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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
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"DRIFTINGS 
 
 IN 
 
 ^DREAMLAND 
 
 POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 JEROME A. ANDERSON 
 
 THE LOTUS PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 
 1170 Market Street, 
 SAN FRANCISCO, CAI., DEC. 25, 1894. 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1894, 
 BY JEROME A. ANDERSON, 
 
 I I 70 Market Street, 
 SAN FRANCISCO, - - CALIFORNIA. 
 

 INTRODUCTION- 
 
 In presenting this little volume of poems to the public, the 
 writer makes no claim to the distinction of being a great, or even 
 a minor, poet. He believes from the very depths of his being that 
 all men are alike, and one, in essence ; and therefore, that all have 
 the poetic faculty, either actually or potentially. To demonstrate 
 this by striking a few chords to which the humblest and lowliest 
 hearts can respond, the collection is published. The poems, al 
 most without exception, were written while the author was quite 
 young. Since then, other work for humanity which seemed more 
 imperative has caused the cessation of any poetical attempts. 
 Whether these youthful poems will ever be justified by the better 
 work of maturer years, depends upon that other work assuming 
 or seeming to assume a relatively lesser importance. But the 
 writer believes there is sufficient merit in this volume to justify 
 its publication; else it would uoc be done. 
 
 A. ANDERSON. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Reincarnation r 
 
 In Shasta s Shadow *9 
 
 Rachel 22 
 
 At the End 2 3 
 
 Fate 2 5 
 
 Reminiscor 2 ^ 
 
 Rest 26 
 
 Faith 2 7 
 
 Eternal Patience 2 7 
 
 My Creed 28 
 
 SEA SONGS. 
 
 The Southern Cross 3 1 
 
 Sunset on the Golden Gate 3 2 
 
 At Sea 34 
 
 Sunset at Sea 35 
 
 IN DIALECT. 
 
 In the Drift 39 
 
 Fisherman Job 4 
 
 Aunt Beulah 43 
 
 Only Joe 45 
 
 Eliab Eliezer 47 
 
 Laborer Mike 49 
 
 LlSSA. 
 
 Part 1 5 1 
 
 LlSSA 
 
 Part II 6 5 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 The Old Homestead 79 
 
 Culpa Mia 8 5 
 
 In the Churchyard 86 
 
 Promise 88 
 
 In Memoriam 88 
 
 The Echo 9 
 
 The Country Party 9 1 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 To- 94 
 
 In Silence 95 
 
 But This 95 
 
 In the Gloaming 96 
 
 Ivy 97 
 
 Contentment 98 
 
 El Cabo de Todos 99 
 
 Armageddon 100 
 
 Unrecognized 101 
 
 YOUTHFUL POEMS. 
 
 Possession 105 
 
 In Golden Gate Park 105 
 
 A Picture 107 
 
 Retribution 109 
 
 After Church in 
 
 Winona 112 
 
 A Dream of the Tropics 113 
 
 Unrest 114 
 
 Sonnet 115 
 
 A Burial Hymn 116 
 
 Adios 116 
 
 In An Album 117 
 
 In Retrospect . % 117 
 
 Drift With the Tide 119 
 
 Madonna Mia 120 
 
 Evening and Morning. 121 
 
 Fickle Sorrow 122 
 
 A Fragment 123 
 
 A Memory 125 
 
il, 
 
 
 
 Usq/nA,Z lA * 
 
 
 
 Jessamine ^> 
 
 Violet, 
 This Book is Affectionately Dedicated. 
 
MYSTIC POEMS. 
 
REINCARNATION. 
 
 in that far-oiT time, of which thou tellest, 
 Thou shalt be I? When I am cold and dead, 
 And life from my numb fingers slipped and fallen, 
 Thou shalt take up again its silver thread? 
 
 Thou shalt be I? My very dreams and visions, 
 My hopes, my aspirations, and my fears, 
 
 Mv sins and shame e en these be in thy being, 
 
 And mold thy fate through those thy span of years ? 
 
 Nay, I had thought when this brief life is over 
 To lay the body, like a worn-out tool, aside, 
 
 And the dark record of its earthly errors 
 Within the silence of the grave to hide. 
 
 Or that the grave-earth through the coming ages 
 Shut in and closed the Book of Life for aye. 
 
 And, say st thou, there are yet unopened pages, 
 And every page a life another I? 
 
 So be it. There are thoughts my soul has cherished 
 I fain would see live on when I am dead. 
 
 *A monologue, in which the reflected " I " of the present personality addresses 
 the reflected " I," of the next. In the philosophy of Reincarnation, the real 
 " I," the Reincarnating Ego, is untouched and unchanged by birth or death. 
 With its lower reflection in matter, or each personal "I," the case is dif 
 ferent. This perishes as an entity at death, and only lives in the memory of 
 the Higher or Reincarnating Ego thereafter. Of course, it is the same " I am I" 
 in each personality; but this poem is written from the point of view of the ordi 
 nary person, who has no recollection of preceding lives, and to whom, therefore, 
 each life seems separate and distinct. 
 
12 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 If but the good survived ! If evil perished 
 Thou had st not such a thorny path to tread. 
 
 And so, I charge thee, hearken to my warning, 
 For I have somehow missed the goal in life, 
 
 And thou, mine other self, mayhap may st profit 
 By these my failures in its war and strife. 
 
 I have dreamed dreams of bold and high endeavor ; 
 
 Of battles for the Right fought well and won ; 
 Of succor for the oppressed ; of freedom conquered 
 
 For serfs of every clime beneath the sun. 
 
 Yet, in the passion of the battle s clamor, 
 
 I have been reckless of my thrusts and blows, 
 
 And oft have found, when passed the glamour fatal, 
 Myself, a traitor, fighting for my foes. 
 
 And often when the world, mad, drunk with error, 
 Knelt to some transient idol of its heart, 
 
 Crying, " Great is Baal ! Baal, live forever ! " 
 I have been silent : played the coward s part. 
 
 But thou O, thou shalt see with clearer vision ! 
 
 Thou shalt face sternly, in majestic wrath, 
 All forms of error. Fears shall not assail thee, 
 
 Nor Doubt s dark demons stalk about thy path. 
 
 And if, amidst the warfare and the turmoir, 
 The Sphynx has looked upon me, gloomy-eyed, 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 13 
 
 And questioned : " What is life 1 " I turned me priestward, 
 And on their pattered creeds alone relied. 
 
 And if Christ s tender, pitiful forgiveness 
 
 Seemed an unmanly portal to the rights 
 Of blissful heaven ; if such cheap salvation 
 
 A warrant seemed for lengthening sin s delights ; 
 
 Or if pure Buddha s life-long sacrificing 
 
 Of all desires that make our earth lives sweet 
 
 Seemed but a darkening of the holy wisdom 
 That chains in flesh our erring, straying feet ; 
 
 Or if the sacred fire of Zoroaster 
 
 Concealed the true Fire from our longing eyes; 
 Or if Mahomet s holy fasts and vigils 
 
 Led to a sensuous, selfish Paradise, 
 
 I questioned not. Thou shalt not need to question: 
 All faiths shall yield their mysteries to thee. 
 
 Thou shalt lay bare the Secret of the Ages, 
 
 And know the truth : and it shall make thee free. 
 
 The world has known a thousand holy Saviours 
 Each Judas-kissed, betrayed, and thrice denied. 
 
 Prometheus, Indra, Christna, Mithra, Jesus, 
 Are but a tithe of these, its Crucified. 
 
 And thou shalt love them all. Thy larger wisdom 
 Beneath each creed shall find truth s hidden gems. 
 
 Thou shalt ascend to many mystic Calvaries ; 
 Thou shalt bring myrrh to many Bethlehems. 
 
14 DRIFT LNGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 The separate goal, the personal salvation, 
 Shall seem a selfish end to thy pure eyes. 
 
