S 1659 
 F32 B6 
 opy 1 
 
 r H E 
 
 BOAT OF GH^HON, 
 
 A POEM. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE ALFRED TAYLOR, 
 
 
 DENVER, COLORADO. 
 
 1891. 
 
TH E 
 
 BOAT OF GHi^f^Ofl, 
 
 A ROEM. 
 
 BY 
 
 -: GEORGE ALFRED'fAYLOR, '^^^^'^ 
 
 
 Copyright 1891, by George A. Faylor. 
 
 DENVER, COLORADO. 
 1891. 
 

 PREFATORY, 
 
 Ab stars at night, that march in wide 
 
 Procession to the sage's ken 
 
 Are scanned, and known thereafter in 
 
 Their magnitude: somen do walk 
 
 Upon the road of Time, into 
 
 The Temple of Eternity, 
 
 Thus roundly measured and thus mapp'd. 
 
 And I, of these, my turn await. 
 
THE BOAT OF CHARON. 
 
 I. 
 
 Man is a thing that's born; and being born it follows that 
 
 He dies. To no time heir, but to a seeming circumstance 
 
 The fellow, he steps from waking light to sleeping shadow 
 
 Man, living, fears the end, and at ending the future dreads, 
 
 Or speeds his mortal pace, and, tired, at last seeks com- 
 fort in 
 
 The lodge-house of the worm. To sleep where waking 
 ends, and where 
 
 Mutable laws no more oppress; to be and to become, 
 
 We burn the once lighted, extinguishable lamp, to surfeit 
 oft. 
 
 Death is a king, and Life, a jester, stands in cap and bells, 
 
 Beside the eternal throne. The earth's a court for fools 
 unfeed. 
 
 And men wise past their follies, a huge brown top that 
 
 spins round 
 And casts a shadow, which doth shut the covers of man's' 
 
 day. 
 Thy playhouse, kings, and, beggars, thy prison. Folly 
 
 was in 
 
 The die which cast thee, world; the grave sobers thy 
 revelry. 
 
The world's a sea, and men ships on it. Each makes a 
 
 voyage 
 And rests in port, or, wrecked midway,- sinks in the blue. 
 
 Some coast 
 By spicy isles, lay in calm streams and fill their happy sails 
 To bellying with sweet winds; others, beat by freezing 
 
 gales, 
 'Mid icy hills, and shoals, and rugged reefs, hard driven, 
 
 at last 
 Drift into Arctic night, and sail no more. Some, chartless 
 
 steer 
 To brief destruction down through the narrows; some 
 
 shave the coast 
 And the wild breakers ride to fortune and discovery. 
 Gold laden, some with crime's rich fruit return; dashed 
 
 with its fruit 
 Do some beat on the rocks. Here navigation errs, cur- 
 rents 
 Confound the card, and tides do ebb when they should 
 
 landward flow, • 
 
 Wherein he problems vaster than the weight of suns; and 
 
 yet 
 'Tis simply Fate, now mending childhood's broken toys, 
 
 and now 
 Sinking the scale of empire. It makes contemplation great. 
 
 The sick man views a paradise in health ; the poor in wealth ; 
 The wretch in an unrighteous gain; the rake in some 
 fresh roam 
 
By town or main. Voluptuaries find in houri's charms 
 The heaven the weary view, beyond all life's alarms. 
 
 Alone, 
 The sage philosopher, in old Contentment's bone, oft seeks 
 The sweet marrow of a wise pleasure. 'Twas such a one 
 
 I knew: 
 Aged and pale haired, and mild as melting Winter when 
 
 Spring 
 Brings forth perennial flowers; wise in all wisdom, and 
 
 more soft 
 In the sweet essence of good nature, than the teat fed 
 
 babe 
 Or politician office bent; a large proletariat 
 Out of times; a lay minister of a philosophy 
 Untried; above the world, yet humbly conscious of the 
 
 breadth 
 Of Nature's God; ambitious to no big supernal end, 
 A worm who knew his magnitude and gauged himself a 
 
 worm. 
 When morning broke, and day first gathered form, then 
 
 he was forth 
 Bathing his grateful soul in the magnetic flood of Heav'n. 
 He Hved the day, and in the star and planet-freckled eve, 
 He scanned the worlds that walked their treadmill orbits 
 
 round the sun. 
 In deep battallions ranged he viewed the starry army pass, 
 With funereal pace, down the wide slope of night; and 
 
 when 
 
The heart-fire slept, and on his guard the honest watch- 
 dog sate, 
 A healthful and dreamless repose drowned out his happy 
 
 day. 
 For him at dewy morn and eve, no loving wife looked out, 
 No curious small family hung round his ancient knee, 
 To hear his ancient tales. He deemed the bachelor 
 
 happy, 
 Escaped the pains, the pleasures and excessive ecstacies 
 Of a superfluous life. Not him the soulful dove-eyed 
 Senorita's song and tuned and touched guitar made gay; 
 But oft for him a bowed and seamed old iifer on his reed 
 
 blew out 
 Old tunes and sober melodies, and airs that once had led 
 The Southern fighters to the war, and these he simply 
 
 deemed 
 Voluptuous. In high capacious hall, he soughi no vain 
 And heartless company; but, greatly humble, loved his 
 
 dog, 
 And the children and the poor, for these were next to 
 
 nature. 
 
