 
 What good they left, forevermore shall lack — 
 
THE CHOICE. 41 
 
 With this great hope, the nobler lives they live 
 Thenceforth, may win some bliss compensative — 
 Since erring nations, in an evil way 
 Can only speed to premature decay, 
 And to-day's guerdon must be won to-day — 
 Old graves are vocal, and the whirlpool-rocks 
 Wreck-beaconed murmur o'er their thunder-shocks, 
 The solemn voices of the immortal dead. 
 And the wild moan of wasted lives, ill-sped, 
 Swell the deep warning of the living Seer, 
 Choose well to-day your unrevoked career ! 
 
 Now is the Crisis ; the dead Past is gone, 
 And the swift Present seals her page anon ; 
 This moment's action plants the good or ill 
 That, ages hence, will flourish greenly still. 
 
 And if to-day we reap the bitter tares 
 
 Our fathers sowed, self-willed or unawares. 
 
 With more hot earnest speaks the warning voice 
 
 To snatch this moment's unreturning choice. 
 
 To strike the furrow by the rigid line 
 
 Of human rights, which are indeed " divine," 
 
 And fling broad-handed, over all the plain, 
 
42 
 
 THE CHOICE, 
 
 The golden seeds of truth and right again — 
 
 Freedom for all — the inviolable cot, 
 
 With its free fields, a consecrated spot. 
 
 And a broad charter for excursive thought 
 
 To seek new truth, and speak the truth she sought j,' 
 
 So the great Future may not learn to curse 
 
 A niggard toil that cultured bad to worse ; 
 
 But bless the hands that to her children gave 
 
 A teeming glebe unblighted by a slave, 
 
 And the fair boon of souls who dare to be 
 
 What God would have them, fearless, true, and free. 
 
THE SOUTH PASS. 
 
 'Tis but the opening step that costs, 
 
 For labor, love, or laurel ; 
 With corn that dared the vernal frosts 
 
 The autumnal never quarrel. 
 The Rubicon of Laramie, 
 
 Passed bravely by the ranger, 
 None doubted then his foot to see 
 
 Victorious over danaer. 
 
 "O 
 
 And, now the mighty goal is won — - 
 That Portal of the Mountains, 
 
 Where forth to either ocean run 
 The floods of rival fountains — 
 
44 THE SOUTH PASS. 
 
 No rugged rocks' gigantic mass, 
 
 No fathomless abysses, 
 Confound the vasty mountain-pass. 
 
 With horrent precipices. 
 
 By endless slopes of climbing plain, 
 
 O'er-starred with blooming Asters, 
 The foot, unconscious of its strain. 
 
 The towering; summit masters : 
 Ascent as easy to subdue, 
 
 When on the icay the will is, 
 As up your glorious Avenue, 
 
 The Capitolian Hill is ! 
 
 The Gallant who has climbed that steep. 
 
 And many a summit harder. 
 From Jessie-mine-bowered Lover's-Leap, 
 
 To snowy-gulfed Nevada, 
 May lightly reach this spot of earth. 
 
 Where grleams Ambition's tower — 
 Just stepping, from the top of Worth, 
 
 Down on the top of Power. 
 
 Through perils from the savage foe, 
 And kindly hearts unstable, 
 
THE SOUTH PASS. 45 
 
 From dastard souls who would not go, 
 
 And weak who were unable, 
 We've reached the Southern Pass, at last, 
 
 Star-flowered with better promise, 
 And if we will, we'll soon have passed, 
 
 Where Slavery's floods roll from us 
 
 ! 
 
 Up then, ye dauntless freemen, on ! 
 
 Track close your dauntless Master ; 
 We've crossed the fateful Rubicon, 
 
 To victory or disaster. 
 This day the nation's noblest hopes 
 
 Hang trembling in the balance. 
 Up ! charge the level Pass, that opes 
 
 The broad Free West, my Gallants ! 
 
 While now the finger of Events 
 
 Though tremulous, like the needle, 
 Points only North, out from your tents, 
 
 In squadrons millipedal ! 
 And march for Freedom's Mountain-door, 
 
 Where Slavery's flood rolls from us, 
 And living fountains flash, that pour 
 
 Down all our Land of Promise. 
 
45 THE SOUTH PASS. 
 
 Thus only can we reach that hiorht 
 
 Which towers aloft supremely, 
 Where truth is law, and right is might, 
 
 Far seen before us, dimly. 
 Then on ! and He who bore his flag 
 
 Across the Mountain's Portal, 
 Will bear up ours, as o'er his crag, 
 
 To Freedom's Peak immortal. 
 

 FREMONT PEAK. 
 
 THE HIGHEST POINT OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 
 
 Aloft in naked grandeur towered 
 
 The vast Cathedral of the Hills, 
 High peaks that would have quelled the coward 
 
 To look upon their pinnacles. 
 Sheer over all, with awful front, 
 
 Not yet baptized in brave sweat-drops 
 Of its High Priest, the " Peak Fremont" 
 
 Looked down on all the mountain-tops. 
 
 Far up, its skeleton white hand, 
 
 In glitter of eternal snow, 
 Caught the young Morning's flaring brand, 
 
 And flung it to the hills below. 
 
48 FPwEMONT PEAK. 
 
 In the keen quivering of the light, 
 Might seem its rigid arm to wave, 
 
 Repellaut in the weak heart's sight, 
 
 But beckoning up the strong and brave. 
 
 Ten thousand years of flood and fire, 
 
 Of earthquake and of hurricane. 
 That fleshless Arm, no time could tire, 
 
 Had beckoned for its Man in vain. 
 Sometimes the Indian's fiery eye 
 
 Far off, its morning signal saw, 
 But strange, weird voices in the sky. 
 
 Low muttering, turned him back in awe ! 
 
 The Builders of the mighty Mounds, 
 
 Who laid those fingers on the lips 
 Of their Land's Secret, heard the sounds, 
 
 And saw that towering fiend eclipse 
 The downward Sun, their glorious God, 
 
 Ages before — and flying far. 
 Piled for his grave the wintry sod. 
 
 And died beneath their fatal star. 
 
 Ten thousand years of mellowing change, 
 Of rain, and sun, and greening grass, 
 
FREMONT PEAK. 49 
 
 Of eag-le-fliglit, and wild beast's range, 
 That towering Peak had seen to pass ; 
 
 But waved its fleshless arm in vain, 
 For ages, since the world began ; 
 
 Till now, in Freedom's latest reign, 
 
 The imv.earying Call has fomid its Man ! 
 
 Aloft with Freedom's meteor flag — 
 
 In hands like his redeemed from shame — 
 He scales the mountain's dizzying crag, 
 
 Clinging and climbing like a flame ! 
 Right up ! a thousand feet below. 
 
 The deep lake glitters like a star, 
 Up ! through the everlasting snow, 
 
 Beyond the storm-line's icy scar. 
 
 Up ! where the eagle scarce could stand ! 
 
 Till his unerring foot has trod 
 The loftiest cliifthat heaves its hand 
 
 Between its mountain-throne and God. 
 Beneath his foot the thin spire ([uakes, 
 
 Like a tall cedar in the blast ! 
 'Tis the old Mountain's hand that shakes 
 
 The welcome Hero's hand at last ! 
 
/ 
 
 50 FREMONT PEAK. 
 
 Sheer down, a hundred fathoms dread, 
 
 On the broad shoulders of the Cliff, 
 He sees the royal ermine spread, 
 
 Like some proud Sultan's, jewel-stiff*; 
 And round their awful Monarch's knees, 
 
 The mountain Peers, with all their woods, 
 And far, on either hand, he sees 
 
 The Cradle of the mighty Floods. 
 
 Like a wild meteor in the sky, 
 
 Outgleams the banner of his land, 
 As with a loud, exulting cry, 
 
 He gives it to that fleshless Hand ! 
 A symbol on the eternal hills, 
 
 That all below them should be free. 
 As that free-mountain shout, that thrills 
 
 Down all the slopes to either sea ! 
 
TO "BROMUS," ON FREMONT'S PEAK. 
 
 ALOFT 13,570 FEET. 
 
 Yellow-coated little Hero! 
 Bold explorer of the hills ! 
 Do you look for daffodils, 
 Lily-blooms, and purple flags — 
 With the mercury at zero — 
 On these barren, icy crags ? 
 
 What has sent you, lonely Rover, 
 Far away from meadow slopes, 
 Columbine and heliotropes ? 
 
52 TO "BROMUS." 
 
 Reveler in sunny light, 
 And the sunny banks of clover, 
 Why your wild and weary flight ? 
 
 Is it possible Ambition 
 
 Harbors in your little soul. 
 Eager for the highest goal — 
 Doing what no other can ? 
 Pretty, miniature edition 
 
 Of the sateless heart of man ! 
 
 " Humble ?" so I hear you cited ; 
 But, between yourself and me. 
 Boy ! if yoiCre a hinnhle-hee 
 I have not the wit to guess 
 Where a proud one would have 'lighted, 
 In our little wilderness ! 
 
 But I may divine what meaneth 
 This my witty fellow speaks. 
 Up among the chilly peaks ; 
 That a steady, sunward flight, 
 Though it may not split the zenith, 
 Finds a very noble hight ; 
 
TO ' UUOMUS." 53 
 
 That the Eagle and the Vulture 
 
 Are not all who mount the sky 
 So " unutterably high ;" 
 But that any little chap 
 May, if true to pith and culture, 
 Put that feather in his cap ! 
 
THE CROSS ON ROCK INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 Best Hero is best Man in every sphere ; 
 
 The noblest soul is always meek and just ; 
 Its pride, that tramples upon human fear, 
 
 And treads down peril as the common dust, 
 
 Is the calm nursling of a lowly Trust ; 
 For he whose faithful spirit walks with God, 
 
 Soars above terror and unworthy lust, 
 And will not wield, nor suffer, the base rod 
 Of tyrant power that makes Humanity a clod. 
 
 No pompous Braggart's egoistic " I," 
 
 In his small worth and over-swollen conceit ; 
 No blatant ruffian, who can pitch more high 
 
CROSS ON EOCK INDEPENDENCE. 55 
 
 His threatful clamor than the valorous beat 
 
 Of his fierce heart ; nor he whose fears defeat 
 More than injustice or an evil deed, 
 
 May dare to front the Future's judgment-seat 
 And claim the name of Hero for his meed : 
 The paths of inward peace to outward grandeur 
 
 lead. 
 
 High natures are allegiant to a Higher, 
 ' And looking upward teaches them to climb. 
 The soul that has no God, nor altar-fire, 
 
 Must grovel coldly in the barren slime 
 
 Of selfish pride, or at the flames of crime 
 Warm the thick blood to false enthusiasm ; 
 
 But Faith makes even our feebleness sublime, 
 
 And, bridging Death, leaps every narrower chasm, 
 
 And turns to new Life's flight the last convulsive 
 
 spasm ! 
 
 The Heroes 'balmed in everlasting song 
 
 By the great Past, who drew from fearful odds 
 
 New strength, for sterner conflict with the wrong, 
 Fought for their Country and their Household 
 Gods ; 
 
56 CEOSS ON EOOK INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 The laurel, grown on all their battle sods, 
 Hung round the Altar with their dinted arras ; 
 
 And he who sang in golden periods, 
 " Arms and the MaA," with ^^ pious y^' crowned 
 the charms 
 Of his heroic worth in council and alarms. 
 
 Nor shall this age,. whose better faith demands 
 More strict devotion, lack heroic men 
 
 Who will not blush to join victorious hands 
 In humble adoration, even then, 
 When hot blood ureses to the charoe asfen ! 
 
 So have we seen our laureled Washington, 
 Besieging Heaven in some secluded glen, 
 
 On bended knees ; then, armed with fire, anon 
 Sweep the red field of War, till victory was won ! 
 
 So have we seen, in years allied to this. 
 
 The bold Pathfinder bowing to the Cross ; 
 
 And heard Detraction's atheistic hiss 
 
 Greet the great Symbol of our Gain and Loss, 
 With foul lips' curl, and low head's scornful 
 toss, 
 
 As Envy maddened at our Hero's crown. 
 
CEOSS ON EOCK INDEPENDENCE. 57 
 
 Ah, gallant Soul ! a thousand years may moss 
 The sign thou carvedst in thy young renown, 
 But ere that fair fame fail, the Rock shall crumble 
 down. 
 
 Far in the savage wilds that granite block 
 From the deep bowels of the mountain hurled, 
 
 Seems, in the grandeur of its barren rock, 
 The corner-stone of some unfinished world, 
 Huge Mausoleum, with Fame's scroll unfurled 
 
 Upon its surface, or an altar grand, 
 
 With thunder-clouds for smoke of incense, 
 curled 
 
 Above its awful front, where, graven, stand 
 The names of brave, great, good, from many a 
 rival land. 
 
 While power, and pride, and bounding life were 
 theirs, * 
 
 They made that Rock their living Monument ; 
 
 And for the strength with which, alone, it dares 
 The storms of ages, moveless and imrent, 
 Baptized it unto Freedom ; and so blent 
 
 Its name with this young Empire of the West, 
 
 a* 
 
58 CEOSS ON EOCK INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 Whose " Independence," like that Rock, has 
 sent 
 Its challenge to the thunder ! and, confest, 
 The World's great exiles set their names upon its 
 breast. 
 