 Humanity s great, pulsing soul be thy soul, 
 To perish with it, or with it to rise. 
 
 And I have dreamed of love ; and, in my dreaming, 
 
 Have likened it to that rejected stone 
 Which made the temple perfect. Blessed and radiant, 
 
 Life crowned by love sits king-like on its throne. 
 
 Yet, like the treasure by some earth-gnome guarded, 
 Love vanishes when just within our grasp. 
 
 Like Dead Sea fruit, it turns to dust and ashes 
 A Cleopatra s basket, with its asp. 
 
 And why? Men know not love from selfish passion : 
 They force, like Titus, its most holy shrine, 
 
 And find naught there but solitude and silence. 
 Love dwells within : it has no carnal sign. 
 
 The love that seeks as its supremest object 
 To crown another life with its high grace 
 
 Encounters lust, mad, frantic for possession, 
 And dies in that unholy, fierce embrace ! 
 
 And man who ever seeks some hapless idol, 
 Forsaking stone, has made of woman one, 
 
 Wiser than He who first his help-meet fashioned 
 Flesh of his very flesh j bone of his bone. 
 
 Bone of his bone. His strength, his weakness 
 Is knit in every fibre of her heart, 
 
DRIFIINGS IN LREAMIvAND. 15 
 
 In every good, in every sin or passion 
 
 Still is she help-meet ; bears an equal part. 
 
 Except that man through ages of oppression 
 
 Has forced her to adopt a devious path ; 
 Forbade to reason, taught to turn, dissemble, 
 
 She fawns and natters to forestall his wrath. 
 
 He sternly bids her prophesy. Her message, 
 
 Like Delphic priestess, in her cave of old, 
 Bears double meaning. He in choosing 
 
 Takes that his self love wishes to be told. 
 
 And so she sits, a tottering, trembling goddess, 
 Upon the dizzy heights of her false throne. 
 
 Half conscious of her folly ; half believing, 
 And wholly envious of man alone. 
 
 And yet her throne is formed of aspirations 
 Toward all that men hold sacred, holy, true. 
 
 She incarnates the virtues of the nations 
 As Buddha s ugly, lifeless idols do. 
 
 But in thy day Oh, then shall love be perfect ! 
 
 Thine eyes shall not be blinded by the light 
 Of fires unholy. Thou shalt choose thine help-meet, 
 
 Star-eyed, clear-souled and radiant in thy sight. 
 
 She shall enfeminine thy harder nature ; 
 
 Thou shalt bring strength where she is faint and weak 
 And thy divided lives shall this blessed union 
 
 Into the One of perfect being speak. 
 
16 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 The weariness of age bears hard upon me, 
 
 And memories of unforgiven sins 
 Loom large and black, as life s brief day declining 
 
 Shows sharper shadows ere death s night begins. 
 
 And in my soul there dwells the gnawing sadness 
 
 Of golden opportunities forever lost ; 
 Of toils and pain to gain the gifts of Mammon ; 
 
 Of heaping dust to ashes, to my cost. 
 
 For I have lived for intellect; have wandered 
 Down dusty paths of useless, cumbrous lore. 
 
 The surface-seeing, catalogueing Babel 
 Of science I have held a priceless store. 
 
 That science which with all its store of knowledge 
 Knows naught of life from whence it came, or why. 
 
 A broken reed, it pierces, sharp and sudden, 
 When at the end we lean on it to die. 
 
 And I must wait (thou sayest) in worlds unreal, 
 With earth s desires still hot within my heart, 
 
 While earth is not ; and time and space together 
 Forsake my life : become as things apart. 
 
 Yet feel the shock and thrill of mortal battles, 
 While I seem by some hideous nightmare bound ; 
 
 My touch unfelt, my form unseen, unnoticed; 
 Voice my despair in shrieks that give no sound. 
 
 I shall press kisses on lips cold, unanswering ; 
 My loving words beat back on my own breath. 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 17 
 
 One hope alone shall cheer my fainting spirit 
 The speedy coming of the second Death. 
 
 O^e day is as a thousand years in His sight ; 
 
 A thousand years as one, brief, Summer day. 
 It well may be that one such hour of torture 
 
 Shall purge a lifetime s earth-desires away. 
 
 Then I shall merge my purified existence 
 
 Into bright visions, glorious, supreme. 
 The loved and lost shall gather close around me 
 
 I shall create and dream them in my dream. 
 
 And I will dream no partings there, no sorrows, 
 
 (I shall be arbiter, creator, king), 
 No envy, malice, heartache, hate, ambition, 
 
 No sin nor shame, nor any wicked thing. 
 
 Rest shall be there. The moaning, tossing ocean 
 Shall break no more its billows on the shore ; 
 
 The laboring earth shall cease its fierce commotion, 
 And storm and quake shall rend and throe no more. 
 
 And peace, and truth, and hope shall brood in silence, 
 
 Until a new and perfect earth I tread. 
 The nations shall not gnash their teeth in anguish, 
 
 Nor curse, nor murder, in their strife for bread. 
 
 Alas, the woes of life, its struggling, sinning, 
 
 Are earth-born, of the body s fierce desire. 
 Few, few have sinned for knowledge or for wisdom. 
 
 Soul sight grows clear at passion s funeral pyre. 
 
18 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 And here the bitter struggle for existence 
 
 Strengthens each base and false thing in our hearts, 
 
 Which else had died ; but now, in black luxuriance, 
 Preys vampire-like upon our better parts. 
 
 Yet, while I dream, of wars and woes unconscious, 
 The struggle for the Right will still go on. 
 
 Lo, even now, faint-limned against the Orient 
 Appears the promise of the coming dawn. 
 
 Yea, champions shall rise ; and hairy Baptists, 
 Shall cry out in life s wilderness of wrong ; 
 
 And Christ s shall come ; Buddhas forego Nirvana 
 And when I wake the time will not seem long. 
 
 Nay, when thou wakest. I shall be forgotten 
 When thou shalt " get thee coats of skin " again, 
 
 And joy in life with all its glorious newness, 
 Unconscious of my old life s grief or pain. 
 
 My spirit shall be thine I know it fully 
 Whate er this mortal body may betide. 
 
 And yet, this brain that thinks, this heart so daring 
 They seem as kingly tools to cast aside. 
 
 Ah, well ! I merge my hopes and aspirations 
 On thee ; and I will henceforth bring to thee 
 
 The sacrifice of all my lower nature 
 
 That thou may st rise, unfettered, fearless, free. 
 
 Thine eyes shall see the glory and the triumph, 
 Thy lips shall voice the paeans and the songs, 
 
 When kingcraft, statecraft, priestcraft, all shall perish, 
 And with them all their harpy brood of wrongs. 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 The petty aims of life, its vain ambitions, 
 These are but toys that occupy its youth. 
 
 Its manhood s strength shall find but one vocation 
 The earnest, ceaseless search for God and truth. 
 
 Sometime these past lives all shall be remembered? 
 
 Nay, then, if thou shalt gain that sunny height, 
 Look kindly back on this my feeble groping, 
 
 Through doubts and darkness, towards the promised light 
 
 Perhaps the one, supreme, initial effort, 
 The choice between the evil and the good. 
 
 O * 
 
 That made thee possible, is marked by footprints 
 Where iny thorn- torn and bleeding feet have stood. 
 
 IN SHASTA S SHADOW. 
 
 JTTuE air is fragrant with the balmy breath 
 * Of stately cedar, and of drooping fir ; 
 
 Of mountain pines that softly sway and stir, 
 As each to each some whispered secret saith. 
 
 Above looms up great Shasta s hoary head, 
 Clothed in white raiment of eternal snow. 
 Silent, apart, he views the world below 
 
 Like one who counts his unreturning dead. 
 
 His birth-throes rent the reeling continents, 
 
 Midst shifting seas, and quaking, world-wide fears 
 
20 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 When history clossd her long account of years, 
 And turned a page, all whit3, for new events. 
 
