[Born about 1840 in California. Known in literature as "Joaquin," but in society as "Cincinnatus H. Miller." Has passed a rough adventurous life in his native district and the regions of Western and Central America; gaining the experiences which he has now begun to embody in very striking and picturesque poems]
"And I have said, and I say
As the years go on and the world goes over,
'Twere better to be content and clever
In tending of cattle and tossing of clover,
In the grazing of cattle and the growing of grain,
Than a strong man striving for fame or gain ;
Be even as kine in the red-tipped clover;
For they lie down and their rests are rests,
And the days are theirs, come sun come rain,
To lie, rise up, and repose again;
While we wish, yearn, and do pray in vain,
And hope to ride on the billows of bosoms,
And hope to rest in the haven of breasts,
Till the heart is sickened and the fair hope dead;
Be even as clover with its crown of blossoms,
Even as blossoms ere the bloom is shed,
Kissed by kine and the brown sweet bee-
For these have the sun, and moon, and air,
And never a bit of the burthen of care;
And with all of our caring what more have we?
I would court Content like a lover lonely,
I would woo her, win her, and wear her only,
And never go over this white sea wall
For gold or glory or for aught at all."
He said these things as he stood with the Squire
By the river's rim in the fields of clover,
While the stream flowed under and the clouds flew
With the sun tangled in and the fringes afire.
So the Squire leaned with a kind desire
To humour his guest, and to hear his story;
For his guest had gold, and he yet was clever,
And mild of manner; and, what was more, he,
In the morning's ramble, had praised the kine,
The clover's reach and the meadows fine,
And so made the Squire his friend for ever.
His brow was browned by the sun and weather,
And touched by the terrible hand of time;
His rich black beard had a fringe of rime,
As silk and silver inwove together.
There were hoops of gold all over his hands,
And across his breast, in chains and bands,
Broad and massive as belts of leather;
And the belts of gold were bright in the sun.
But brighter than gold his black eyes shone
From their sad face-setting so swarth and dun,
Brighter than beautiful Santan-stone,
Brighter even than balls of fire,
As he said, hot-faced, in the face of the Squire :
"The pines bowed over, the stream bent under,
The cabin covered with thatches of palm,
Down in a cañon so deep, the wonder
Was what it could know in its clime but calm :
Down in a cañon so cleft asunder
By sabre-stroke in the young world's prime
It looked as broken by bolts of thunder,
And burst asunder and rent and riven
By earthquakes, driven, the turbulent time
A red cross lifted red hands to heaven.1
And this in the land where the sun goes down,
And gold is gathered by tide and by stream,
And maidens are brown as the cocoa brown,
1 These are the lines as given in the later American edition: the last two are far from perspicuous. The earlier English edition says merely,
"It looked as if broken by bolts of thunder,
Riven and driven by turbulent time.”
And a life is a love and a love is a dream;
Where the winds come in from the far Cathay
With odour of spices and balm and bay,
And summer abideth for aye and aye,--
Nor comes in a tour with the stately June,
And comes too late, and returns too soon
To the land of the sun and of summer's noon.
"She stood in the shadows as the sun went down,
Fretting her curls with her fingers brown,
As tall as the silk-tipped tasselled corn-
Stood strangely watching as I weighed the gold
We had washed that day where the river rolled;
And her proud lip curled with a sun-clime scorn,
As she asked, 'Is she better or fairer than I ?—
She, that blonde in the land beyond,
Where the sun is hid and the seas are high-
That you gather-in gold as the years go on,
And hoard and hide it away for her
As a squirrel burrows the black pine-burr?'
"Now the gold weighed well, but was lighter of weight
Than we two had taken for days of late;
So I was fretted, and, brow a-frown,
I said, 'She is fairer, and I loved her first,
And shall love her last, come the worst to worst.'
Now her eyes were black and her skin was brown,
But her lips grew livid and her eyes afire
As I said this thing: and higher and higher
The hot words ran, when the booming thunder
Pealed in the crags and the pine-tops under,
While up by the cliff in the murky skies
It looked as the clouds had caught the fire-
The flash and fire of her wonderful eyes.
"She turned from the door and down to the river, And mirrored her face in the whimsical tide; Then threw back her hair, as if throwing a quiver, As an Indian throws it back far from his side
And free from his hands, swinging fast to the shoulder,
When rushing to battle; and, rising, she sighed
And shook, and shivered as aspens shiver.
Then a great green snake slid into the river,
Glistening, green, and with eyes of fire.
Quick, double-handed she seized a boulder,
And cast it with all the fury of passion,
As with lifted head it went curving across,
Swift darting its tongue with a fierce desire,
Curving and curving, lifting higher and higher,
Bent and beautiful as a river-moss.
Then, smitten, it turned, bent, broken, and doubled,
And licked, red-tongued, like a forked fire,
And sank, and the troubled waters bubbled,
And then swept on in their old swift fashion.
"I lay in my hammock. The air was heavy
And hot and threatening; the very heaven
Was holding its breath; and bees in a bevy
Hid under my thatch; and birds were driven
In clouds to the rocks in a hurried whirr,
As I peered down by the path for her.
She stood like a bronze bent over the river,
The proud eyes fixed, the passion unspoken-
When the heavens broke like a great dyke broken.
Then, ere I fairly had time to give her
A shout of warning, a rushing of wind,
And the rolling of clouds, and a deafening din,
And a darkness that had been black to the blind,
Came down, as I shouted, 'Come in! come in!
Come under the roof, come up from the river,
As up from a grave-come now, or come never!'
The tasselled tops of the pines were as weeds,
The red-woods rocked like to lake-side reeds,
And the world seemed darkened and drowned for ever.
"One time in the night as the black wind shifted,
And a flash of lightning stretched over the stream,
I seemed to see her with her brown hands lifted--
Only seemed to see, as one sees in a dream--
With her eyes wide-wild, and her pale lips pressed,
And the blood from her brow and the flood to her breast;
When the flood caught her hair as the flax in a wheel,
And, wheeling and whirling her round like a reel,
Laughed loud her despair, then leapt long like a steed,
Holding tight to her hair, folding fast to her heel,
Laughing fierce, leaping far as if spurred to its speed:-
Now mind, I tell you all this did but seem—
Was seen as you see fearful scenes in a dream ;
For what the devil could the lightning show
In a night like that, I should like to know?
“And then I slept, and sleeping I dreamed
Of great green serpents with tongues of fire,
And of death by drowning, and of after death-
Of the day of judgment, wherein it seemed
That she, the heathen, was bidden higher,
Higher than I; that I clung to her side,
And clinging struggled, and struggling cried,
And crying wakened, all weak of my breath.
"Long leaves of the sun lay over the floor,
And a chipmonk chirped in the open door;
But above on his crag the eagle screamed,
Screamed as he never had screamed before.
I rushed to the river: the flood had gone
Like a thief, with only his tracks upon
The weeds and grasses and warm wet sand;
And I ran after with reaching hand,
And called as I reached, and reached as I ran,
And ran till I came to the cañon's van,
Where the waters lay in a bent lagoon,
Hooked and crooked like the hornèd moon.
"Here in the surge where the waters met,
And the warm wave lifted, and the winds did fret
The wave till it foamed with rage on the land,
She lay with the wave on the warm white sand.
Her rich hair trailed with the trailing weeds,
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