 Here the young Hero of the mountain peaks, 
 Who could have shamed the chamois on his 
 Alp, 
 When, like a sunrise, he had hung the streaks 
 Of our starred Banner on the naked scalp 
 Of pinnacled rocks supreme — who knew the 
 help 
 God lends the daring, in memorial love 
 
 Graved his Redeemer's Cross. The gaunt 
 wolf's whelp 
 May sriMl below it, but heaven smiles above ; 
 True hearts of every name, and every creed, ap- 
 prove. 
 
 If it were noble, and of worthy fame, 
 To bear aloft his country's eagle flag 
 
 Beyond the eagle's ken, and in her name 
 Unfurl it there, upon the topmost crag 
 
CROSS ON EOCK INDEPENDENCE. 59 
 
 Of this New World, poised on a splintered jag- 
 Where never yet the boldest foot had trod, 
 
 Shall bigot Envy's soul-polluted hag 
 Cast down his laurels to the trampled sod, 
 For that he laid them all upon the shrine of God ? 
 
 Ah, no ! the symbol of the bannered stars, 
 
 Flung out far up the starry deeps of blue, 
 Is freedom for the arms that break the bars 
 
 Of olden Empire, to create the new ; 
 
 The holier symbol of the Cross he drew 
 On the rock basis of the eternal hills, 
 
 Is freedom for the soul, who dares be true 
 In the loner martyrdom of mortal ills, 
 And many a noble heart that sign with rapture fills ! 
 
THE CANON 
 
 I. 
 
 At the roots of the mountains — 
 The wreck of a world — 
 
 Where the congregate waters 
 
 Of myriad fountains 
 Together are hurled — 
 
 The precipice totters 
 With ruinous weight, 
 
 Leaning over the river 
 
 That darts with a shiver, 
 As of a lashed hound, 
 
 Now, headlong, or never, 
 To plunge with a bound 
 Through that perilous gate ! 
 
THE CANON. Ql 
 
 From meadows that offer 
 
 Their sunniest nooks 
 To the purple aniorpha, 
 And flowers without number, 
 
 Gold, azure, and red, 
 Multitudinous brooks 
 
 In the low river-bed, 
 Like glittering arrows 
 
 Flown home to their quiver. 
 
 Unite in a river. 
 One moment to slumber, 
 Ere hurled to the narrows 
 
 It rushes in dread, 
 With rocks to encumber 
 
 Its turbulent flow, 
 And rocks overhead, 
 
 Bowing fearfully low. 
 
 Shot down from its level, 
 
 Clear, sunny, and large, 
 Its mirror-like bevel 
 
 Leans smooth to the rock, 
 Thouoh swift as the lightninor 
 
 It shoots to its targe. 
 
Q2 THE CANON. 
 
 Till, shattered and whitening, 
 'Tis crushed by the shock 
 Of its thunderous charge. 
 
 Hemftied in by the ledges, 
 How fiercely it wedges 
 
 Its terrible path 
 To the jaws of that ruin, 
 Where, ages on ages, 
 
 It gnawed as it gnaws. 
 And raged as it rages, 
 Incessantly hewing 
 
 A way for its wrath, 
 
 In those terrible jaws. 
 
 'Tis the shallow Nebraska, 
 The limpid Nebraska, 
 Now goaded to frenzy, 
 
 Or drunk with the alee 
 Of some Sibylline fancy 
 
 Of all it may be. 
 Shot down from its level 
 
 Of lifeful repose, 
 A jubilant masquer 
 
THECANON 63 
 
 In carnival madness, 
 And frenzy of gladness, 
 
 In roaring and revel, 
 The foaming Nebraska — 
 The shouting Nebraska, 
 
 Exultingly goes ! 
 
 Ever deeper and deeper, 
 As steeper and steeper 
 
 The sulf>> of their torment 
 Descend like a leaper, 
 
 The waters are piled 
 
 In an eddying mass ; 
 And the foam of their ferment ' 
 
 Ascends in the pass. 
 As white, o'er the storm-rent 
 Atlantic, the corm'rant 
 
 Goes driftingly wild. 
 
 With a half-timid shiver 
 
 The goat of the ledges 
 
 Peers over their edges, 
 And leaps the loud river ; 
 
 Far up in the blue, 
 
54 THE CANON. 
 
 Flitting by in tlie sky 
 Like a lark to the view, 
 
 Or an animate mote — 
 The jaws of that inner 
 Gulf's watery Gehenna 
 
 Yawn upward so high 
 
 O'er its cavernous throat. 
 
 Adown the abysses 
 
 The swift river pours ; 
 It rustles and hisses, 
 
 It thunders and roars. 
 With changing and ranging, 
 
 Now hither, now thither — 
 Momently sundered 
 
 And tumbled together 
 Torn by a hundred 
 
 Impetuous wills, 
 Baffled and frantic, 
 Amid the oioantic 
 
 Debris of the hills — 
 Rushing and winding ; 
 
 Plunoinor in cataracts, 
 Leaping in fountains — 
 
THEOAJfON. 65 
 
 So tlie mad water acts, 
 Rending and finding 
 
 A path through the mountains. 
 
 'Twas thus the Nebraska, 
 The fettered Nebraska, 
 
 Yet young from the lap 
 Of its Titaness Mother — 
 
 Untortured to grind 
 In the mill of a Tasker 
 As slave to another — 
 
 Nor leaving the sap 
 Of its vigor behind 
 
 In the roseate charms 
 
 Of the Prairie's arms — 
 Was mighty to snap 
 
 Its mountainous bands, 
 
 And out, with a shout. 
 Leap, wild as the clap 
 
 Of the Thunderer's hands ! 
 
 The dark, roaring gap. 
 With its precipice cap. 
 
 Where the river-floods fell 
 
QQ THE CASON. 
 
 In their mutinous wrath, 
 Was the Caiion's Gehenna — • 
 
 Its watery hell ! 
 The smoke of whose torment, 
 
 A nebulous banner — 
 Involved, like a cerement, 
 
 The ruinous dell 
 That plowed its abysses 
 
 Along in the path 
 Of a braver Ulysses 
 
 Than old story hath — 
 The eagle-like soarer, 
 Bold Chief and Explorer, 
 
 Whose foot trod as well 
 Over skied precipices, 
 
 As on the green math 
 Willi his bounding Signora. 
 
RUNNING THE CANON. 57 
 
 II. 
 
 RUNNING THE CANON 
 
 The Hero, imdaimted, 
 
 Turned not on his track ; 
 A duty before him, 
 And way peril-haunted, 
 Far rather would spur him, 
 Than hold a rein o'er him. 
 
 Save guidiiigly slack. 
 The hearts of his chosen. 
 By terror unfrozen, 
 Exultingly panted 
 
 To ride on the back 
 Of that wild foamino- charorer, 
 
 Rioht down through the roar 
 Of the turbulent river — 
 By keel of the voyager 
 
 Ne'er cloven before — 
 By bold Rider never, 
 In gallant endeavor, 
 
 So scourged with the oar. 
 
58 RUNNING THE CANON. 
 
 They launched on a bubble ! 
 
 A spacious, tenacious, 
 Exotical bubble — 
 
 A thread at the helm 
 
 Of that tenuous film — 
 That spun in that trouble 
 
 Of weltering water, 
 As spins, for a little, 
 
 A brain-dizzied otter 
 Ill-struck by the hunter — 
 Then, borne to the middle, 
 And finding her center. 
 
 She darted ! she flew ! 
 
 With her dexterous crew, 
 Just skimming the wave 
 
 As a rapid sea-mew. 
 And shunning her grave 
 
 In the hollows beneath, 
 Where the splintering jags 
 
 Would have cloven her through, 
 With their terrible teeth ! 
 
 The precipitous crags. 
 In the glimmering blue, 
 
RUNNING THE CA5(0N. gg 
 
 Flew hurriedly back, 
 Like the thunderous rack 
 
 That the hurricanes brew ! 
 And sunlight and shadow — 
 As ov^er the meadow 
 
 When Taurus is nigh — 
 With smiling and weeping 
 Unstable and fickle — 
 
 Went troopingly by. 
 
 But more of terrific 
 
 And ruinous power 
 Rode, deaf ningiy sweeping, 
 
 Along with that shower. 
 As a cold, clammy trickle 
 Dropped down from petrific 
 
 Rock-cumuli o'er them ! 
 While round them, and under, 
 
 Above, and before them. 
 One Maelstrom of thunder 
 
 Involved them, and bore them ; 
 With rapid reef-whit'ning, 
 
 That flashed, intermitting. 
 
70 EUNEING THE GASCON. 
 
 The sim-splendors flitting, 
 Shot by for their lightning ! 
 
 With singing and shouting 
 
 Unheard in the roar, 
 Nor fearing nor doubting 
 
 The perils before, 
 They flew through the hollow 
 
 Reverberant caves, 
 As a tiny clifi'-swallow 
 
 Alone with the waves. 
 
 From the bow of the falls 
 
 Ijike an arrow they leapt, 
 And around in the sling 
 
 Of the vortices swept, 
 Were hurled to the walls, 
 
 With a perilous fling, 
 Like the pebble that leveled 
 
 The Anakim king ; 
 But gracefully shunning 
 
 The shock, in a breath. 
 They flew where the stunning, 
 
RUNNING THE CAJJON. 71 
 
 White cataracts reveled ; 
 Exultingly running 
 
 Their gauntlet of death ! 
 
 So daring and well, 
 With his chosen companions, 
 Our braver Ulysses 
 Went down the abysses 
 The Phlegethon-flood 
 
 Of that watery hell ; 
 Went down through the caiion's 
 
 Gehenna of waves, 
 Till they stood where the blood 
 
 Of immaculate Braves 
 Had thrilled with a shiver 
 To see the mad river, 
 
 With a death-gurgled note 
 Sucked down through the teeth 
 Of the black jaws beneath, 
 
 To the fathomless throat 
 Of impassable caves. 
 
 O ! the wilds and abysms, 
 Rough danger and toil, 
 
72 EUNIfING THE CAJJON. 
 
 Are the nurture and soil 
 Of sublime Heroisms ! 
 And better than war is, 
 
 And better than peace, 
 Are the perilous forays 
 
 'Gainst desert and river, 
 
 And stem wilderness ; 
 Thev open the door-ways 
 
 Of future endeavor, 
 And challenge the Darkness, 
 Close-lipped in its starkness. 
 
 To stand and deliver ! 
 
THE STA^'D AT HATVK'S PEAK. 
 
 « 'TwAs nobly done !" Aye, nobly done ! 
 
 And worthy of the old renown 
 Of Platasa and of iNIarathon — 
 
 To timg the daring gauntlet down,' 
 To the false leader of a baud 
 
 By lying panders stung too well 
 To lierce resentments, in a land 
 
 As fair as heaven and false as hell. 
 
 He came in peace, for worthy ends. 
 To give the secrets of that clime 
 
 To star-eyed Science, still who lends 
 The soui new wings for flights sublime ; 
 
 i 
 
74 THE STAND AT HAWK'S PEAK. 
 
 His weapons were that magic reed* 
 
 Which plucks the planets from the sky, 
 
 The prisoned Arielf who leads 
 
 The voyager where no path is nigh ; 
 
 The wizard's balance,;}: fine and thin. 
 
 That weighs the unfathomable air, 
 And that pale child§ of Hermes' kin, 
 
 Whose pulses the long throbs declare 
 Of the great fire-heart of the world ; 
 
 With more of strange and weird design, 
 Whereby the mysteries are unfurled 
 
 That sleep, thin-veiled, in nature's shrine. 
 
 Around him, hardy as the hills. 
 
 His triple score of gallant men, 
 Throush fire and frost and countless ills, 
 
 In savage haunt, or lonely glen, 
 With toil, and chase, and rifle-shot. 
 
 Kept famine and fierce foes at bay ; 
 Ha ! toy with hungry wolves, but not 
 
 Provoke the wrath of such as they ! 
 
 * Telescope, t Compass. % Barometer. § Thermometer. 
 
THE STANB AT HAWK'S PEAK. 75 
 
 Through every heart, their Leader's heart 
 
 Beat like a pulse of molten steel ; 
 Not sooner would their proud steeds dart 
 
 From shaken rein and roweled heel, 
 Than these, on Peril's wildest charge, 
 
 At his low word, or silent sisn ; 
 His brain superb, and spirit large, 
 
 Shone out confest, in storm and shine. 
 
 He came in peace, with welcome given, 
 
 To read the wonders of that land, 
 Her flowers and floods, and chasms riven 
 
 Through bald sierras, wild and grand. 
 But Treachery, choking back her words, 
 
 Roused the red Indian's eyeless w^ath, 
 And arming all her mongrel hordes. 
 
 Shook chains and death across his path ' 
 
 Ah, little did the traitor chief 
 
 Who stirred that Mountain Spirit, deem 
 That, ere the lengthening days grew brief, 
 
 'T would haunt him like an evil dream ! 
 And little could he guess how well 
 
 The hand that plucked his golden flowers, 
 
75 THE STAND AT HAWK'S PEAK. 
 
 Could hurl defiance down the dell, 
 On all his congregated powers. 
 