 For when his peaks shook off the sapphire wave, 
 And reared them haughty to the horrent sky, 
 Atlantis sank, with drowning, dying cry, 
 
 To her abysmal, lost, forgotten grave. 
 
 Yet, since, he sits in lone, eternal pride ; 
 
 A civilization counts but one brief day ; 
 
 Its rise, its zenith, and its slow decay 
 Mark but a ripple on his life s long tide. 
 
 His wisdom is the fruit .of age untold ; 
 
 His silence, because none can understand. 
 
 Alone he sits, and, sphynx-like, views the land 
 Whose history is locked in his firm hold. 
 
 The Dwellers in the Caves he saw their day ; 
 
 The Builders of the Mounds to him bowed down ; 
 
 The Aztecs sacrificed beneath his frown ; 
 And these, the offspring of some lost Cathay 
 
 All, all he knew. Their long-forgotten past 
 Lives in his memory, as fresh and green 
 As these tall pines, whose leafy, emerald sheen 
 
 Begirts his base, in forests dense and vast. 
 
 Yet, like Atlantis, mayhap waits a sea, 
 
 That shall o erwhelm e en his imperious brow. 
 All things created to time s fiat bow, 
 
 And Shasta s very name shall buried be. 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 21 
 
 Still, ere that awful day, of nature s wrath, 
 
 When she " repents" her having borne our race, 
 And to our prayers turns stein, unpitying face, 
 
 While cataclysms sweep us from her path, 
 
 It may be Shasta, from his icy height, 
 
 Shall look down o er a happier, better world. 
 Ormuzd, perchance, may win ; Ahriman hurled 
 
 Where new spheres rise by mingling wrong and right. 
 
 Then will the cruel race for wealth have ceased ; 
 
 Ambition fold his bloody hands and die ; 
 
 No Shylocks for their pounds of flesh shall cry ; 
 No idlers sit down to an unearned feast. 
 
 No more the war-cry of the strong be heard ; 
 
 Nor nations plunged by king-craft into strife ; 
 
 But in the new, grand Brotherhood of life 
 The deeper, truer chords of love be stirred. 
 
 Then Labor shall be king , unfettered thought 
 
 Shall set his tasks to pure, harmonic song. 
 
 Days shall be full of peace, and life be long, 
 And strife and evil cease, and be forgot. 
 
 0, Shasta, if before thou sink st again 
 
 Thou see st these things, brought by our drifting ships, 
 So shalt thou pass with blessings on thy lips, 
 
 And thy long life will not have been in vain ! 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 RACHEL. 
 
 IN Ramah, o er her infant dead, 
 Wept Rachel ; sore, uncomforted. 
 
 Above, the sky arched blue, serene ; 
 Beneath, the vine-clad hills were green. 
 
 Soft breezes, fresh from Galilee, 
 Brought grateful kisses from the sea. 
 
 All fair things thronged about the spot ; 
 Yet what availed when they were not *? 
 
 The harp, swept o er by fingers skilled, 
 Seemed rnoskery with their voices stilled. 
 
 The twitter of the nesting birds 
 Recalled their broken, childish words. 
 
 A thousand unexpected things 
 Brought sudden, sharp rememberings. 
 
 O, Jewess mother, centuries 
 Still echo thy despairing cries ! 
 
 Thy life is not is past, apart ; 
 
 Yet still thy wailings haunt each heart 
 
 Still we, who weep a withered flower 
 That bloomed one, transitory hour, 
 
 In our new grief but voice the woe 
 That wrung thy heart so long ago. 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DRKAMI.AND. 
 
 Still is the tear our eye that tills 
 Old as Judea s hoary hills. 
 
 And white lips mumble words of faith, 
 And each set phrase that comforteth. 
 
 But in our hearts, Death s " Dust to dust" 
 Meets voiceless plaint, "Unjust, unjust !" 
 
 And Time, who heals all wounds but death, 
 Folds helpless hands, nor answereth. 
 
 And so, like thee, with bowed head, 
 We mourn our dead, uncomforted ! 
 
 AT THE END. 
 
 OME day shall death look on my face 
 And bid me follow to his place. 
 
 Some day my wearied lids shall seal 
 To earth, and awful things reveal. 
 
 What shall come first, of all that waits 
 Where life is barred back at his gates ? 
 
 Will earth have fled, as flees a dream 
 Before the morning s wakening beam 1 
 
 Or will our dim, sealed eyes, the end 
 The vision of enchantment lend 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 And earthly things change and grow clear, 
 Until we find that heaven is here ? 
 
 Will slim, white hands we oft have kissed 
 Beach out and grasp ours through the mist ? 
 
 And a soft voice, out of the Infinite, 
 Say, " Sorrow is dead, and woe with it." 
 
 " Of all sweet things in the vale of breath 
 There is naught so beautiful as death." 
 
 " Death, which you mortals so dread and fear, 
 Is a pitying, compassionate angel, dear ! " 
 
 Ah, well ! Let us fold our hands and wait ; 
 Some day will be woven our web of faie. 
 
 And the Weaver shall look on it once and say, 
 " It is done as I planned it ; take it away ! " 
 
 And the knowledge that no one can know and live 
 That moment under His eyes will give ! 
 
 In the silence that follows ours souls shall hear 
 The Sphynx s dark riddle first made clear. 
 
 O, terrible joy ! O, moment grand ! 
 To feel it is ours at last to command ! 
 
 For life has concealed with the mists of his breath ; 
 But death must discover, or he is not death ! 
 
 And we, who in life were the sport of fate, 
 At last his secrets must penetrate. 
 
DR.IFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 25 
 
 As dumb brutes we are constrained and compelled 
 Life forced upon us and its meaning withheld ; 
 
 But death, like a beautiful dream, ere long 
 
 Shall right each thing that has seemed to us wrong. 
 
 And our pale lips parted, but not with breath, 
 Shall whisper, "O, terrible, beautiful death," 
 
 Of your joys the chief est, supremest good, 
 
 Is to find God knew ; and we misunderstood ! " 
 
 FATE. 
 
 SULLEN SEA, that fling st thy waves 
 5 Against the adamantine rock, 
 Which age on age thy fury braves, 
 
 Canst thou forbear the hopeless shock 1 
 
 O brooklet, murmuring through the lea 
 Where buttercups and pansies grow, 
 
 The gray, dead sea awaiteth thee, 
 
 Yet canst thou stay thine onward flow? 
 
 soul, that beatest gainst the bars 
 
 Which gall and chafe thy prisoned life, 
 
 Defeat has marred a thousand wars, 
 
 Yet canst thou cea >e the bootless strife 1 
 
26 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 REMINISCOR. 
 
 How sweet will earth life seem ! 
 
 Who has not passed through troubled times, where foes 
 Made life a weary burden, till arose 
 Betimes strong friends, who stayed his sinking hands, 
 And victory wrought 1 Yet when the shifting sands 
 Of life have thrown that barren waste of time 
 Far in the past, how discords melt to rhyme ! 
 How do the false, the wrong fade from our view, 
 Leaving undimmecl the good, the beautiful, the true, 
 
 Blended as in a peaceful dream ! 
 
 How sweet will earth life seem ! 
 The sin and shame, the woe and misery, 
 Will all have faded. Memory s drifting ships 
 Will cast the gall and wormwood in the sea, 
 And bring sweet wines alone unto our longing lips. 
 And we shall drink ; and with the draught shall come 
 Old earth life thronging back ; as passing sweet 
 As when in visions comes our childhood s home, 
 With grassy pathways for our tired feet, 
 With love our aching hearts to fill replete, 
 
 And not one link lost from the perfect dream 
 
 REST. 
 
 ODEAD, who slumber soft, with dim, sealed eyes, 
 ) Nor struggle more for nature s hard-grudged breath, 
 Is it not sweet, this solemn sleep of death, 
 Where tasks are done, and none cry out, " Arise? 1 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 FAITH. 
 