 Small versed in worldly ways, he deemed the right that 
 
 which was right — 
 Man's dishonor shook his faith in man and woman's in God. 
 So lived the gray old solitaire, bent on the knee of Time. 
 So on the road of Hfe he passed, slow to the silent inn, 
 The caravansary of sleeping citizens, and where 
 
The clay outlasts the mould, and brains of kings, and beg- 
 
 gfar's hands 
 Forget their ofiices, he found a perfect rest at last, 
 Amid the eternal oblivion of a nameless grave. 
 
 II. 
 
 Now toll, ve thunders, and ye clouds, hang out your 
 deepest black. 
 
 Aii^Lher wand'ring soul embarks upon the St3^gian flood. 
 Here awful night lay on the shore of earth, and, overhead, 
 A starless canopy of jet roofed in the blackened world 
 Old Tempest, bellowing, roared out across the Northern 
 steppe. 
 
 And there the lightning slipped its leash, and with horrific 
 orb 
 
 Scanned all the sky; then fled down to destruction 
 through the East. 
 
 Brief radiance this, and yet it seemed the curtained gloom 
 was drawn 
 
 Aside, and fabled lamps of Heav'n w^ere shone upon 
 the scene. 
 
 In the glare old Charon, ferryman on the last river, 
 
 Stood, cowled helmsman to the dead, doomed with his 
 craft to fathom 
 
 Pluto's seas. With silent keel sw^ift passed his black- 
 ribbed vessel 
 
 Along the void, he aft. The deck, a dark, prodigious 
 
Sarcophagus, held man}^ a soul, and one the parting sage. 
 Around large tribes of the lower creation floated out, 
 And farther than on ocean reach the eves, the train 
 
 pursued. 
 Thus, with its freight, the Boat of Charon drifted to the 
 
 sea. 
 Soon was the earth left spinning on its round, and from 
 
 the wave, 
 
 Up rose the dead world Moon, like the face of a pure 
 woman, 
 
 And rolled down the solemn flood. Then it was left 
 behind. 
 
 Opposed the sun's irradiance, down through the under- 
 world, 
 
 Still flowed the silent stream, still rowed the silent gon- 
 dolier. 
 
 And all the dead drift of the animate world came after. 
 So the migrating herds on hyperborean fields press back 
 Into the North, when hungry Winter shows his icy front. 
 Now was the beamy Sun lost with his rays, gone down 
 behind 
 
 The convex distance. With speeed beyond even man 
 
 to know. 
 Left as a burning star, mid solemn fields star strewn, at 
 
 last 
 
 The earth went o'er the gloomy horizon, and with its kind 
 
To disappearance passed, and all but' gloom, a speckless 
 sea. 
 
 Was lost; yet onward went the boatman and his crewless 
 bark. 
 
 Now perished heat, and thence, a vasty desert rolled, a 
 
 plain. 
 
 To desolation given o'er, like which men fathom not. 
 
 Nor he, the boatman, halted ev'r, nor slacked his pon- 
 d'rous flight. 
 
 But as the comet falls, or backs, yet frictionless, he being 
 
 In nature anomalous, swept on and swiftly onward. 
 
 There never desert was nor void eternal, nor ever 
 
 A voyage but had digression and an end. So with this. 
 
 At last new skies arose, new heavens beamed on the 
 
 boatman's ken; 
 
 New systems, people in the solar realm and like in kind 
 
 To small Earth's fellows, and such as intervening, Charon 
 
 His whole route long saw rise and set in distant latitudes. 
 
 Strewing the plains of space, now lay like monsters in a 
 sea 
 
 Of twilight. The universe fashions its communities. 
 
 Not the sardines or gillycrew of trout that spear the wave 
 
 Have confines more than grandest systems. These roam 
 in waters, 
 
 Within restricted room, those soar in space's airs with 
 flight 
 
Curtailed; and as to man, to fish and to the winging birds 
 
 Is limit giv'n, so giv'n to those tremendous animals, 
 Are realms with borders absolute; and as to man's small 
 
 mind, 
 The wild'ring vacancies of space reach out into the night, 
 So to the sytems, citizens and glorious peoples 
 Of the world above the world, He there eternal regions 
 Beyond comprehension. And to the limit of that world's 
 Farthest state, inhabited of giant systems, sailing out 
 A silent awful wand'rer o'er the gloom and passive stream 
 Unto the wide, still ocean of this realm of whirling spheres, 
 The boatman sped his bark. On to the utmost shore of it. 
 Where day to twilight merged, upon the verge of star- 
 less night. 
 Reaching to voids eternal and the haunt of deep chaos, 
 A murky sea, isle-fretted lay. Thither he oared and 
 
 there. 
 Eased of his cargo, lay upon the shore. Demons there 
 
 were 
 Prodigious in bulk and black, scaled as the crocodile. 
 Each huge as earth, and frowning each, that held a 
 
 guardian place 
 O'er lightnings storms and thunder-bolts. To them the 
 
 souls passed in. 
 With lightnings merged and passed from individuality. 
 
Thus to the cycle and the sphere creation tends, blending 
 The whence and whither, as waters sprung from the 
 
 ocean's womb 
 Return to ocean. 
 
 * * * Then Charon, a boatman on a cruise. 
 More lone than comet doomed to roam the frontiers of 
 
 old space, 
 Oared back, a cowled, sad skipper on an ebless tide, and 
 
 still 
 He urged his ebon passage when from view of suns and 
 
 worlds 
 The stream of Styx was perished; on, in gloom, he, 
 
 silent, swept. 
 
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