 There, on the peak " del Gabellan," 
 
 The Hero's oaken rampart rose, 
 Above the towers of San Juan 
 
 Where thronged the legions of his foes. 
 There first the sunrise Eagle flew, 
 
 Gold-gleaming, o'er the Land of Gold, 
 Full in that mustering army's view. 
 
 And cowered their numbers manifold. 
 
 As some gaunt wolf, that on his prey 
 
 Descending with an eager dash, 
 Finds there the Shepherd's dog at bay, 
 
 And sees the white teeth foam and gnash, 
 Reels back, and crouching, circles far, 
 
 Blood-snufiing, and at last slinks ofl' — 
 So came, so quailed Don Castro's war. 
 
 Before that banner's flouting scofl"! 
 
 'Twas nobly done ! against a host 
 
 To hurl their challenge down the hills. 
 
 Free hearts, all round them to the coast. 
 Leapt jubiliint, with prescient thrills ; 
 
THE STAND AT HAWK'S PEAK. 77 
 
 Far flashed the sign to distant lands. 
 
 Atlantic cheered it with a roar ; 
 And glad Pacific clapped her hands, 
 
 To hail the coming conqueror ! 
 
 Once more roll out thy signal sheet 
 
 For Freedom, on her eminent hight! 
 Our hearts leap up with fiery beat 
 
 To join thee in the moral fight. 
 The Prairie wolf shall cower away 
 
 To his swamp lair, thenceforth his grave, 
 And rescued Kansas ch6er the day 
 
 That saw thy conquering banner wave. 
 
A NIGHT BY LAKE TLAMATH. 
 
 Whex snows have fled from the breath of Spring, 
 
 And the rushing floods leap swollen on — 
 As a jewel set in a mountain ring, 
 
 On the hand of the Giant Oregon — 
 Or a star in the dusky night of pines, 
 That bright in the sombre foliage shines — 
 Or a lover's eye that clear, between 
 Dark lash and heavy brow, is seen — 
 
 The Tlamath Lake lies beautiful, 
 In the heart of its mighty hills and woods. 
 
 Glassing them well in its waveless lull. 
 Or making the mountains, like their floods, 
 
 To leap and quiver, in fields below, 
 
A NIGHT BY LAKE TLAMATH. 79 
 
 When its mirror moves with a waving flow, 
 As odorous winds from the forest blow. 
 
 But when the red autumnal sun 
 Rolls over the mountains in a veil 
 Of purpling mist, that seems to trail 
 On the piney slope of each mighty sheaf 
 In that great Harvest Field begun 
 
 Among the hills ; when a mellow^ wail— 
 As of young love's delicious grief. 
 
 Or the harp of sorrow, struck with one 
 Prelusive note — begins to run 
 Through the red arcades of pine, before 
 The harsher blasts of the winter pour— 
 The waves that roll on the Tlamath Lake 
 Are emerald billows of flowing grass ; 
 The stag of the hills may come to slake 
 His thirst in the river, whose waters break 
 
 The green expanse, with their fluid glass, 
 But the smoke of the Indian's domed tent 
 
 Goes up from the smooth savannah's breast, 
 As over its sheet of waters went 
 
 The morning mist, when June had kissed 
 Their ripples awake with her sweet Southwest. 
 
80 A NIGHT BY LAKE TLAMATH. 
 
 Lake Tlamath lav like a bridge of lislit, 
 
 That spanned a fathomless gulf below, 
 When the May Moon on its weltering night 
 
 Dissolved, in a silver overflow. 
 And adown the pines in flakes of white 
 
 On the tents of the voyageurs shook its snow. 
 No paddle disturbed the silent wave ; 
 
 No sound was out in the silent air, 
 Save only the whispering tongues that gave 
 
 A weird, low murmur, everywhere, 
 A secret that no soul dirines — 
 The mystery of the midnight pines ! 
 And save withal the flames' low mutter. 
 
 That seemed as if in vain they strove 
 Unutterable things to utter, 
 
 Of the deeps below and the heavens above. 
 
 The Indian of the Tlamath Lake 
 
 Is fierce as savage foe may be. 
 Remorseless as the wolves that break 
 The corral's hedge, for their famine's sake. 
 When the herdsman, standing broad awake, 
 
 And the rifle's leveled bead, they see — . 
 And treacherous as the wily cat — 
 
A NIGHT BY LAKE TLAMATH. Q} 
 
 That spotless Tiger of the West, 
 So smooth in her bhick and shining vest, 
 So still, through the long reeds gliding flat, 
 Till she darts on her helpless victim's breast ! 
 
 His arrows are tipped with English steel, 
 Barbed and keen, on a feathered shaft — 
 And bound to his wrist, by its polished haft, 
 
 Is an English half-axe huno- to deal 
 The nearer blow, when, hand to hand 
 And foot to foot, the foemen stand 
 
 In the deadly last appeal. 
 
 But the Tlamath's trail is far away 
 
 From their silvery lake and mountain pines, 
 To the hostile south in a fierce foray. 
 Or northward with their spears, 
 Watchincr the shoals where the salmon shines 
 By the steep Cascades, that whiten the line 
 ^Of their nursing hills, like banners waved 
 From feudal towers, for a people saved, 
 In the olden lands and years. 
 
 Thus silence reigned in the weary camp, 
 
 Unjarred by the slow and measured tramp 
 
 4* 
 
82 A NIGHT BY LAKE TLAMATH. 
 
 Of the wakeful sentinel ; 
 For" the voyageurs all were folded deep, 
 In the downy bosom of toil-won sleep, 
 
 And the soldiers slumbered well. 
 
 Fleet couriers from the sunrise land, 
 
 They had brought to the Chief of the mountain 
 
 band. 
 Over trackless wilds of steep and glen, 
 Through the deadly haunts of savage men, 
 Sweet words of Home ; how doubly sweet 
 
 In the depths of an utter solitude, 
 Where the stealthy glide of the Indian's feet, 
 Is the only human tread they meet, 
 
 And that is blood-imbrued. 
 And came withal a whispered call 
 
 To turn In in i)ack, for a dav of need — 
 To the golden south, where his gauntlet fell 
 At Castro's coward foot so well — 
 
 With a whip in the hand of his eager band 
 To scourge the wretch for his miscreant deed, 
 
 When the Hour should strike its bell ; 
 And sooth, his steed would make good speed 
 
 With that buoyant hope in sell. 
 
A NIGHT BY LxlKE TLAMATH. QS 
 
 Not yet the Leader gave his hand 
 
 To the beckoning hand of sweet Reposej 
 With her dreams of home in a sunny land, 
 
 Beyond the whoop of savage foes. 
 With a slow and cautious tread, he went, 
 
 Between the camp-fires and the dark, 
 Where the flickering flames, far outward, sent 
 The huge pine shadows, reeling and bent, 
 
 Like wrestling giants, grim and stark ; 
 And he saw them leap from tent to tent, 
 
 With their ghostly arms flung up in air, 
 As if their frenzied play were meant 
 
 To warn him back from a peril there, 
 Or so to find some silent vent 
 
 For a great and dumb despair. 
 
 All round the Camp his ear and eye 
 
 Caught every motion, and every sound ; 
 The whispering flames, and the solemn sigh 
 Of the pine-tops, where the winds went by 
 
 In their everlasting round ; 
 The creeping stir of the bristling leaves 
 Where a breath would dance their quivery sheaves. 
 The moan of the waters that came to break 
 
to^'J 
 
 84 A NIGHT BY LAKE TLAMATH. 
 
 On the reedy marge of the Mooned Lake, 
 And a low, faint murmur, everywhere. 
 
 From the deeps of pine to the Tlamath's verge 
 As if the spirits who hovered there, 
 Were singing, to a love-lorn air. 
 
 The prelude of a solemn dirge ! 
 
 Such fancies are feeble to awe the brave ; 
 
 He heeds no murmur of wood or wive 
 
 Who trembles not at a war-whoop's yell — 
 
 The silence of the untrodden wild, 
 
 And the trust of nature's simple child — 
 
 The steed, quick-eared — who is prompt to tell 
 The lurking of foes — said, " All is well !" 
 
 Calm in assurance the Leader went 
 And sat at the door of his open tent, 
 
 In the light of the whispering flames ; ■ 
 And over the page in silence bent. 
 
 That bore his treasured Names — 
 And whose simple words had power to roll 
 
 The broad expanse, with its mountain chains, 
 
 And deserts and woods and endless plains. 
 Together, like their pictured scroll. 
 
A NIGHT BY LAKE TLAMATH. §5 
 
 Bringing the utmost zones to meet 
 In a kiss of unity long and sweet. 
 
 What waking visions softly came 
 Between him and the mystic flame, 
 That changed the deeps of the forest gloom, 
 To a twilight nook in a curtained room, 
 The heavy breaths of his sleeping band 
 
 To the ripples of Childhood's sv\^eet repose — 
 The soft wind's touch to a gentle liand, 
 On his forehead pressed, in a far-off land, 
 
 And its sound to a music he only knows — 
 While over his head the holy stars, 
 Looking down through the pine trees' moving bars, 
 
 Became sucli eyes ! Ah me ! to guess 
 Were to touch too near the sacred veil ; 
 
 Or how, with a growing vividness. 
 The visions shone as the fires grew pale, 
 
 Stealing away into dreams of sleep, 
 
 Tile same, but ever more clear and deep ; 
 Till camp, and mountain, and Tlamath vale, 
 
 Were things involved in a distant clime, 
 
 And the purple mist of a vanished time. 
 
'g 
 
 86 A NIGHT BY LAKE TLAMATH. 
 
 Hark ! was it not a falling blow 
 
 111 the dusky verge of the sleeping camp 1 
 Look ! are the^/ only the shadows, that go 
 Along the pine-bolls, crouching low, 
 
 In the pale fire's dying lamp ? 
 And that the moan of the breeze ? Ah, no ! 
 That stifled moan is a dying groan. 
 
 Where the hand of the traitors fell ! 
 " To your rifles ! ho ! 'tis the savage foe !" 
 To their feet they sprang, and the forest ranj 
 
 With a long unearthly yell, 
 And the sudden twang of the deadly bow — 
 
 And the rifle's crack, quick answering back, 
 That laid the foremost Tlamath low ! 
 
 A moment now, for death or life, 
 
 The pine-woods blazed with the quick, hot h^trifc 
 
 Of barbed arrow and whizzinjj ball : 
 The Delawares plied the scalping-knife 
 
 Wherever a foe might fall, 
 And the Tlamath's scalp was whirled on high, 
 With a leap, and a fierce exulting cry. 
 And such a glare in the burning eye. 
 
 As looks but to appall ! 
 
A NIGHT BY LAKE TLAMATH. g? 
 
 The Tlamaths gave one parting yell, 
 
 One arrowy shower, and fled. 
 And left behind them, where he fell, j. 
 
 Their boldest warrior, dead — 
 A royal chieftain, strong and yonng. 
 
 Whose polished arrows, and plumage red, 
 And cap with glittering jewels strung, 
 
 Bespoke the flower of their savage band, 
 
 Of the subtlest brain, and the firmest hand, 
 A warrior proud and dread. 
 Alas ! too well in the silent dark 
 The red axe struck to its sleeping mark ; 
 
 Young Basil the gallant, the loved and fair — 
 A sinewy Sioux swift and stark, 
 
 And a bold broad-breasted Delaware — 
 
 Lay bleeding and warm, but lifeless there, 
 But dear to their souls was the red cup poured 
 With another dawn, on the Tlamath horde, 
 When the hungry fire, and the rifle's shot, 
 liapped up their homes to a blackened spot, 
 And mowed their swarms like the falling srain. 
 When the reapers bow to the harvest plain — 
 Till their treacherous power, with their warriors 
 
 F<dl shattered and was not. [slain. 
 
BASIL LAJEUNESSE. 
 
 A THRENODY. 
 
 By the beautiful Lake Tlamath 
 Sleeps Basil Lajeimess^, 
 
 With his arms upon his bosom, 
 And his mantle on his face. 
 
 The Pines' aeolian murmur 
 Is over him forever, 
 
 And a moaning, moaning, moaning, 
 A melancholy moaning, 
 Like a widow's lone intoning. 
 
 Joins, from the muffled motion 
 Of the darklv-rollinu- river. 
 
 o 
 
 By the beautiful Lake Tlamath 
 Sleeps Basil Lajeunesse ; 
 
BASIL LAJEUNESSE. QO 
 
 He has fought the good life-battle, 
 
 He has run the manly race. 
 We mourned him like a brother, 
 
 For we knew him but to love him ; 
 And the dripping, dripping, dripping, 
 
 The musical, low dripping 
 
 Of the dew-drops, was in keeping 
 With the tears that, in our silence, 
 
 Shed we, womanly, above him. 
 
 By the beautiful Lake Tlamath 
 
 Sleeps Basil Lajeunesse, 
 The young, the swift, the beautiful. 
 