 A traveller o er a pathless plain 
 
 While yet from haunts of men afar, 
 
 Was shrouded by night s sable train, 
 Unlit by one faint, glimmering star. 
 
 Yet still he bravely struggled on, 
 Hoping to hold his course aright, 
 
 And soon a dim path chanced upon, 
 Which plainer grew as grew the night. 
 
 But when the morning dawned at last 
 To his amazement then he found 
 
 The long, long weary night had passed 
 Treading a narrow circle s round. 
 
 Oh, thus do men, with clinging faith, 
 Press onward through the night of life, 
 
 Each in his circle, until death 
 At last forbids the useless strife. 
 
 All faiths are false ; are but the track 
 Where wandering, erring feet have trod. 
 
 All faiths are true, for all lead back 
 To where we started and to God. 
 
 ETERNAL PATIENCE, 
 
 IN Egypt, godlike Cheops reigned, 
 And built a wondrous pyramid. 
 Long centuries have waxed and waned 
 Since in its depths his tomb he hid. 
 
 
28 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 At length, by vandal hands laid bare, 
 
 Some wheat grains in the tomb were found. 
 
 They sowed them there with wond ring care 
 In Gizeh s silent, sacred ground. 
 
 They sprouted, grew ! The cycling years 
 Could not destroy the germs they hid. 
 
 Disturbed by neither doubts nor fears, 
 They waited neath the pyramid. 
 
 Have faith, my soul ! The germs of good 
 Somewhere within thy being lie ; 
 
 The Bow of Promise spans the flood 
 Thine hour awaits thee, by-and-by ! 
 
 MY CREED. 
 
 TTTms is my creed : I cannot reach 
 -* By thougiit, or word, or deed, the height 
 Where God is throned. My puny might 
 Is less than naught in His pure sight. 
 
 Yet God made Man : and men are his. 
 And so, like one who wandering 
 Finds a poor brute, dumb, suffering, 
 And succors the insensate thing 
 
 For love unto its master borne, 
 
 E en so towards man, frail, passion-tossed, 
 Will I do right. If, to my cost, 
 More is required, then am I lost. 
 
^ gr^_ 
 
 SEA SONGS. 
 
THE SOUTHERN CROSS. 
 
 THWART a sky of purple dye 
 
 It flared and flamed, a beacon light, 
 A grand, weird beacon, set on high 
 To guide a drifting world aright. 
 
 And all around the restless sea 
 
 White arms aloft did reach and toss, 
 
 And gladly called aloud to me, 
 
 " The Southern Cross ! The Southern Cross ! 
 
 And I was glad ; and, gazing far 
 
 Across the foam, blown white as floss, 
 
 I vowed no more the North s cold star 
 Should lure me from this tiery Cross. 
 
 For that dear night she stood by me, 
 My dark love, of the sunny South, 
 
 And each gust, eddying o er the sea, . 
 Blew me sweet kisses from her mouth. 
 
 Her tresses, tangled by the breeze, 
 
 Swept o er my breast, in silken skeins. 
 
 Oh, never fetters dear as these 
 
 Bound hopeless thrall in willing chains ! 
 
 Her large, dark eyes now thrilled me through, 
 Now drooped beneath their fringes long. 
 
 Her voice, low-toned, and accent true, 
 Seemed sweet as some sad singer s song. 
 
32 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 Clasped to my heart, with trembling joy, 
 (How strangely kin are joy and pain ! ) 
 
 My happiness knew no alloy 
 
 JFirst, last, with thee, O maid of Spain 1 
 
 O, naming Cross, far from thy sight 
 I roam the icy North alone. 
 
 The love that dawned that starry night 
 As dawned thy light for aye is gone. 
 
 And still I sigh, and moaning cry 
 Unto the hungry, cruel sea, 
 
 O, give my sweet dead up to me 
 O, sea, or clasp and bid me die ! 
 
 SUNSET ON THE GOLDEN GATE. 
 
 BOAM-C RESTED waves, of molten gold, 
 That rock enrapt in sundown beams, 
 And hold and kiss the crimson gleams, 
 Like lover, grown with dalliance bold. 
 
 I list their murmur on the beach 
 
 Of this, the wave- worn Occident, 
 And muse if so the Orient 
 
 They lull with like low, dreamy speech. 
 
 Aye, speech of brighter skies than these, 
 That look down o er a fairer clime ; 
 A land of music, mirth and rhyme, 
 
 Of greener isles ; of bluer seas. 
 
DRIPPINGS IN DREAMLAND. 33 
 
 For somewhere, while the billows fret, 
 
 Rocks ship of mine, that rich freight brings 
 To waiting me. Their whisperings 
 
 Say, " Hold thy faith ; she cometh yet 1 " 
 
 Still all they tell I can not ken 
 
 I know when South winds softly blow, 
 And rippling crests, with murmur low, 
 
 Croon to their mates, who croon again, 
 
 That they are whispering of lands 
 
 Which lie I know not where ; I list 
 To voices, calling through the mist, 
 
 And fainting reach to reaching hands 
 
 And suddenly my dream is gone. 
 
 Returns the silvery beach once more, 
 The crimson waves break on the shore^ 
 
 And murmur on ; and murmur on. 
 
 Now sinks the sun beneath the wave, 
 
 And calls each lingering beam away, 
 And speeds them forth, to herald day 
 
 On shores which Far-East oceans lave. 
 
 Reluctant yields each shivering crest 
 Her lover, who in haste has fled : 
 Yet blushing now a rosy red 
 
 That he so long lay on her breast. 
 
 But night, approaching silently, 
 
 Hides now the blush neath purple pall, 
 
 That falleth gently over all, 
 And lulls to sleep both land and sea. 
 
34 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 AT SEA. 
 
 TTTHE waves dash by with eager speed, 
 * As though from far-off seas had come 
 
 Dim bugle call and roll of drum, 
 Telling of strife and hour of need. 
 
 And on ea^h quivering, rushing crest 
 The white foam leaps, like rider bold, 
 Who, falling, yet regains his hold, 
 
 With lightest laugh when hardest pressed. 
 
 And gray gulls, folding weary wings, 
 Alight within our vessel s wake, 
 Drop far astern, then, rising, take 
 
 Our course, with scolding questionings. 
 
 To starboard glides a stately ship, 
 
 With silent sails that glint and gleam ; 
 An utter stranger, yet abeam 
 
 Our courteous ensigns mutual dip. 
 
 And I I look, and muse, and say, 
 " O, brother, on life s stormy sea, 
 Let this to us a token be 
 
 While threading our uncertain way." 
 
 " Reach out, and grasp my reaching hands 
 For the brief time our pathways cross, 
 Then though the waves roll in, and toss 
 
 Our barks apart, the moment stands. 
 
 An island green, whose emerald sheen 
 Of wave- washed shores shall ever be 
 A grateful, pleasant memory, 
 
 Tho years and seas drift in between !" 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 SUNSET AT SEA. 
 OFF THE COAST OF SAN SALVADOR, CENTRAL AMERICA. 
 
 CTT WESTERN lies a weird, wide sheen 
 
 /*> Of waves, which stretch, a purple sedge, 
 
 Out the far horizon s edge, 
 And droon and croon the waste between. 
 
 While to the East a tropic shore 
 
 Looms out, as brought by magic wand ; 
 And seaward from the flower-strewn land, 
 
 Drift odors sweet, the waters o er. 
 
 And farther back, within the marge 
 Of shadows where creeps on the night, 
 Dim outlined by his own rod light, 
 
 Santana towers, black and large. 
 
 Anear, in moody silence, frown 
 
 Huge peaks, whose fires have long since died j 
 Yet grand they stand, in sullen pride, 
 
 Wrapped in the darkness, settling down. 
 