 With every manly grace ; 
 The virgins of Canadia, 
 
 Far, far away shall mourn him ; 
 And the vvailino- wailing, wailinff. 
 
 The weary west-wind's wailing. 
 
 Will waft them one unfailing 
 
 % 
 
 Memorial, low monody. 
 
 From the bed where we have borne him. 
 
 By the beautiful Lake Tlamath 
 Sleeps Basil Lajeunesse, 
 
90 BASIL LAJEUNESSE. 
 
 But not long shall sleep forgotten 
 
 In a solitary place ! 
 The Future's fair-haired Virgins, 
 
 Along that moon-lit river, 
 In a soothing, soothing, soothing. 
 
 Soft threnode, spirit-soothing, 
 
 The ruffled night air smoothino 
 With the beautiful Lake Tlamath 
 
 Shall weave his name forever ! 
 
DEFEAT OF WAH-L AH-WAH-LAHS. 
 
 " Vexgeance on the white marauders, 
 
 Vengeance on their gathered host, 
 Who are grasping all our borders, 
 
 From the mountains to the coast. 
 They have robbed us, they have slain us, 
 But their Law shall never chain us, — 
 
 For the red-tongued scalping-knife 
 Shall declare the wrongs we bear, 
 
 In exterminating strife. 
 Rouse our overwhehnincj numbers ! 
 
 Blood for blood, and life for life ! 
 Strike their war-men in their slumbers, 
 
 Fire the home, and brain the wife !" 
 
92 DEFEAT OF W AII-LAII- W AII-L AIIS. 
 
 Yelled the savage Wah-lah-wah-lahs, 
 With a peal that rent the sky, 
 
 Like the terrible " il-Allahs" 
 Of the Moslem's charging cry. 
 
 All the vale of Sacramento 
 
 Shuddered at the vengeful yell ; 
 Ever clearer, louder, nearer. 
 
 Clearer, louder, more terrific, 
 On the scattered Homes it fell. 
 
 Till the snowy-peaked Sierra, 
 Thousand-echoed, caught the terror, 
 And her wrath-white lips magnific 
 
 Flung it to the broad Pacific, 
 With an ever-deepening swell. 
 
 Followers of the Eagle Banner ! 
 
 Conquerors of the *' Golden Gate !" 
 Periled life, and periled honor. 
 
 In a swirl of refluent fate. 
 
 North and south, upon you wait ! 
 Rebel Dons at Santa Barbara 
 
 Snatch the loosened reins of State ; 
 While the angered northern savage, 
 
DEFEAT OF W AH-LAH-WAH-LAHS. 93 
 
 Eager now to burn and ravage, 
 In your perils grown elate, 
 For the fatal moment waits, 
 When but blood his fury sates. 
 
 Where is now the dauntless Leader 
 
 Of the never-daunted clan ? 
 He who on the white Nevada — 
 
 On the peak " del Gabellan"— 
 
 Hung before his narrow van 
 
 Freedom's meteor flag again, 
 Threatful with its bloody bars, 
 Glaring with defiant stars 
 
 On the treacherous Mexican ? 
 
 Where is now the " Iron Man" 
 With his Braves who never blanch. 
 
 Who, in spite of twanging bow, 
 
 Lance's hiss, and axe's blow, 
 Rode that ride at Redding's Ranch, 
 
 On a forest of the foe ? 
 
 Summoning his bold Battalion, 
 He has turned to tame Rebellion 
 On the hills of iSunta Barbara, — 
 
94 DEFEAT OF W AII-L AH - W AH-L AH3, 
 
 Santa Barbara won and lost, 
 Where their mettle soon was tried, 
 Fiercely, at the next Yule-tide, 
 As the storm in sleety horror 
 Wrapt the shuddering Sierra, 
 
 While the dauntless hero cross'd. 
 With their Leader, side by side, 
 They, in valor^s hardy pride. 
 
 Charged the Elemental Host, 
 Thouirh a hundred horses died 
 
 By the arrows of the Frost! 
 
 Needs the land such mettle now, 
 For a quick and deadly blow 
 
 In the Sacramento's valley. 
 Where the savage Wah-lah-wah-lahs 
 
 To the dance of vengeance rally 
 Like the heroes in Valhalla's 
 
 Wassail wild, from ghastly bowls 
 
 Pledjiirio- their infernal " skoals.''^ 
 
 Turn, thou thunder-bolt of war. 
 
 Flash thy liglitriings on the north ; 
 ' Help!" forsaken wives implore, 
 
DEFEAT OF W Aj^L AH-WAH-LAH S. 95 
 
 Old and worn, who fight no more, 
 Babes and virgins near and far, 
 Call thy conquering valor forth. 
 
 Eager for the fearful fray, 
 
 Round the Leader flocked his band, 
 
 Fiery heart and iron hand. 
 On their chargers fierce as they. 
 
 Snuffing battle in the gale 
 
 That swept broadly down the vale, 
 Seemed, in equal ardor fit, 
 Horse and Rider champed the bit, 
 
 As impatient of delay. 
 
 But the Chieftain, with the lifting 
 
 Of his right hand, waved away 
 All the longing Rangers, thronging. 
 
 Panting for the savage fray. 
 
 " Not to-day ! not to-day ! 
 I have need of picked companions 
 
 For my conquerless array ; 
 Ye who ran the roaring canons. 
 
 Making hardihood a play. 
 
 Well can do what valor may ; 
 
96 DEFEAT OF WAH-LAII-W AlI-LAHS. 
 
 But a courage more divine 
 
 Must be mine, if Heaven incline 
 In my perilous path to shine. 
 
 " Under that great Eye who sees us, 
 I must go, and you must stay ; 
 
 Let your fiery valor burn, 
 
 It shall blaze, at my return, 
 
 On the ramparts of Don Jesus, 
 And the rebel south affray. 
 
 Now with these my chosen Three, 
 
 I go forth to victory, 
 
 Or what fate the Power decrees us 
 Whom to know is to obey." 
 
 Forth they rode, the galhmt Four, 
 
 Rode the Leader with his Three, 
 From the wonder of their fellows, 
 Why they rode, or why no more, 
 
 On so fierce an enemy ; 
 Forth they rode with equal flight 
 
 Till they heard the war-whoop's roar, 
 Saw the war-firos burning briuht. 
 Saw the angry Wah-lah-wuli-lalis 
 
DEFEAT OF W AH-L AH- W AH-L AH S. 97 
 
 Whet their vengeance for the fight ; 
 Heard the cry which filled the hollows 
 
 With far echoes of affright, 
 As the judgment-knells of conscience 
 
 Fill the murderer's dreams by night. 
 
 With a slow and measured tramp, 
 
 Rode the One before the Three, 
 Straight into the stormy camp, 
 
 Roaring round them like a sea ; 
 Straight to where the old War-Sachem 
 
 Swung his axe in savage glee, 
 On imagined scalp-locks clutching, 
 From invisible mothers snatching 
 
 Babes his wrath alone could see. 
 
 In a lull of sudden wonder — 
 Hush of that mid-volleyed thunder. 
 Which might make the terror grander, 
 Thus outspake the bold Commander : 
 
 " I have heard the Avrongs you suffer, 
 
 Heard the cry of your distress ; 
 
 Here witk open hands I proffei* 
 
 5 
 
98 DEFEAT OF W AH-L AH- W AH-LAHS. 
 
 Pledge and prop.iise of redress. 
 I have steeds as fleet as arrows, 
 
 And unerring as the bow — 
 I will bring them when the sparrows 
 
 Sing for the retreating snow ; 
 Though for many lingering morrows 
 
 Southward down the coast I go. 
 Chase the game along the narrows, 
 
 Elk and deer and bufialo : 
 Call your kinsfolk, your companions, 
 
 To the better way ye learn ; 
 Spear the salmon in the canons — 
 Hunt and fish, and spare the lives 
 Of our little ones and wives — 
 
 Live in peace till I return : 
 And this warrior by my side 
 "With your gallant Braves may ride, 
 Holding up our Banner's pride. 
 
 That before your path shall burn, 
 An inviolate guard and guide. 
 
 He were rash who dared to spurn !" 
 
 Peace was on the Leader's brow, 
 And Persuasion on his tongue ; 
 
DEFEAT OF WAH-LAH- W AII-LAHS. 
 
 Honor sealed his simple vow, 
 Faith on every accent hung. 
 
 From his lip whose smile was balm. 
 From his eye whose glance was law, 
 
 Round him grew a ring of calm, 
 Round him grew a ring of awe ; 
 
 For his words were words of truth, 
 And his look was silent Power : 
 
 Hoary chief and fiery youth, 
 
 Yielding all the centered weight 
 Of their hoarded wrath and hate. 
 To an action calm and great, 
 Were the conquest of that hour. 
 
 " Take," he said, " my bearded Brave, 
 Pledge my foot will never lag 
 
 In the promises I gave ; 
 
 Take the white man's starry Flag, 
 
 For where'er its splendors wave 
 O'er your march, by dell and crag, 
 
 Moves the great shield of our Law ; 
 
 And the foe that strikes that banner 
 
 Strikes me, and the jealous honor 
 Of a broad Land, stretching far 
 Both her arms, of Peace and War !" 
 
 99 
 
100 DEFEAT OF W AH-LAH-WAH-LAHS. 
 
 Ceased the war-cry of the savage, 
 Ceased the will to burn and ravage, 
 
 And the valleys slept again. 
 Backward rode the gallant Three, 
 
 Rode the Leader and his Twain, 
 From a bloodless victory, 
 
 From a field without its slain ; 
 And the boldest Wah-lah-wah-lahs 
 
 Rode to battle in his train. 
 
THE RIDE OF ONE HUNDRED. 
 
 " Steeds ! steeds for my Riders ! the fleetest and 
 best! 
 
 My Country demands, and there's death in delay ! 
 Unbar your corral to a People's behest, 
 
 And lavish your treasures to speed us away ! 
 The stars of my banner must blaze in the rout 
 
 Of Castro, the hater, the coward, and slave ! 
 And its stripes like a manifold scourge shall flout 
 
 That insolent traitor death-hunting the brave ! 
 
 " He is trailing his hounds to the deadly attack 
 On the Guards of Los Angel os, sturdy at\a few, 
 
 But a week this day will I harry him back 
 
 With the shattered remains of his howlino- crew." 
 
102 THE EIDE OF ONE HUNDEED. 
 
 The Ranch of Valleyo was buried in sleep, 
 
 But it roused at the call of that dark Mountaineer, 
 
 Who had marshaled his band for a hurricane-sweep 
 Through the lines of Rebellion, flank, center, 
 and rear ! 
 
 " Two hundred leagues ! and a savage no Road 
 
 Over bleak sierra and quaking morass ! 
 Through gulches untamed by a human abode. 
 
 And the wild ' el Rincovis' weltering pass ! 
 It can not be done !" and Valleyo's head 
 
 Shook a creditless " No" in the face of the chief. 
 " But it must ! and it shall be !" the warrior said, 
 
 " My Land is my pledge, and the moment is 
 brief!" 
 
 Three hundred steods, from Valleyo's Ranch, 
 
 Went down the Sonoma together that night, 
 With the headlong plunge of an avalanche. 
 
 That still in descending redoubles its might ! 
 Throuoh the hills and the hollows the echoes were 
 waked. 
 
 With a charging shout of the daring and free — 
 Till down Yeiba Buena her cottages quaked 
 
 In a prescient throb of her magic To Be. 
 
THE BIDE OF ONE HUNDEED. 103 
 
 In a snow-flight tinged with a raining of red, 
 The galloping chargers were strung to their 
 speed ; 
 For the mouths that were foaming, and flanks that 
 bled, 
 Showered thus in the path of each emulous 
 
 steed ! 
 The Riders leapt down from the beast over-spent 
 To their riderless runners that scoured o'er the 
 plain ; 
 And their pathway was marked, far along, as they 
 went, 
 By the wild-dogs feeding on fallen and slain ! 
 
 » 
 No needless delay for imperative need, 
 
 One nap, and a snatch, and away to their Ride ! 
 With their swarthy Fremont dashing on in the 
 lead, 
 And his wiry Kit Carson almost at his side. 
 No sound on their charge but the storming of hoofs. 
 And the snort of the steeds as they darted and flew, 
 Or a shout from the ridges hurled down to the roofs. 
 Like a voice from the clouds or a bolt from the 
 blue ! 
 
104 THE EIDE or ONE HUNDEED. 
 
 Through startled San Pablo, through hushed Mon- 
 terey ; 
 
 Through far-scattered hamlets, o'er hedge-row 
 and fosse ! 
 The lone watcher, roused by the stormy affray, 
 
 Just muttered a curse, with the sign of the cross ! 
 The spectres that ride on the Brocken by night, 
 
 Not wilder nor fleeter had seemed to their terror. 
 Than these, in their wordless and weariless flight, 
 
 Over ruinous rifts, and the jagged Sierra ! 
 
 The dark-flooded Rio rolled down in their path ; 
 
 They faltered one leap, at its ruinous roar ; 
 " On ! on through the torrent ! we'll buflet its 
 wrath !" 
 And the Leader dashed on through the whirl to 
 the shore ! 
 Swept down like the leaves of the forest, they 
 went, 
 And the dark Sacrificios whitened with spray, 
 As they struggled and plunged in the deadly de- 
 scent, 
 Till all but the rearmost rode out and away ! 
 
THE EIDE OF ON^ HUNDEED. IQ^ 
 
 " The Dead to their Maker ! the Quick to the 
 Charge ! 
 The hiohts of the Puebla are looming in sioht : 
 There wavers the Banner of Stars, on their marge ! 
 Now, plunge in the Battle ! and God for the 
 Right!" 
 Oh ! what a wild yell, like the funeral knell 
 
 Of rampant Rebellion, went up with that cry ! 
 As full on the rear of the Traitor they fell, 
 
 Like a thunder-bolt launched from a shadowless 
 sky! 
 
 " Fremont to the rescue ! Ho, rally once more ! 
 
 He has come with his Riders ! the dark Moun- 
 taineer !" 
 The garrison's volley rang out with a roar. 
 
 In reply to the thunders that rose on the rear ! 
 Star flashing to star, from their flags, o'er the foe, 
 
 Sent a cheer to the Braves, but a basilisk glare 
 On the terrified legions dispersed at a blow, 
 
 And whelmed by the Riders in final despair ; 
 
 For the Lancers of Castro went down in that storm, 
 
 Like reeds of the fen in a tempest of fire, 
 
 5* 
 
106 THE RIDE OF ONE HUNDRED. 
 
 Where the fierce Wah-lah-wah-lah's ungarmented 
 form 
 Rode on, like a demon of doom, in his ire ; 
 And the swart Mountaineers with their Chief in 
 thfe van, 
 Wheeled in, with a gallop, and swept them away ! 
 So rode The One Hundred, led on by The Man, 
 And the arm of Rebellion was broken that day. 
 
 Again to the rescue ! undaunted Fremont ! 
 
 The hell-hounds of treachery, snuffing for blood. 
 Are loosed on the Man-child at Liberty's font — 
 
 Young Kansas the free, trampled down by their 
 brood ; 
 Now thunder (he war-cry, as then it was thundered, 
 
 Charge home on Oppression ! and God for the 
 Right! 
 Our Millions will ride in the path of the Hundred, 
 
 And bloodless, or bleeding, win all in the fight ! 
 
CONQUEST ENDED 
 
 BY THE FATE OF DOK JESUS PICO. 
 
 December's glowing sun looked down 
 On verdant field and leafy oak, 
 
 San Luis' towers, and roofs of brown, 
 And the swift victor's camp-fire smoke. 
 
 Before its golden beams illume 
 
 The eastern mountains' sea-ward wall, 
 The captive foe must meet his doom. 
 
 From many a deadly rifle-ball ! 
 
 No blanching on his manly cheeks. 
 No quailing in his dauntless eye ; 
 
 Firm as his own Nevada's peaks. 
 The Insurgent Chieftain waitWo die. 
 
■[08 CONQUEST ENDED. 
 
 To die a soldier's death of shame. 
 
 'J 
 
 Twice conquered by a single hand, 
 And wearing on his mountain name 
 The fire-mark of Dishonor's brand. 
 
 Wrapt in his " old Castilian pride," 
 He begged no boon of lingering life ; 
 
 If for his Country's love he died, 
 
 Why kneel to live for Home and Wife ? 
 
 Home, Mother, AVife, and dark-eyed Girls, 
 Dear to the Brave, and doubly dear 
 
 When o'er him Death's white breaker curls- 
 Wrung out no weak memorial tear. 
 
 A glitter on the snowy peaks, 
 
 And on the rifle's readv^ line, 
 To his calm eye the moment speaks, 
 
 And flashes far its fatal sign. 
 
 Alone in his unguarded tent. 
 
 Watching the Hour's relentless hand. 
 The Victor stood, with forehead bent, 
 
 Lip-parted for xiie last command : 
 
CONQUEST ENDED. X09 
 
 When all the Captive's wealth of Home, 
 Mother and Wife and black-eyed Girls 
 
 Thronoed round him — these with cheeks like foam 
 In the dark splendor of their curls — 
 
 That with her pale majestic face 
 
 Crowned well by smooth Madonna hair, 
 
 And clinging in a linked embrace, 
 
 They breathed and looked and wept their prayer. 
 
 " Mercy ! thou merciful and brave ; 
 
 Spare, spare to us our more than life ! 
 The Husband, Son, and Father save, 
 
 To weeping Mother, Child, and W^ife. 
 
 " Perhaps a mother's fading eye 
 
 Watches the west for thy return ; 
 A true wife's prayer ascends on high. 
 
 Tender with thoughts that o'er thee yearn ; 
 
 " Or in an hour that change may bring, 
 
 Far from their fallen father's tomb, 
 Thy children's happy laugh may ring, 
 
 Unconscious of their flying doom ! 
 
IIQ CONQUEST ENDED. 
 
 " God spare them long ! and spare us, thou, 
 The bitter cup they would not drain ; 
 
 And we will hold thee, close as now, 
 
 To hearts where grateful love shall reign." 
 
 Oh, to have seen our Hero then ! 
 
 The great tear trembling in his eye, 
 Not " first" alone, but " best of men !" 
 
 Had been our heart's applauding cry. 
 
 " Guards, lead the Captive to my tent !" 
 
 Calm in the rifle's deadly aim, 
 The Doomed had stood, and proudly went — 
 
 But seeing, trembled as he came. 
 
 " Take from my hand, and with my hand. 
 
 Full pardon, and thy periled life, 
 To be the bulwark of thy land, 
 
 The joy of Mother, Child, and Wife !" 
 
 Thrice conquered, at the Victor's knee 
 
 The strong man bowed, with heaving breast, 
 
 Devoting hand and heart to be 
 The ransom of the far Southwest. 
 
CONQUEST ENDED. HI 
 
 There bowed a People's jealous hate, 
 There breathed a People's loyal vow ; 
 
 And, thronging through the Golden Gate, 
 Our myriads share that conquest now. 
 
 More worth than laurels dripping red, 
 Is Mercy's stainless lily crown ; 
 
 Its odor, round the Brave Man shed. 
 Is sweeter than his old renown. 
 
 Not myriads alone shall bless 
 
 The Hero of the Spotless Shield, 
 
 For now our rousing millions press 
 Around his Banner in the field. 
 
 Like lightning to the embattled wrong. 
 Like sunshine to the poor and weak, 
 
 It calls the dauntless and the strong, 
 It lures the merciful and meek. 
 
 Not myriads alone shall share 
 
 The triumphs of that glorious flag ; 
 
222 CONQUEST ENDED. 
 
 But, from the walls of Slavery's lair, 
 To white Nevada's farthest crag, 
 
 O'er all the land his courage gave 
 To Freedom and the march of man. 
 
 When, unpolluted Jjy a slave, 
 Rolls west her endless caravan, 
 
 May teeming millions find a home, 
 And spread the empire of the free. 
 
 From far Pacific's whitening foam 
 To broad Atlantic's heaving sea I 
 
TO CAPTAIN J. C. FREMONT. 
 
 FEOM THE SPANISH OF DON HEENANDO ffUEEO. 
 [Lo8 Angelo8, Feb., 1847.] 
 
 Brave Foe ! whose conquering sword is wreathed 
 
 With olive, never stained by wrong ; 
 Whose spirit, in thy warriors breathed, 
 
 Imparts thy courage high and strong, 
 I crown thee generous as brave, 
 
 Proud peer of all the great and free, 
 And bless defeat itself which gave 
 
 Our land, our laws, our all to thee ! 
 
 From thee, as midnight from the sun, 
 Shrank Castro, anarchy, and chains ! 
 
X14 TO CAPTAIN J. C. FEEMONT. 
 
 Thy crimeless victories, bravely won, 
 Gave freedom to our scouroeJ domains. 
 
 Law followed in thy glorious track. 
 And Mercy flew by Valor's side ; 
 
 Ah, Jesu ! that this land should lack 
 What rights a noble Foe supplied ! 
 
 A Foe no more ! with proffered hand, 
 
 And grateful heart, we hail thee Friend ! 
 Magnanimous to a fallen Land, 
 
 Whose old Castilian pride may bend 
 To a great Heart, but sooner dies 
 
 Than blanch at death — I crown thee Great, 
 In action strong, in council wise. 
 
 True savior of a totterincr State ! 
 
 a 
 
 I see the ancient fire renewed 
 
 In this last age of coward men ; 
 Texeda's dauntless heart, endued 
 
 With stubborn virtue, lives again ; 
 Manaya's fiery will in war. 
 
 Puts lightning in thy every blow ; 
 The Western World's young Campedor, 
 
 Thy very presence quells the foe ! 
 
TO CAPTAIN J. G. FREMONT. H^ 
 
 No other hand could guide so well 
 
 Your sunrise Eagle on our hills : 
 Our jealous hate might ne'er repel, 
 
 But would have stunor, with clinoino- ills. 
 The victor, who in triumph's flush 
 
 Knew not so grandly to forbear — 
 For the Guerilla's steel can blush. 
 
 But not his cheek, at deeds we dare ! 
 
 Tracked by the glare of burning homes. 
 
 By childhood's curse and woman's wail, 
 ' Tis thus the heartless conqueror comes, 
 
 Whose path is one red murder-trail ! 
 But white hands down thy swifL career 
 
 The dark-eyed signoritas wave, 
 And matrons join the deepening cheer 
 
 That hails tliBe Merciful as Brave ! 
 
FAREWELL TO "SACRAMENTO." 
 
 Hurrah ! and away ! My Steed, good-bye ! 
 
 Gray Sacramento, I glory to see 
 Thy smoking mane and thy blazing eye, 
 
 And thy broad breast swelling to be free ! 
 Almost it seems that a human soul, 
 With its lofty essence of self-control, 
 
 And that divine disdain to be 
 The creature of any, which marks the goal 
 
 Of a higher nature won. 
 Were speakmg now, in thy glorious mien. 
 And making the fire of thine eye more keen. 
 As I shout to cheer thee on ! 
 
 Rushing away to the reinless herd, 
 
 Thou hast cleared the prairie, fleet as a bird, 
 
FAREWELL TO "SACRAMENTO." 117 
 
 With a joyous prance for thy wordless glee, 
 And a backward glance of pride for me, 
 And another, as proud, for the jealous crowd, 
 Sent over the left exultingly back, 
 .With a challenge to come if they will, on a 
 track 
 That runs like a flash through the tempest's 
 rack — 
 Thyself the flash of thy own dust-cloud ! 
 
 Away with thy fellows, who hail thee in pride, 
 I see thee dashing the laggards aside. 
 As a steamship dashes the billowy tide, 
 For thy tameless purpose is still to lead ! 
 Hurrah ! the hunter who hopes to ride 
 With a bit for thee, my gallant Steed, 
 Should mount the Eagle for better speed, 
 With a shooting star for his only guide, 
 And train his nimble hand to throw • 
 
 The lightning-streak for his red lasso ! 
 
 Ila ! ha ! I laugh with thy victor laugh ! 
 And see with thee, from that burning eye, 
 The hills and the woods go drifting by, 
 
118 FAREWELL TO " S A CE AMENT O. » 
 
 Like clouds of hurricane-winnowed chaff! 
 As if the world were around thee hurled — 
 That eye the center, from which it whirled, 
 
 And its bicker thy jubilant laugh. 
 
 Thou hast served me well, and T speed thee well, 
 
 My gallant Steed, forever free ! 
 Leaping the cliffs like a light gazelle, 
 And far out-flying the very yell 
 Of the savage hordes, whose arrows fell 
 
 In a pattering hail on our smoking trail, 
 
 Whole roods behind thy meteor tail, 
 And wasted there, on the desert air, 
 
 The vengeance meant for me. 
 
 Thou hast borne me over the herbless waste, 
 With a hardy mettle and eager haste. 
 That left swift Famine, thin and pale, 
 Drifting astern on the panting gale ! 
 
 Little to thee, as a stumbling-block, 
 
 Was fallen tree or fallen rock ; 
 One bound went clear, over rock and tree ! 
 
 The treacherous cleft was spanned and left, 
 With a graceful daring, proud to see ; 
 
FAREWELL TO « S ACE AMENTO." ng 
 
 The roaring floods thou hast carried me through, 
 With the buoyant bound of the fleet canoe, 
 Or the lighter glide of the swift curlew 
 Across the waves of a troubled sea. 
 
 I have pillowed my head-on thy dark gray side, 
 Watching the stars, our golden guide ; 
 We have drunk together the same clear flow 
 ''roin the cups of the playful brooks, that grow 
 To majestical rivers far down below. 
 Almost, by times, I had need to share 
 The bitter herbs of thy scanty fare — 
 And oft have we gone to one roofless bed. 
 With the same bare sod beneath us spread, 
 Or coiled in the folds of the falling- snow. 
 Where man and beast at the dawn were found, 
 ^ach lying apart in his silent mound, 
 Vs if our camp were a burial-ground 
 For the sleep of the nameless dead ! . 
 