 Lo ! in the West, as sinks the sun, 
 
 A thousand viewless spirit hands 
 
 Are busy, painting fairer lands 
 Than mortal eyes e er look upon. 
 
 Dense banks of purple cloudlets form 
 Dark foreground; then a crystal sea, 
 A glassy, waveless, boundless lea, 
 
 Sweeps towards eternal shores; while warm 
 
 35 
 
 
36 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 And beautiful, a thousand isles 
 Lie sparkling in the amber light, 
 Gemmed o er with verdure, fresh and bright 
 
 As April s in wreathed tears and smiles. 
 
 Through vales where star-crowned palm trees grow, 
 A brook of gold steals soft, as if 
 Twere dazed, until from onyx cliff 
 
 It leaps into the sea below. 
 
 And crystal mountains rise, to mock 
 Their compeers, black, upon the shore ; 
 These California s ruddy ore ; 
 
 Of sapphire those, a solid rock ! 
 
 Southward a fierce volcano burns, 
 Outpouring lava, glowing, red, 
 Which seeks a lakelet s emerald bed 
 
 And, cooling, into rubies turns. 
 
 And floating o er the enchanted scene 
 Are tinted clouds, fair as the mist 
 Of colors, when by sunbeams kissed 
 
 The blushing rainbow s arc is seen. 
 
 But night creeps slowly, surely on 
 And somber grow the tints, and gray ; 
 Like earth hopes, fade they sad away, 
 
 And sea, and isles, and day are gone. 
 
IN DIALECT 
 
IN THE DRIFT. 
 
 EAR away down the shaft, in the face of the drift, 
 Two miners were busily working. 
 With a jest now and then, just to give time a lift, 
 As they toiled through the hours of the dreary night shift 
 Nor dreamed they of danger near lurking. 
 
 One Cornish. He spoke of his home o er the sea, 
 
 And its loved ones, with passionate yearning j 
 A dear, patient wife, who with hope ever bright 
 Watched o : er her three babes, kept the cottage aright, 
 While awaiting the wanderer s returning. 
 
 How the thought fires his heart, puts new strength in his arm, 
 
 And the worn drill is clanging and shrieking 
 At the quick, stinging blows which relentlessly fall, 
 Driving slow the hard steel in the firm granite wall, 
 Which encases the treasure he s seeking. 
 
 The other, a mere lad, scarce out of his teens, 
 
 Soft-voiced and fair as a maiden. 
 
 He had come from the States ; and he spoke of the day 
 When from mother and home he had wandered away 
 
 To the mines, that with treasures were laden. 
 
 "And I never write back," added he, while his voice 
 
 Grew cold, just to hide his regretting ; 
 "For I made up my mind not to write till I d struck 
 Something grand ; but I never have had any luck, 
 
 And I guess the old folks, are fretting 
 
40 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 To hear from me. Well, I guess one of these days 
 
 I ll sit down, and write thsm a letter 
 Jus-t to tell them I m living. It s hard, tho , you seo 
 They always had counted so much upon me, 
 
 And to think that I ve not done no better ! " 
 
 "Is the hole deep enough] Well, let s tamp down tha blast. 
 
 It s too late to begin any sinking : 
 Stick a light to the fuse and come out o that Joe; 
 We ll stop in the raise till we hear the blast go ; 
 
 It ll throw pretty well, I m a-tliinking." 
 
 " A cave, did you say ? Great God, them poor men ! n 
 
 " Both killed, sir. The boys say, what found em, 
 They were out in the raise, when the rocks overhead 
 Tumbled down, killing both the poor fellows stone doad, 
 And pilin the boulders up roun.l em ! " 
 
 "But the worst of all is, tho we know very well 
 How to write to the Cornishmun s home, 
 
 Where the boy s folks are liviu can t even be guessed. - w 
 
 Ah, well. After all, is it not for the best 1 
 They will die, still hoping he ll come ! 
 
 FISHERMAN JOB. 
 
 "77r ELL 7 oun un > vou re nnghty smooth spoken, and it all 
 
 ^A^ may be just as you say, 
 
 That God never interferes with us ; but lets each one go on 
 his own way; 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 41 
 
 But when heaven has silvered your locks with the snows of 
 
 some eighty odd year, 
 
 As it has mine, and always in rnarcy, you ll regret this wild 
 fancy, I fear. 
 
 " Just let me spin ye a yarn, sir, as happened a long time agone 
 
 To me, and if such is all luck, why, I hope it ll allus hold on. 
 
 It s now nearly three score Summers since this accident hap 
 pened to me; 
 
 Just after I d married my wife, arid settled down here by 
 the sea. 
 
 "For I were a fisherman born, sir, lovin always the wild 
 
 waves to ride ; 
 They re the type o my life, an I m think in tliat it s now near 
 
 the turn o the tide. 
 There ware three of us then as were partners in the trimmest 
 
 and best little boat 
 As ever were true to her colors, just a bright little "Sunbeam" 
 
 afloat. 
 
 " We had had a long run o good luck, sir, with the weather 
 
 as fair as could be ; 
 And the morrow were goin again, when the gray light first 
 
 dawned on the sea. 
 But, before I was fairly turned out it seemed as I heard 
 
 something say, 
 * There s breakers ahaad o ye, Job ; don t go on the sea, lad, 
 
 to-day ! 
 
 "At fust I felt kind o scared like, but I thought twas all 
 
 fancy, you see ; 
 So I took a good look at the sky; twas as clear and as bright 
 
 as could be. 
 
42 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 But it still seemed to whispsr, Beware ! an the breeze crept 
 
 by soughin and slow, 
 And a voice, like a wail for the dead, with each gust seemed 
 
 to murmur, Don t go ! 
 
 " Then I got kind o nettled, to think that my narves should 
 
 sarve me that way, 
 An I says to myself, You re an ass, Job ; but ye ll go for all 
 
 that, lad, this day. 
 
 So I kissed wife a hasty good bye, and set off a hummin a song, 
 Till the path took a turn by that cliff, at whose foot the sand 
 
 stretches along. 
 
 " Then what happ3n3d I never could tell, but the fust I re 
 member, I know, 
 
 The cliff were afrownin above me, and I stunned and bruised, 
 down below ! 
 
 And my wife kneelln down by my side, an lookin as fright 
 ened as if 
 
 I were dead. Says she, Job, were ye crazy 1 ? Ye walked 
 right straight off o the cliff! 
 
 "I didn t say much; and of course my mates went out that 
 
 day alone. 
 An I lay on my bed, kind o happy to find arter all I d not 
 
 gone. 
 But the strangest of all is yet comin , for that mornin as fair 
 
 as could be, 
 Was followed ere noon by a storm as was fairly terrific to see. 
 
 "We waited in agony, knowin such a sea the boat could not 
 
 outride ; 
 -\nd were thankful when even their bodies were laid at our 
 
 feet by the tide. 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 43 
 
 It s no use in askin my fate, if that mornin I only had gone ; 
 And, if such things all happen by luck, why, I hope it ll allus 
 hold on ! 
 
 AUNT BEULAH 
 
 mHY I never got married, Melissa 1 Well, I m sure I can t 
 tell you, my dear ; 
 I haven t thought much about sweethearts for nigh onto 
 
 thirty odd year. 
 I am sure I am happy, my darlin that to-morrow will greet 
 
 you a bride ; 
 But why I never got married law, I never could tell, if I tried. 
 
 It wasn t that none came a-wooin , deary me I had plenty of 
 
 beaux. 
 And more than I wanted. The right one didn t happen to 
 
 come, I suppose. 
 
 Tell you about them 1 You re foolish, my child. Let me see 
 Well, the handsomest one, I remember, was curly-haired 
 
 Robert McKee, 
 
 Did I love him 1 Well, yes, child, he seemed once, of course, 
 
 very dear; 
 But, law, that has passed away long since, along with these 
 
 thirty odd year. 
 Of course, I remember him yet, for we can t help that if we 
 
 would ; 
 Though I never have tried to forget him, for there 
 
 reason E should. 
 