 My dauntless Kit has a plume for thee ! 
 For thy saving speed in an hour of need. 
 When thy hoofs were fleet, and his rifle slow, 
 To level the death-doing Indian foe, 
 
120 FAREWELL TO "SACRAMENTO." 
 
 Whose fatal point was drawn to the bow — 
 Thy swift leap trampled him down at a blow, 
 And my Lad stood peril-free ! 
 
 Ha ! ha ! I shout to thy gallant neigh, 
 And cheer thee on thy reinless way, 
 
 Free ! free to thy heart's desire ! 
 Ill fare the hand that touches again 
 The dark gray ridge of thy tossing mane ! 
 Or thy swelling nostrils, red and thin, 
 Sucking the air like a wliirlwind in, 
 
 To snort it out in fire ! 
 Never again let rider sit 
 
 On thy strong back, my noble Steed ! 
 Nor part thy teeth with the iron bit. 
 
 To pamper his pride, or serve his need. 
 I give thee to the unbounded plain, 
 With the whole broad West for thy fair domain, 
 
 And a wild hurrah, for my parting word ! 
 Wherever the fire of thy heart may lead, 
 Go forth, forever unleashed and freed. 
 Thy best defense in thy own good speed — 
 
 Thou lord of the reinless herd ! 
 
THE PRAIRIE CAMP. 
 
 As sloops becalmed upon the deep, 
 Or birds upon the wing asleep, • 
 
 White on the Kansas' boundless plain 
 The Explorer's tents are seen again ; 
 For still undaunted to the last, 
 By woes to come, or perils past, 
 Again he dared the winter's wrath — 
 To trace the inevitable path 
 Where yet the Lightning's moaning lyre 
 Shall wail her bondage to the wire. 
 While shriek the whitemaned Steeds of Fire — 
 That path he would have trod before 
 Vhen, wandering in the mountains hoar. 
 
122 THE PKAIKIE CAMP. 
 
 Came pale Disaster for their Guide, 
 And brave hearts, scattered far arid wide, 
 In snowy gulfs sank down and died. 
 
 But far from hiL A^hite tents to-day, 
 
 The Leader held his lonely way. 
 
 Disease had touched the " Iron Man," 
 
 But not the less his valor ran 
 
 High bounding, eager to return, 
 
 Where now their smouldering watch-fires burn, 
 
 And once again, in courage stern. 
 
 To charge, with his devoted band. 
 
 The horrors of the mountain-land. 
 
 The lingering voyageurs set their camp 
 Where, day by day, the Bison's tramp 
 Came booming o'er the rolling plain, 
 Like surges of the watery main ; 
 And bounding over many a slope, 
 Flew by the graceful Antelope, 
 Light, slender, fleet, and beautiful. 
 Skimming the long waves like a gull ; 
 While, from his covert in the wood, 
 Game forth by times and wondering stood 
 
THE PRAIKIE CAMP. 123 
 
 The stately Elk in all the pride 
 
 Of his huge antlers branching wide, 
 
 As first upon his startled sight 
 
 Appeared the low tents, gleaming white — 
 
 Then darting down the j .er, sped — 
 
 The cleft air hissing round his head, 
 
 His branchy horns, now seen, now lost, 
 
 Like leafless oak-boughs tempest-tost, 
 
 Rising and sinking on the view, 
 
 As o'er the endless reach he flew. 
 
 Along the river's banks of green 
 The willow hung its pendent screen. 
 And dark in heavier masses stood 
 The thick groves of the cottonwood. 
 While on the waves that never broke. 
 Hung a broad crest of giant oak. 
 
 Far o'er the plain as sight could pass. 
 Rolled, deep and brown, the sea of grass, 
 Whose lifted surge, a moment seen. 
 Tossed up its hidden wealth of green, 
 Flashing an inward transmarine, 
 Like ocean's billows in the light,. 
 Just ere the long curl breaks in white. 
 
J 24 THE PRAIKIE CAMP. 
 
 The Prairie Sage, a matted mass, 
 Like brown rocks in the flowing grass, 
 Would whiten to the ruffling breeze, 
 As by the foam of breaking seas ; 
 While, here and there, the mottled hen 
 Rose from the mass, and sunk agen. 
 As you have seen the hunted brant 
 Leave, for a breath, his watery haunt, 
 And plunge below the wave, too fleet 
 For the quick death shot's leaden sleet. 
 
 Wide round the camp, on either hand, 
 The turbid Kansas, rolling grand 
 Stretched her two arms, as if to clasp 
 The broad savannah in her grasp. 
 And hold the voyageurs' little band, 
 
 As in the hollow of her hand. 
 
 But where is He whose beacon soul 
 May light them to their ocean goal ? 
 They lingered long, and day by day. 
 Looked darkly up the western way. 
 Looked longing down the eastern plain, 
 But, vainly longing, looked in vain. 
 
THE PEAIEIE CAMP. 125 
 
 Below their sunset's golden shore 
 A hundred length'ning leagues, and more, 
 Their journey lay, through perils sore ; 
 Beyond the Prairie's weary miles, 
 Beyond the mountains' rocky piles, 
 Right through the desert, stretching blank 
 Along Nevada's eastern flank. 
 And o'er the white Sierra's crest. 
 To the broad waters of the west. 
 
 Already the blue air grew dun. 
 And crimsoned the October sun ; 
 Already, on the steep ascents. 
 Had coming Winter pitched his tents. 
 And mustering all his savage host. 
 With biting gale and burning frost, 
 Far forth, by howling wind and rain. 
 Sent down his challenge to the plain. 
 
 Where vv'aits the Leader, whose right hand 
 Shall lift an ensign o'er that hand, 
 And lead them to the sunset land ? 
 The darkened sky grows yet more dun. 
 Grows redder the October sun, 
 
126 THE PEAIKIE CAMP. 
 
 And down the thick air's deeper gloom, 
 Its setting seems the eve of Doom, 
 Ah, well they know, who linger there, 
 Tlie meaning of that darkening air, 
 And what Doom's-eve its dusky robe 
 Winds round the sunset's burning globe ! 
 
 Night, with its overarching tomb, 
 
 Shuts down, and lo ! the dawn of Doom ! 
 
 One lurid ring, from left to right, 
 
 Round all the east, involves the night. 
 
 A ring of fire, and fiery cloud. 
 
 That, like the Torturer's Iron Shroud, 
 
 Rolls in and in, its narrowing walls. 
 
 While dovv^n, and down, the dun roof falls ! 
 
 Ha ! by tha: closing ring they read 
 
 The red invader's fatal speed. 
 
 Bannered like Israel's desert flight 
 
 With cloud by day and fire by night ! 
 
 AVhere rides the Leader ? The swift wrath 
 Is rolling on his very path ; 
 Or, if he lingers far aback, 
 , Sweeps out the records of their track. 
 
THE PEAIEIE CAMP. 127 
 
 Redder and redder, to the sky, 
 It heaves its kirid arms on high ; 
 Darker and darker glooms the vault, 
 To starless horror, in the assault 
 Of billowy clouds, whose volumes vast 
 Snow down black ashes, hurtling past. 
 
 From point to point, rise towering higher, 
 
 In beacon splendor of wild Fire, 
 
 The signal torches, that betray 
 
 The vortex of a fiercer fray ; 
 
 Where, lingering in its headlong flow, 
 
 To gloat above a nobler foe, 
 
 It deepens to a more intense 
 
 And terrible magnificence. 
 
 There, standing long unscathed before. 
 Some forest kings, all bearded hoar. 
 Have roused the demons of the fire, 
 To wilder bursts of fell desire — 
 Arrears of their vindictive ire. 
 The crackling boughs that, as it came, 
 Rolled upward, molten into flame. 
 Fall crumbling down like that red snow 
 That showered on Dante's world of woe. 
 
128 '^H^ PRAIEIE CAMP. 
 
 Coiled round the giant trunks, anon, 
 The serpent flames run circling on, 
 And o'er the topmost spire have flung 
 The hiss of many a cloven (ongue ; 
 Till, robbed of royal robe and crown. 
 One here, and there, goes tottering down, 
 And naked, burning to the heart, 
 Alone, the mightiest stand apart, 
 Tossing their blazing arms on high, 
 In dumb appealing to the sky, 
 Like awful Martyrs ere they die ! 
 
 The gallant Leader, where ' oh where ? 
 On that scorched desert of despair, 
 A crumpled cinder black and bare ? 
 Or flving throuo;h the lurid gloom, 
 Dogged by the fire-hounds to his doom ? 
 
 The anxious voyageurs gaze in vain, 
 
 Across the fiery-girdled plain. 
 
 Or listen through the wakeful camp, 
 
 To hear a fleet steed's charging tramp. 
 
 They only see the lurid belt 
 
 Drawn inward, as the broad leagues melt 
 
THE PEAIEIE CAMP. 129 
 
 Before that desolating breath — 
 
 That rustlins of the vviriors of death ! 
 
 They only hear the distant cry 
 
 Of wild-birds, wailing through the sky, 
 
 And now the long, unearthly bark 
 
 Of wolves sent trooping down the dark, 
 
 And the deep jar that shakes the plain, 
 
 Where sweeps the Bison's hurricane. 
 
 All night a million tongues of fire 
 That, ever nearer, fluttered higher. 
 In one infernal Pentecost, 
 Seemed gibbering over something lost ! 
 
 At length the struggling morning came, 
 And turned to cloud the distant flame ; 
 While, nearer, marched its baffled ranks, 
 Roaring; along the river-banks, 
 As mad to see the white camp gleam 
 Securely, by the guardian stream. 
 
 Ha ! laughed they not with evil glee, 
 To see what now the voyageurs see ! 
 Hemmed in and cheated by the flood 
 The red-winoed fiend has cleared the wood ! 
 
130 THE FEAIRIE CAMP. 
 
 A ... ...ips from groaning tree, to earth, 
 
 Clapping his miUion hands in mirth, 
 Lioking the long grass from the sod 
 A. ...aino^ like an an^rv aod. 
 
 TMiere is the dauntless Lea.Ur ! where t 
 
 To teach their hands to do and dare. 
 
 And snatch them from this hour's despair 1 
 
 \Yith easfer will, and nerve that strains, 
 Taey strike their tents and pi!e their wains, 
 While yet the last green rood remains ; 
 And turn the frantic cattle towards 
 The shelter of the river-fords ; 
 Then thronging by the watery marge. 
 Await the last decisive charge. 
 
 *' Hur: ' '" How wild a yell there broke 
 Above the rolling flame and smoke — 
 The long glad whoop that well declares 
 The fierce joy of the Delawares. 
 He comes ! the Leader comes at last. 
 His steed careering like the blast ; 
 Rieht onward through the roarincr tire 
 That leaps and writhes with baiiled ire ; 
 
i ;: j:. 
 
 ri-lAIEIE CAMP- 132 
 
 Ai.-. Ciose ^ '*' ■' . side b)' side, 
 
 His r :«jiuis ivfefecji ■ " -y Goide, 
 
 " ^- . ..e we^.,..-, - . :... -^ hot. 
 
 Rings with their sh';-;* ;:.nd volley iug sLoit, 
 
 T- ■:■'"■" 
 
 To k ir Leader, lost a: d ! 
 
 No jr''; -"'"'-- *' ■ "■ V 7'-- •■'-.- - -. 
 
 J 
 
 F ; umeV. y lap 
 
 Whfc; -:lre. 
 
 Greet new. ... : .,:.^- . . , ..-:.x sire, 
 
 1^;-' *',eiirs, a-";-'^ *'■* ■"' - -'--, 
 
 Wneu I jved Leaaer came. 
 
 Short time for ereetin? : cbar^fe 
 
 Where trar - """ grass. - '• - 7 their patli. 
 Diss: fire c: -ath ; 
 
 And o'e. 
 
132 THE PEAIKIE CAMP. 
 
 SEQUEL TO THE PRAIRIE CAMP. 
 
 Pale Freedom in her 'leaguered camp, 
 
 Her forehead with its blood-sweat damp, 
 
 Sits by the willows drooping low, 
 
 Beside the Kansas' mournful ilow, 
 
 A childl-ess Mother in distress, 
 
 A Widow in the wilderness. 
 
 Her children iled, or by her side, 
 
 In the young bloom of strength aiad pride, 
 
 Fell, bleeding for her sake, and died, 
 
 Smote down by ruffians foul with grime — 
 
 The eraseless blot of every crime. 
 
 All round her, over plain and dell. 
 Roars the red fire of Slavery's hell. 
 One lurid blast whose volumed swell 
 Has mown her golden harvest down. 
 Devoured the homes of Lawrence town, 
 And swept the cherished rights of Man 
 Into black ashes where it ran. 
 
THE PEAIEIE CAMP. ^33 
 
 Missouri's dregs of villain blood, 
 The old Palmetto's traitor-brood, 
 And Georgia's ruffians ; with the scum 
 or all their Southern Scoundreldom — 
 Sped on by Northern slaves, and knaves, 
 Who have defiled their Fathers' graves, 
 And cast the taint of bestial shame 
 On their dead Mothers' sacred name — 
 More foul than even the "ravening" Sire 
 Of their dark spirits, could desire — 
 Devour that groodlv land like fire, 
 And blacken deeper the dark page 
 That bears the crime-blots of this age, 
 By deeds whose mearmess would debase 
 The horse-thief Pawnee in his chase. 
 And whose sheer horror, to behold. 
 Might turn the prairie Wolf's blood cold. 
 