44 DRAFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 And sometimes when I sit with my knittin my thoughts 
 
 wander back to the clays 
 When I used to love spellins and quiltins and the parties, 
 
 with old-fashioned plays. 
 And the sleigh bells that jingled so merry, as we dashed along 
 
 over the snow, 
 For Robert at such times as these was generally with me you 
 
 know. 
 
 And he seemed to be happiest always when he d tucked me in 
 
 fora ride; 
 
 And I wasn t quite so contented as when I was snug by his side. 
 Tho we never said nothin , but only loved on in the old, quiet 
 
 way; 
 But somehow i fancied that Robert grew cbarer with every day. 
 
 Till one time that I long shall remember as the happiest hour 
 
 of my life, 
 Came a letter that told all his love, and asked me to be his 
 
 own wife ! 
 Such a letter ! I always have kept it, tho now it s so faded 
 
 and blurred 
 That I scarcely can read it ; but then it was dearer than gold, 
 
 every word ! 
 
 So I stole me away to my chamber, to answer the letter, you see, 
 And tell him how happy I was to know that he loved only me. 
 Then I sent it ; and waited, and waited for his footsteps again 
 
 at the door ; 
 And what there was wrong I don t know; but 1 never saw 
 
 Robert no more ! 
 
 For the very next evening they told me he started across the 
 wide sea ; 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 45 
 
 And I bore up bravely, to show them his goin wan t nothing 
 
 to me. 
 But the sky for a time seemed so leaden, and the world was so 
 
 cheerless and cold, 
 And when it at last had passed over, I found I d begun to 
 
 grow old. 
 
 For parties and spellin s and such things seemed to be kind o 
 
 like children s play ; 
 And tho there were many came wooin there were none that I 
 
 cared to have stay. 
 So I ve lived on contented and cheerful, and I can t say that 
 
 blessings I lack, 
 For I m happy when gazin before me, and I love, dearly love 
 
 to look back. 
 
 Cryin , child 1 Well, joy that is deepest is of tenest seen in a tear ; 
 But for me it has passed away long since, along with these 
 
 thirty odd year, 
 lam happy, so happy, my darliri that to-morrow will greet you 
 
 a bride ; 
 But, why I never got married, law, I never could tell, if I trie I ! 
 
 ONLY JOE. 
 
 This grave, were ye meanin , stranger ? Oh, there s nobody 
 
 much lies here ; 
 
 Its only poor Joe, a dazed lad ; been dead now bettar n a year. 
 He were nobody s child, this Joe ; orphaned the hour of his 
 
 birth. 
 
46 DRI.VTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 And simple and dazed all his life, yet the harmles^est critter 
 on earth. 
 
 Sorae say that he died broken-hearted ; but that is all nonsense, 
 
 you know, 
 Fr.r a body could never do that as was simple and dazed, like 
 
 Joe. 
 But I ll tell you the story, stranger, and then ye can readily 
 
 see 
 How easy for some folks to fancy a thing that never could be. 
 
 Do ye see that grave over yonder 1 Well, our minister s daugh 
 ter lies there ; 
 
 She were a regular beauty, and as good as she was fair. 
 She d a nod and kind word for Joe, whenever she passed him by ; 
 But, bless ye, that were nothin , she couldn t hurt even a fly. 
 
 It weren t very often, I reckon, that people a kind word would 
 say, 
 
 For Joe was simple and stupid, and allus in somebody s way. 
 
 So when Milly took down with consumption or some such tick- 
 ness as that, 
 
 Joe took on kind o foolish there were nothin for him to cry at. 
 
 But when winter was come, she died; and I well remember 
 
 the day 
 
 When we carried the little coffin to the old churchyard away. 
 It were so bitter cold we were glad when the grave was made ; 
 And when we were done, and went home, I suppose poor Joe 
 
 must have staid. 
 For they found him here the next mornin , lyin close to tV> 
 
 grave, they raid ; 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 47 
 
 And lookin like he were asleep ; but then, of course, he were 
 
 dead. 
 
 I suppose he got chilled and sleepy, and how could a body know 
 How dangerous thet kind of sleep is, as never knosved nothin , 
 
 like Joel 
 
 ELIAB ELIEZER. 
 
 HE Reverend Eliab Eliezer 
 
 Sat toasting his shins by the grate; 
 His ponderous brain busy musing 
 On man s most pitiable state. 
 
 Abroad the storm-king was raging, 
 
 And the snow was fast whitening the ground ; 
 Yet its fury disturbed not Eliab, 
 
 From his reverie, so deep and profound. 
 
 Aye ; he thought how wicked and sinful 
 Was poor fallen man, at the best ; 
 
 And even Eliab Eliezer 
 
 Was almost as bad as the rest ; 
 
 And he piously groaned in the spirit 
 
 At the flesh, which so leads us astray. 
 "There is nothing that s good," saith Eliab, 
 
 "In these weak, worthless vessels of clay." 
 
 "Now there s swearing Meg, at the corner ; 
 Her case shows plainly, I think, 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 How wicked our natural hearts are ; 
 
 How much lower than brutes we can sink. 
 
 " I will preach to my people a sermon, 
 And take swearing Meg for my text, 
 
 And show them how narrow the safe road 
 That leads from this world to the next." 
 
 So he sat himself down at his table, 
 And began with " Original Sin ; " 
 
 And, by-and-by, Meg and her swearing 
 Were deftly dove- tailed therein. 
 
 With thirdly and fourthly he finished ; 
 
 Then turned to his grate, nice and warm ; 
 When bethought of Widow Morey, and wondered 
 
 If she were prepared for the storm. 
 
 " I will call around soon in the mornin^ 
 
 O 
 
 And be sure that all is quite right." 
 He did ; and found food in abundance, 
 
 And the grate with a fire glowing bright. 
 
 And the widow, with joy fairly weeping, 
 Told how she was caught by the storm. 
 
 Not a morsel of food for her children ; 
 Not a coal her poor hovel to warm. 
 
 And that they would surely have perished 
 
 Too chilled to go out and beg 
 When pitying heaven sent succor 
 
 By such a strange angel old Meg ! 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 49 
 
 Then a light slowly dawned on Eliab ; 
 
 I can t say what conclusion he reached ; 
 But I know, stowed away mong his sermons, 
 
 Lies one that never was preached. 
 
 LABORER MIKE. 
 
 |IKE earns just a dollar and a half .every day, 
 
 And toils from the rise to the set of the sun ; 
 He s a wife and five childer the sixth on the way 
 Who all have to eat and be clothed on his pay. 
 Now, how in the de il is it done 1 
 
 First, then, he burrows in some dirty street, 
 
 In a basement, perhaps, or, perhaps, near the sky ; 
 And he pays forty cints every day to the cheat 
 The landlord God s vicar twould seem the dead beat, 
 But he s lord of poor Mike and his sty. 
 
 Two bits to the butcher for a bit aff the neck 
 
 Of a sheep, for twill make both some broth and a stew ; 
 
 Potaties tin cints for the half av a peck ; 
 
 Siven mouths make of three loaves av bread a sad wreck, 
 And that s fifteen cints, at the best you can do. 
 
 His groceries cost him some twinty cints more 
 For sugar and coffee and butter and sich ; 
 
 Thin tin cints for coal to cook his scant store ; 
 
 And tin cints for milk, av it s left at the door ! 
 And five cints for beer wad ye grudge it, ye 
 
5 o DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 So there s fifteen cints left for the clothes that they wear 
 For shoes, hats and coats, and such short-lasting things, 
 Four dollars a month, with a few cints to spare 
 How the wife makes it do, we must niver inquire, 
 For expadients laid bare is where poverty stingy. 
 
 So Mike lives along, with nothing to fret, 
 
 Till his job peters out, or the wife s taken sick ; 
 Thin his bank suspinds payment, and Mike gets in debt 
 To butcher, and baker, and doctor, you bet, 
 
 Just as long as each party will sell goods " on tL-k." 
 
 Thin what does he dot He finds a new job. 
 
 But how can he live, and yet his debts pay 1 
 He s a deep-thinking social economist, my bob ; 
 He s honest at heart, and it hurts him to rob, 
 
 So he gathers his traps, and just moves away ! 
 
 Pray, whose is the fault 1 Mike s labor is worth 
 
 To some capitalist prince ten dollars a day. 
 He squanders the rest, for he s lord of the earth, 
 And he robs and cheats Mike from the hour of his birth, 
 While we, heartless Levites, "pass by another way." 
 
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 
 
 
LISS A. 
 
 PART I. 
 
/ have no thrilling tale to tell, 
 
 Of daring deed or awful woe; 
 
 And, should you follow wJiere I go, 
 
 A wasted life is all I trace. 
 
 Its only merit, that I know, 
 
 A brother s tis, of our strange race. 
 
LISSA. 
 
 I CAN not tell I do not know, 
 Though dumb, dead years have glided by, 
 Whose tombstones white, a ghostly sight, 
 Are all that now remain to show 
 I ve lived them o er, I say, to me 
 Tis yet an unsolved mystery 
 Why she should love me so ; or why 
 I gave such love again. Aright 
 We can not read the future s lore 
 The past is blurred by tears ; and we 
 Can only sigh; "Ah, me, Ah, me ! 
 Sweet love is dead, to live no more !" 
 
 Yet this, and this alone I know, 
 Amid the wrecks the years have made, 
 We loved. Trusting and unafraid, 
 We bade the fleeting moments go, 
 Believing, with unquestioning faith, 
 That equal joys the future hath 
 For those who wait with ne er a doubt 
 To shut the Bow of Promise out ! 
 
 Not beautiful ; but passing fair 
 She seemed. A gold-brown, dreamy eye, 
 That haunts me yet, half pleadingly, 
 Hilf haughtily; a wealth of hair 
 That rippled o er her shoulders bare 
 In jetty curls ; and cherry lips, 
 
5 6 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 Which stood half o ped, in sweet surprise 
 That you should pass them idly by, 
 When they were waiting to be kissed, 
 If love would only claim his prize ! 
 
 And oft I claimed it. Never she 
 By word or sign opposed my will ; 
 Yet still I durst not drink my fill 
 At such dear fountain, lest I be 
 With love intoxate grown, and bold 
 Had crushed my vase within my hold. 
 For deep down in her dreamy eye 
 I saw as plain as though it there 
 Were traced in words of fire, " Beware ; 
 That love which ever would endure 
 In its first state, untainted, pure, 
 Must veiled be by mystery ! " 
 
 Such maid was she, as I have drawn 
 
 In colors all too wan and faint 
 
 Her shadow e en to rightly paint 
 
 Who with firm, gentle grace, upon 
 
 Her throne within my heart reigned queen- 
 
 A worshiped queen. And who was I, 
 
 That with such blind idolatry 
 
 Low at her feet was ever seen 1 
 
 God pity me ! I do not know 
 
 I can not read the Sphynx-like book 
 
 Which opens when I inward look, 
 
 And mocks, and mystifies me so ! 
 
 For I was aye a dreamer. When 
 A wayward child, I reamed at will 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 57 
 
 O er grassy vale, or wooded hill, 
 
 Sweet, strange companions with me then 
 
 "Were ever present. I could hear 
 
 Voices which reached no other ear. 
 
 Each violet blue or buttercup 
 
 Held elf, or shut a fairy up ; 
 
 A thousand leaflets, fluttering 
 
 With joy, to me were beckoning ; 
 
 Or else, if Autumn ruled the year, 
 
 And they had purple grown and sear, 
 
 So plain they told their tale of woe, 
 
 So mutely plead for grace to stay, 
 
 That I could almost weep, as slow 
 
 They trembling took their earthward way ] 
 
 While on the North wind s chilling breath 
 
 Their slayer they with touching faith, 
 
 Wafted a farewell piteously 
 
 To life, and light, to love and me. 
 
 Yet fairest seemed the bright Springtime, 
 
 When nature doffed her icy sheen, 
 
 And donned her beauteous robes of green ; 
 
 When in a happy, babbling rhyme, 
 
 A thousand voices sweetly sang, 
 
 A thousand echoes, answering, 
 
 Made wildering concord. Low and clear, 
 
 Of all my sweethearts doubly dear, 
 
 The blushing flow rets called to me 
 
 In love s own language. Though there be 
 
 Long, silent years between, yet plain 
 
 I still can heart heir sweet refrain : 
 
5 8 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 SONG. 
 
 Come, and kiss your sweethearts, 
 Waiting, eager, longing ; 
 
 See us, laughing, pouting, 
 Everywhere a-thronging. 
 
 Here are violets, nestling 
 In bright, sunny crannies ; 
 
 Here are lowly daisies, 
 
 Here, proud Jump-up- Johnnies. 
 
 Here are red, red roses, 
 Regal in their splendor ; 
 
 Here are white, white lilies, 
 Whispering, low and tender. 
 
 Buttercups and pansies, 
 
 Brown-eyed, trembling clover 
 
 All have kisses waiting 
 For their ling ring lover ! 
 
 We, through dreary Winter 
 Dared not show our faces, 
 
 So we ve waited, waited, 
 In our hiding places ; 
 
 Cruel, will you tell us 
 
 That you did not miss us? 
 
 Out on such a lover 
 Hasten, kiss us, kiss us ! 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 59 
 
 And love oft dies as flowers die, 
 Chilled by the North wind s icy breath. 
 Died ours by such cold, numbing death 1 ? 
 Nay ; flowers can die by heat as well. 
 The very warmth which gave it birth, 
 And bade it grow and bud and bloom, 
 So oft the fragrant dew may sip 
 That sparkles on the lily s lip 
 As e en to kiss it to its tomb. 
 Can love which burns thus fervently 
 Die by its own intensity 1 
 It may be so ; I can not tell. 
 
 In memory s halls the light falls fair 
 On one, the fairest picture there. 
 Twas of a May-day, fresh and bright, 
 When happy, joyous lads and maids 
 Together met, neath sylvan shades, 
 To choose a sceptered Queen, whose right 
 To reign was peerless beauty s power. 
 How through my veins the hot blood raced, 
 When on her brow the crown they placed 
 May s royal Queen, and fairest flower ! 
 And low upon the bended knee, 
 In earnest half, half mockingly, 
 They vowed eternal fealty. 
 How song and dance and mirthful play 
 Ran riot through that happy day ! 
 How each young pair, with guarded care, 
 To leafy nook would steal away, 
 And murmured vows and kisses rare 
 Would exchange there, on sweet May-day ! 
 
60 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 Mid other schemes to while the time, 
 An acted play there lingers still, 
 Which, though but acting, sent a chill 
 Across my heart, like tolled chime 
 Of bells, which clang out mournfully 
 With jarring grief, to feel that they 
 Must first the tidings sad convey 
 That Death again has laid his hand, 
 His ruthless hand, upon our band, 
 And ta en from thence a dear-lovecl friend, 
 Whose face we never more shall see ! 
 
 Twas of a maiden young and fair, 
 With lover rare, of high degree, 
 Who humbly sued, on bended knee, 
 That she would hear and grant his prayer, 
 His loved and beauteous bride to be ; 
 So well he plead that fain was she 
 To yield her heart unto his care, 
 When, suddenly, before them there, 
 Appeared a wrinkled hag, and old, 
 Whom all the people knew a witch, 
 On midnight jousts who rode her switch, 
 Who, to avenge some fancied wrong, 
 Over their hearts a glamour flung 
 For passion pure deep hate upsprung ; 
 Where love-fires burned were ashes cold ! 
 