 While Freedom's sons, whose blithe advance 
 
 Gave life to all that broad expanse, 
 
 Who planted in the virgin soil 
 
 A fj-lorious Future, bv their toil — 
 
 Are ringed and scorched by that red hell — 
 
 Where waits the Leader, born to quell 
 
134 THE PEAIEIE CAMP. 
 
 Its burning march, and trample out 
 The fell flame — charsins with a shout ? 
 
 Not where the great Dome lends her flag 
 To swathe the whelps of Slavery's hag, 
 And cowards sneak with bludgeoned hand 
 To smite the purest of our land ; 
 Not where the White House — once a home 
 For laureled Honor — has become 
 A den of thieves from law exempt, 
 The vortex of a world's contempt. 
 
 Not in the cofiie ranks of those 
 Who count Oppression's foes their foes, 
 Whose leader's old gray head has on 
 No wreath, from grateful Freedom won ; 
 Nor in that small and chosen fold, 
 To alien-hate and Slavery sold, 
 Whose moral wisdom, faint and dim. 
 Stands sponsor, as their patronyra. 
 
 No ! But the South, whose poisoned lees, 
 And bitter scum, flow ofl' with these, 
 Has left for us the pure red wine 
 Of her best blood of " old lang syne'' — 
 
THE PRAIKIE CAMP. 135 
 
 Fremont ! the Leader— born to quell 
 The hisurgent fires of Slavery's hell. 
 
 He comes ! thank God, we wait no more ! 
 " Hurrah !" the wide air feels the roar 
 Of that loud cheer which millions pour, 
 Who mingle in the fiery charge 
 Across the Prairie's burning marge, 
 To trample out the invading ilame, 
 Or backward scourge it whence it came— 
 To wipe the forehead, torture-damp. 
 Of Freedom, in her rescued camp, 
 Replant upon the blackened sod 
 
 Her golden seeds, for Man and God, 
 
 And rear again her fruitful vine 
 
 Broad bowered where millions might recline, 
 
 And the great. Future, glad and free, 
 
 Shall celebrate her jubilee. 
 
THE OATH. 
 
 They stood together on a hoary peak 
 
 Of the mid-mountains ; famine in their eyes, 
 And the deep lines of want on brow and cheek, 
 A ghastly brotherhood, grown pale and weak. 
 
 In their long battle with the rocks and skies ! 
 " Swear !" cried their Chieftain's voice, above the 
 
 shriek 
 Of antheming winds, resounding through the bleak 
 
 Rock-chambers of the hills ; old memories 
 That wakened sights of horror and despair. 
 
 Deepened the solemn cadence of his speech ; 
 " Ye bold companions of my perils, swear. 
 
 That come what may, in hunger's utmost reach, 
 Ye lift no hand of brother upon brother. 
 But rather will die with, than live upon, each other." 
 
THE OATH. 137 
 
 II. 
 
 " So help me God !" Their mountain altar rung 
 
 As with one .voice to that wild covenant. 
 The icy crags, like horns of silver, flung 
 The vow to their far brothers, out among 
 
 The caverns, where the wolf coiled, cold and 
 gaunt, 
 
 Who heard and shuddered with new dreams of 
 want ; 
 The hollow caves, with their sepulchral tongue, 
 Proclaimed it to the desert, and it stung 
 
 The desert with more famine. " Help me God !" 
 And God did help them in the wilderness. 
 
 Desert and crag, and wolves athirst for blood, 
 Howled their unsated hunger and distress. 
 
 As the pale band moved firmly to their goal. 
 
 Where to the vine-clad hills Pacific's waters roll. 
 
 III. 
 
 Swear ! ye who feed upon our human life. 
 
 Who have drawn out the red blood from the 
 
 veins 
 Of haggard women, by your godless gains — 
 
 The pale, thin maiden and the blighted wife, 
 
138 THE OATH. 
 
 Starving upon your justice ! thou whose knife 
 Is at the throat of the robbed emiorant, 
 To carve still deeper what scant fle.sh remains — 
 
 Swear ! ye who, when the hounded fugitives pant 
 Northward, still clanking their half-shattered 
 chains, 
 
 Bark on their track, the veriest hounds of all ; 
 
 And you who keep your savage carnival, 
 
 Fed fat on unbought labor's blood and brains ! 
 
 Swear, that no more ye will pollute earth's sod 
 
 With anthropophagy ; and so help you God ! 
 
BACKING OF FRIENDS. 
 
 FROM AS INCIDENT IN FREMONT's LIFE. 
 
 Do you ask me, hardy brothers, 
 
 Toilers at the wheel and plow, 
 Men of pith who salt your gruel 
 
 By the sweat-drops of your brow, 
 " Men of thought and men of action," 
 
 " Bone and sinew" of the land — 
 Who for this great country's Captain 
 
 Has my heart, and vote, and hand,- 
 "I shall answer, I shall tell you," 
 
 " Live or perish, sink or swim," 
 I will vote for my good Captain ; 
 
 He backed me, and I'll hack him ! 
 
^ 
 
 140 BACKING OF FRIENDS, 
 
 Eastward of the Inland Ocean, 
 
 'J 
 
 Near a mountain's frozen peak, 
 Toiling through the wild Cordilleras, 
 
 Once my heart and limbs grew weak. 
 " Let me die !" I said, " my Captain ; 
 
 Let me die ! I can not go !" 
 O, how brother-like he answered, 
 
 " Die ? my noble fellow ! no /" 
 And he bound me on his shoulders, 
 
 As my failing eyes grew dim. 
 O'er the crag, on knees blood-dripping; 
 
 He hacked mc^ and 77/ hack him! 
 
 O, I saw him when our brother — 
 
 Now who sleeps upon the trail, 
 Through the night of snow and tempest 
 
 Was brought dying, cold and pale — ■ 
 How with action prompt and tender. 
 
 And a woman's melting eye. 
 He made famine seem less bitter, 
 
 Less a bitter thing to die ; 
 But, I thought, this man was gentle, 
 
 I a hlouse — ah, foolish whim ! 
 
BACKING OP FRIENDS. I41 
 
 On his red knees, like a brother, 
 He backed me, and I'll back him ! 
 
 All who served him learned to love him, 
 
 More than life, should peril call ; 
 They were equal who were faithful, 
 
 Black and white, rich, poor, and all. 
 By his words for honest labor. 
 
 For free Laborer and soil. 
 By the vast wealth opened to us 
 
 In his own unwearying toil, 
 All true hearts with me mav answer, 
 
 " Here is Honor's synonym ; 
 When he served the poor and needy. 
 
 He backed me, and Pll back him !" 
 
CROSSING THE WAHSACH. 
 
 Sxow ! snow ! snow ! 
 Before, behind, above, and below, 
 On rock and mountain and forest tree, 
 In valley and canon, pit, and rift, 
 And through the air in a merciless drift, 
 A powdery smoke, that seemed to sift 
 To the very bones, that none could see 
 Whither they went, nor where might be 
 The wallowing path of the Leader's feet, 
 Right up the mountain barrier, beat. 
 
 Snow ! snow ! snow ! 
 
 *' To the council, hardy warriors ! ho ! 
 
CEOSSING THE WAH8ACH. 143 
 
 What word, my Braves, of the better way 
 To scuic the Wahsach's perilous edge 
 And through the gulfs of the looming ledge 
 To cleave our path, like a rending wedge ? 
 'Tis deadly to go and death to stay — ■ 
 Speak, my Delawares ! shrewd to say 
 What path is best in a dubious track, 
 Where the hungry wolf would turn him back." 
 
 " Snow ! snow ! snow ! 
 
 My brave Commander, we can not go ! 
 
 Pits under pits in the white-dark lie, 
 Gale upon gale is the tempest's shriek, 
 Cliff upon, cliff is the mountain's peak, 
 And the ridges beyond are sharp and bleak, 
 
 The treacherous gulfs will cheat the eye, 
 
 Where the struCTpiino- hunter will sink and die — 
 And none shall find his bed in the snow ; 
 My brave Commander, we can not go." 
 
 " Snow ! snow ! snow ! 
 
 Its terrible barrier well I know, 
 
 I see hut that in its whirlino^ dance — 
 
 But — ' can not <" — where did my warrior learn 
 
144 CROSSING THE WAHSACH. 
 
 That woman's word ? or how to turn 
 His back to a peril dark and stern ? 
 We can, we must, we will advance, 
 And the Father above shall guide our chance- 
 Come on ! and follow the forward beat 
 Of my tireless club and my naked feet !" 
 
 Snow ! snow ! snow ! 
 Around, behind, above, and below, 
 In a whirling cloud of fireless smoke 
 Over drift and chasm and looming crag, 
 Where a mountain goat would fail to drag 
 His powerless feet — ashamed to lag, 
 They climbed the cliffs as the measured stroke 
 And tramp of the dauntless Chieftain broke 
 A path to life, and led them on 
 To the Home-like fires of the Parawan 
 
DEFERRED, NOT LOST/' 
 
 In the war against Oppression, 
 
 In the battle on the wrong. 
 When the armies of the Alien 
 Seem unconquerably strong, 
 And the Elect a moment waver 
 Chilled by waning fortune's frost, 
 Mark the word ! 
 Victory is but deferred, 
 Never lost. 
 
 Freedom's champions are immortal 
 
 As the living God they serve, 
 
 * Bo'o Fr(im6iit'8 Letter to GoVemor KoTjlnteii. 
 7 
 
146 "DEFEKKED, NOT LOST." 
 
 Not a blood-drop falls to perish, 
 
 Not an uttered truth shall swerve 
 From its renovating mission, 
 In her fire-tongued Pentecost, 
 To her word 
 Victory may be deferred, 
 But not lost. 
 
 All the Martyrs of old Ages 
 
 Have bequeathed that faith to this, 
 Lifting, through the flames, their beakers 
 
 Of imperishable bliss ! 
 Rome, and Smithfield, and Geneva, 
 Smoking with hell's holocaust, 
 Shriek the word, 
 That our hopes, though long deferred, 
 Are not lost. 
 
 All the legions of the Persian 
 
 In that memorable Pass, 
 Piled to swell the mausoleum 
 
 Of sublime Leonidas, 
 Made Thermopylae a watchword, 
 
 Down through all the ages tosa'd — 
 
"DEFERRED, NOT LOST." I47 
 
 Freedom's word, 
 Teaching that her reign, deferred, 
 Is not lost. 
 
 The grim courage of our Fathers, 
 
 Fiohtinor backwards down the hill, 
 While their burning homes at Charlestown 
 
 Only fired their dauntless will, 
 Speaks from all their lowly tombstones 
 Worn by time, and over-moss'd, 
 The same word, 
 That a victory long deferred, 
 Is not lost. 
 
 Freedom's martyr-souls in Kansas, 
 
 Well who fought alone their fight. 
 Till the Land's inaugurate Traitor 
 
 With her wronged Arm crushed their might, 
 For their burning homes in Lawrence, 
 Yet shall teach, at Slavery's cost, 
 The old word. 
 That their hour is but deferred, 
 And not lost ! 
 
l^Q "DEFEIiKED, NOT LOST." 
 
 They may perish in their bondage ; 
 
 But a lightning flash would leap — 
 From their blood-smoke rolling upward — 
 Through Oppression's cavernous deep, 
 And explode its fatal fire-damp, 
 Thundering o'er your ruined boast, 
 This wild word : 
 In their victory not deferred 
 Ye are lost ! 
 
RESUME. 
 
 Old Poets singing to their lyres of gold, 
 
 True golden Epics, in an iron age, 
 
 Have made their heroes. God above made mine— 
 
 A livinn- canticle of power and peace : 
 
 And I have spoken to you not in vain, 
 
 My countrymen ! if here 1 have not aiarr'd 
 
 His better singing; striving as I may 
 
 To interpret, in lue word.s of human song, 
 
 'j'hat burning Epos. 
 
 If my birciien torch — 
 The simple lamp of hands inured to toil, 
 Have caught one sparkle from the Signal Fires 
 That blaze along a Hero's mountain march, 
 So kindUng with their glory that some eyes, 
 
150 RESUME. 
 
 Led by the nearer twinkle, turn to read 
 
 The unborrowed brightness, and forget the lamp 
 
 That flared their lids up — it is not in vain 
 
 That, for one new moon's rounding, I lay down 
 
 The sickle for the signal, the keen scythe 
 
 For the rude cythern — for it seems, again. 
 
 That miracle of the ages — a True Man, 
 
 Has risen among us — one in whose large soul 
 
 Hero and Human Brother have struck hands, 
 
 And Worth and Worship mingle sisterly. 
 
 Then only, when the world has need of him, 
 God sends the Hero, and his stature marks 
 The measure of his mission ; for, what means 
 This, which we crown as Hero, but the sum 
 And concentration of a People's need, 
 Fed grandly, to repletion of its wants — 
 The incarnate answer of a people's prayer, 
 Perftjrming God's high purpose ? 
 
 Show the Man, 
 Towering preeminent above his peers, 
 And we have witness of a giant work — 
 The clear prediction of what Heaven intends 
 In this Man's generation. 
 
EESUME. 151 
 
 Show the Work, 
 The vast necessities of Humanity — 
 Some hideous monster of the moral world 
 To be scourged out, and driven back to hell — , 
 Some wrong's dark inroad upoii human rights 
 To be repelled— or a wide continent 
 Of primal Chaos, waiting for the hand 
 Of a great conqueror to subdue its wilds 
 To the broad reign of Order — and for each 
 Ripe need, the Heavens have ripened the right Man.,. 
 Him choose, sustain, and help, or the ripe need 
 Grows rotten ripe, and the uplifted Arm 
 Of Benediction falls in judgment wrath ! 
 
 This Land has uttered the prophetic moan 
 
 Of its great want, heard faintly through the shout 
 
 Of boastful clamors, and the noisy whirl 
 
 Of its sublime activities, too long — 
 
 Whole decades long, while parasite Misrule 
 
 Grew fat upon her vitals. She has cast 
 
 The name of God, and the diviner Law, 
 
 Out of her councils ; for the wicked rule, 
 
 And Mammon sits with Anarchy and Clime, 
 
 In her high places — and the people mourn. 
 
152 RESUME 
 
 One cloud has deepened its broad thunder-folds, 
 From a small handbreath to a mountain mass, 
 Behind whose volumed blackness the faint light 
 Has struggled long and fitfully ; but the Man 
 Came not, to answer the mute questioning 
 Of pained hearts, whether in the lurid sky 
 Dawned the new day of Liberty and Peace, 
 Or garnered lightnings fluttered their red wings, 
 Precursive, for the last destroying swoop ! 
 
 When the night gathered, and the perilous fire 
 Stooped imminent, the need produced its Man. 
 Then rose our martyrs whom the world knows 
 
 not, 
 Whose names have been a hissing in the Land, 
 
 The moral champions of outraged Right, 
 Whose names shall be a glory in the Land ; 
 Their great, indignant hearts, with fiery beat, 
 Hurled renovating pulses through the veins 
 Of the sin-fevered and sin-torpid mass, 
 Till the Land's hunger-cry becomes a s hout 
 That will not hush till Freedom's right shall reign. 
 
 Perjured, and stained with every crime — itself 
 The crownino- crime of crime==! — dark Slavery 
 
EESUME. 153 
 
 Has rolled her turbid waters, wave on wave, 
 Over the smiling South-Land, laying waste 
 Her Eden gardens, till the wolves come back 
 And howJL,among her desolated homes ! 
 New lands, new victims, and new devotees 
 Must fall before her, feeding, still in vain, 
 Her still insatiate famine, till, forsworn 
 The oaths she took in solemn covenant — 
 Which, our deep sin in making, bates no jot 
 Of her deep perjury in forswearing — she 
 Leaps her Missouri bound, as lightly as fire, 
 Cruel as death, and false as nether hell. 
 And holds young Kansas by her bleeding throat ! 
 
 Now by the Throne, and Him who sits thereon ! 
 And by our Souls, we swear, weighing our words 
 With finest scruples, swear ^ that the black fiend. 
 Shall lose her clutch from that fair Sufferer, 
 And print no track of her polluted foot 
 On God's free soil, our heritage, again, — 
 Or perish where she stands ! 
 
 This, if I read 
 The indignation of free hearts aright. 
 Is th'ir deep vow and purpose, this the work, 
 
 '7* 
 
154 EESUME. 
 
 One task of many worthy, which demands 
 And prophesies the Coming Man, once more. 
 
 Let not the word-strong moralist, whose words 
 Have sent true pulses through these working souls. 
 Debar their working. It is theirs to braid 
 Organic lightning, from his moral light 
 Whose limbless flame may spread diff'usive life, 
 In broad unbolted flashes, but has need 
 Of the Strong Arm to work its fiery will 
 Upon one purpose — needs the pointed steel 
 Of sword-armed Themis, or the dreader edge 
 — By Duty called and Freedom sanctified — 
 Of red Bellona, to call down its fire 
 In triple bolts on hoar Iniquity. 
 
 The imperative need its index finder lifts. 
 
 Pointing aloft, to mark the magnitude 
 
 Of Heaven's Elect, the stature of his soul. 
 
 Amid the ripening of the mighty Want, 
 
 AVe turn to ask, where ripens the right Man ? 
 
 And find him, tracked bv all his olowiiitr deeds, 
 
 — A great life's-labor for his pupilage — 
 
 StiJl learninij right Rule in God's Normal School, 
 
EESUME. 155 
 
 The wilderness and mountain, where of old 
 The peerless renovators of the world 
 Took their stern lessons. 
 
 He, through giant toils 
 And more gigantic perils, set his name 
 Upon the everlasting mountain-tops. 
 And made the desert vocal with his praise. 
 
 In the wide waste of trackless wilderness, 
 
 He asked the silent stars above his head, [him ; 
 
 "Whither? and where?" and the stars answered 
 
 High on the snow-capp'd mountain, whose abyss 
 
 No line and plummet sounded, he inquired 
 
 Of the thin Air, and the thin Air replied, 
 
 " Thus far, oh, soul-winged Eagle ! thou hast 
 
 soared 
 In the high places of the Universe." 
 He bade the homeless wilds to give him meat, 
 And the wilds fed him, and the river-springs 
 Brought water to him in the lonely place. 
 Till all the wilds grew famished and athirst, 
 And Hunger walked the dreary blank with him ! 
 
 The virgin Realms that slept in solitude, 
 
156 EfiSUMfe. 
 
 Or only woke to the wild wlioop of men 
 Fiercer than wolves — fair Realms as beautiful 
 As Tirzah of the Hills, and terrible 
 As the ranked squadrons of a bannered army !— 
 His hand, to the swart hand of Labor, gave, 
 As a young Bride adorned for her espousals. 
 
 The Golden Gate of the new Ophir rolled 
 
 Unjarring on its hinges to let in 
 
 Our swarming vigor, at his magic word, 
 
 The " open sesame" of his fiery valor : 
 
 And that vast hollow in the giant hand 
 
 Of our world-beckoning Continent, where now 
 
 The fleshly Saints build up their Canaan — 
 
 With all its grandeur of eternal hills, 
 
 And beauty of green meadows, and that deep 
 
 Where the sad billows of the Inland Sea, 
 
 Salt as the grave, break on the Utah rocks, 
 
 And whiten their dark bases — first to him 
 
 Unveiled the secrets of its lonely depths, 
 
 And changed wild Fable into wondrous Fact. 
 
 When the grim Lion of the Isles came down — 
 Warily creeping from his northern lair — 
 
EESUMfi. 157 
 
 Where sat the jeweled Princess of the West, 
 
 Leaned on her white Nevada's ermined arins — 
 
 Or chained, or charmed, upon her virginal hills, 
 
 With old Pacific moaning at her feet, 
 
 By chance the keen eye of the voyager saw 
 
 The unsheathing claws, his quick ear heard the purr, 
 
 Prelusive to the leap — and his quick hand 
 
 Snapped the corroded fetter, and set free 
 
 Her " Beauty" from the spoiler, and the " Beast." 
 
 The baffled Jesuit, and the lynx-eyed Spy, 
 And the false Leader of a cruel band. 
 Muttered vain curses on their swift defeat. 
 The foe, far off in their delightful dreams, 
 But near at hand, with his mysterious Glass 
 Reading their horoscope — from studious toil 
 Leapt up, full armed, and snatched the glowing 
 
 prize ! 
 There Science put on valor, and the Stars 
 
 Fought agrainst Sisera ! 
 
 For his swift success. 
 
 Where to have lingjered had been final loss, 
 
 This Nation, jealous of her Ocean Sire — 
 
 By all she hopes for in her proud expanse, 
 
158 RESUME. 
 
 By all she won in that victorious Ride, 
 Owes to this Man her dearest gratitude. 
 
 Humanity no less, in that broad land 
 Stands debtor to him for a good work done. 
 Wlien other hands were foroino- darker chains 
 For the fair Captive, his shook off the bolts, 
 And, by his voice in Freedom's trial hour, 
 Her Golden Hills were rescued from the chink 
 Of Slavery's chain, the snap of Slavery's wliip ; 
 And unborn millions shall rise up in joy, 
 To call him Blessed as they call him Great. 
 
 His life has gone up to its regal seat. 
 
 Beyond the reign of failure and mischance — 
 
 Even in this pupilage for a vaster work, 
 
 Complete in greatness of a task well done. 
 
 We call him to that work, for our Land's Good, 
 
 Nor offer laurels greener than his own. 
 
 The idolatrous peoples have bowed down before 
 
 The Golden Calf of Commerce — bent so low, 
 
 They see not the dark stains of human blood 
 
 Upon its horrid altar, and forget 
 
 The living God of justice and of truth. 
 
We call our Leader from his Sinai peaks, 
 To bring the Law ; not less the Eternal Code, 
 Than that grave record, read in fathom snows, 
 When the whole mountain smoked, and ever> 
 
 beast 
 That touched it died!* — we call him, so to advance 
 To him one little of the mighty debt 
 We owe the Future, and the Future him. 
 Her myriad voices, and imploring hands, 
 Far-seen in clear prevision, supplicate 
 By all she may be, or may fail to be, 
 'J'hat we be faithful in this fearful hour, 
 And do that justice to a people's hope. 
 That mercy to the peeled and trodden down, 
 Which is but lovelier justice — laid on us 
 By solemn mortmain of the immortal dead. 
 By the stern crisis of the eventful Now, 
 And all the periled Future in our hands ! 
 
 We call the Leader gladly, for we know 
 The startling summons can not be in vain. 
 Whatever fate or favor, frovvns or smiles. 
 The millions gather round his glowing page, 
 * Se« Bigslow's Fkemont, page SG9. 
 
150 EESUME. 
 
 And catch some inspiration from his fire. 
 His stirring Name, heard far away before, 
 Is not an eciio, but a pealing shout — 
 A Power among our jubilating hills — 
 A Sunrise on our plains and valley-paths. 
 
 The very coward, though he shrink and quake 
 
 At the dim story of his daring march, 
 
 Will feel some flutter of exuitiug blood, 
 
 Tending to nobler mardiood, evermore. 
 
 To see the Hero trampling down despair, 
 
 And treading firmlv to sublime Success, 
 
 Where the tough brute reeled stiffly back, and died, 
 
 And the hard savage dare not follow him ! 
 
 o 
 
 This age, among her manifold wealths and wants. 
 Had need of him, to scourge the craven blood 
 Of men, grown paltering hucksters, or sleek- 
 combed 
 Young foplings, toying with a lady's fan. 
 In perfumed parlors — to some dash of health 
 And manly hardihood, which alone make stuff 
 For manlv souls, and brains for manlv thought. 
 The stern, unmeant rebuke of his great life, 
 
RESUME. 
 
 Stings idle natures lapped in moneyed ease, 
 And plucking the ripe fruits of honor's tree 
 From boughs bent to them — like a goading whip 
 In a strong hand, till latent nobleness 
 Leaps to the cheek, and lights the hopeful flush 
 Of mingled shame and better purposes — 
 Or all the innate dastard stands confest, 
 In plotting envy and a powerless rage. 
 
 This life were worthy of its great renown 
 
 If, ending here, it lent no richer fruit 
 
 Than its high lessons for the young and brave — - 
 
 Of modest worth and golden teinper;ince. 
 
 Heart's purity, and reverential soul — 
 
 For strong oppression an instinctive hate — 
 
 A natural sympathy for wronged and weak — 
 
 t!!Irowning intrepid valor, and tirm vviil. 
 
 And a wise mind, that shakes familiarly 
 
 The hand of Nature in her secretest home. 
 
 But even exuberant Fancy were too poor 
 To tell its vast beneficence of worth 
 To that Grand Future he has served so well, 
 When the swift tides of human life have rolled 
 
IQ2 TlESUilE. 
 
 Their endless billows over all the West — 
 Now o'er the Rocky 'Mountains leaping white — 
 Now o'er the stesp Nevada, to the sea ; 
 From where St. Helen lifts her fiery horn, 
 And hoary Hood flings back, on Oregon 
 The sunrise gold, from his eternal snows, 
 To the Sierras of the utmost South, 
 That cruard the Land of Gold — his memory 
 Shall flourish greener than their viny slopes, 
 And purer than their never-trodden peaks. 
 
 The endless harp-strings of the captira Zetis, 
 — Old thunder-god forlorner, at his ti.sk, 
 Than Saturn in his exile — pining out 
 His liohtnincr soul upon the tremulo;:s wive. 
 Shall whisper in one breath, from sea w se;; 
 The Name we blazon on our banner-folds ; 
 A.nd the chained dragon bf tha flving car. 
 Rousing the echoes with a th inder trainp, 
 
 ■ din to St. Francis' Bay, 
 a shriek to all the bills ; 
 
 >unt shall toss our banner-cry. 
 
 " JtREE :vlt,:\, rivEE SOIL, FllEAIOxNT, and ViCTORV !" 
 
 -/n 
 
is 
 
 fss^°^s« 
 
 01 
 
 1897 417 7 %