 To play the beauteous maiden s part 
 
 Was hers ; and mine to humbly woo. 
 
 Oh, never seemed a farce so true 
 
 As this ; or numbing to the heart. 
 
 No muttering witch whose curse-fraught tones 
 
 Rolled o er love s tomb such heavy stones ! 
 
DRIFIINGS IN DREAMLAND. 61 
 
 THE CHARM. 
 
 Fairies and elfins 
 
 Peaceful or wrathful, 
 Tell, if ye ever 
 
 Knew lover faithful ! 
 
 Ye, who have witnessed 
 
 Love s fiercest flashes, 
 Have they not ever 
 
 Ended in ashes 1 
 
 Fickle is woman, 
 
 Men are deceivers ; 
 True love a myth, and 
 
 Fools its believers ! 
 
 A beauteous rose, with 
 
 A worm at its center \ 
 She who would cull it 
 
 Soon shall repent her. 
 
 A chalice of crystal 
 
 With joy overflowing ; 
 A draught of its waters 
 
 Contentment bestowing ! 
 
 He who believes it 
 
 As fair as its seeming, 
 Let him but taste it, 
 
 And wake from his dreaming I 
 
 Aye, wake ; but to find him 
 A slave ; doomed forever 
 
62 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 To a hicbous thrallclom 
 Daath only can sever ! 
 
 Hast knelt where mourners gathsr round, 
 
 To do the last, sad rites of love, 
 
 On pallid brow the clods above 
 
 To place, and consecrate the ground 
 
 To death s long sleep 1 Oh, when the prayer, 
 
 The tearful prayer, breathed soft on air, 
 
 Hath cea-,ed ; and stillness reigns profound 
 
 Till broken by the jarring sound 
 
 Of rattling clods upon the lid 
 
 Where all we love on earth lies hid, 
 
 Is not that sound an awful one ? 
 
 That shrouded sob, that muffled moan, 
 
 Heard in that stifling monotone 1 
 
 So seemed her voice that day, who laid 
 
 Grave earth upon my heart, nor stayed 
 
 Her hand till cold, dump tomb she made ! 
 
 And gazing down on Lissa s face, 
 I saw hope, love and faith all fall 
 Beneath the spell, which like a pall 
 Enwi apped her, too, in its embrace. 
 And from that day where er I fled, 
 I heard a clanging, tolled knell, 
 That ever one sad tale did tell : 
 " Thy love is dead ; thy love is dead ! " 
 The why dumb lips can not declare ; 
 But howl Hast seen the tiny tongue 
 Of flame which in dry grass upsprung 
 When careless spark had fallen there ? 
 See, how it struggles for a hold 
 
DRIFTiNGS IN DREAMLAND. 63 
 
 A feeble thing a breath would slay ; 
 Ah, it has gone ! Nay, it has leaped 
 And caught another blade, which old 
 And dry, affords an easier prey. 
 Down to the root it now has crept, 
 And licks aloft, with tongue as red 
 As that which darts from cobra s head. 
 Yet stronger now a hundred fold, 
 It lurks, a widening sphere of gold, 
 Until it feels the fanning force 
 Of breath of air ; then on its course 
 It feebly starts a beauteous thing ! 
 But, see ! a thousand tongues upspring, 
 Which greedily dart far and wide, 
 And gather food on every side. 
 
 Down stoops the gale to nurse its wrath, 
 And urge it o er its flaming path ; 
 And that which one short breath agone 
 Seemed e en too weak to tread upon, 
 Now roars with hundred voices loud, 
 As wrapped within its flaming shroud, 
 It sweeps, a howling fiend, along ! 
 An awful wall of fire ; its speed 
 By far outruns the swiftest steed. 
 Its wrathful roarings stun the ear ; 
 Its smoke, in columns dense and vast, 
 Pollutes and chokes the azure waste 
 Of heaven above ; its flames below 
 Leap, roar and crackle, like the glow 
 When fuel fresh in hell is cast ! 
 The bellowing herds flee from its patli, 
 And rush where water stays its wrath. 
 
64. DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 Before its rage men pale with fear, 
 As it licks up with greedy haste 
 The toil of years ; full happy they 
 If wife and babes are not its prey. 
 
 But it has gone ; and where before 
 
 A sea of grass, though brown and sear, 
 
 "Waved beautiful the prairies o er 
 
 Now but black, smoking wastes appear 1 
 
 Thus died our love ; not cf my will, 
 Nor yet of hers ; but, helpless, we 
 Saw the wild heart-fiend first set free, 
 Watched his insatiate rage ; and still 
 Were powerless : and when at last 
 The bitter burning names were passed, 
 And but dry, ashen plains remained, 
 We saw our love indeed was dead. 
 And cold and haughty then we spoke 
 Of that which was ; and there detained 
 Ourselves but till a grave we made 
 Brief task and love therein was laid. 
 Few were the sobs the silence broke, 
 And mocking prayers, if aught were said 
 And then to other skies I fled 
 And left the dead, and doubly dead 1 
 
LI SS A. 
 
 PART II. 
 
A song of b hie mountains, which rear them aloft \ 
 
 In regions imtrod, of our own Mexico ; 
 Of beautiful brooks, that with murmurings soft, 
 
 Bid adieu with regret, and awestering flow. 
 A ripple of waves wliere a brave ship glides ; 
 
 A moaning of surf on a tropical sliore ; 
 A nd Ever nor Never no longer divides 
 
 Heart as/tes from ashes long scattered before. 
 
LISSA. 
 
 TTTHERE is a land, as yet untrod 
 *- By wandering, wilderecl feet of men, 
 Where mountain, valley, gorge and glen 
 Belong to nature and to God. 
 For surely grander monuments 
 Of him who shaped this beauteous earth 
 Are not. The azure sky is rent 
 By snow-capped peaks, which reach aloft 
 In daring pride, as though in war 
 With heaven itself, their hands had torn 
 The veil that hangs between ; and hurled 
 Great granite masses to the sky, 
 Until where stars and planets are, 
 Where moons and meteors wander nigh, 
 They rear their haughty heads, in scorn 
 Of vanquished foe ; aye, pitch their tents 
 Neath heaven s very battlements ! 
 
 And prisoned valleys, far below 
 Lie nestling, in dumb, caged content. 
 Caged and yet free. For many a rent 
 Pierces the rugged mountain s side, 
 And yawns, a chasm bold and wide, 
 And deep and dizzy to the sight. 
 Yet still they lie, within the might 
 Of their strong conquerors ; whose hold 
 Is giant s grip, that grows not weak, 
 Tho myriad crumbling voices speak 
 How grizzly gray they are, and old. 
 
68 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 Amid grows tall the graceful pine, 
 
 With here a feathery, drooping fir, 
 
 And there a fragrant juniper. 
 
 And aspen dwarfs, which crowd to line 
 
 The marge of streamlet, welling out 
 
 The mountain s side. These wait, in doubt, 
 
 With russet leaves that give no sign 
 
 Of their rich, beauteous design, 
 
 Until a breath one scarce could feel 
 
 Sets all a quiver with delight. 
 
 Then, with a flash like burnished steel, 
 
 Each turns its breast of silver white 
 
 Up to the sun s warm loving light. 
 
 And leafy pines and firs between, 
 
 Grows rich green grass, in matted swards, 
 
 So thick and dense as scarce awards 
 
 Room for the flowers. These deck the sheen 
 
 Of waving green with many a star 
 
 Of golden hue, of violet blue, 
 
 Of flames that leap the darkness through, 
 
 Of silver and of amethyst, 
 
 Of myriad tints, which mock the mist 
 
 Of colors when the sun has kissed 
 
 And coaxed the blushing rainbow forth 
 
 From out her cloud-land hiding place 
 
 To gaze upon the beauteous earth. 
 
 Within the wood, the huge horned elk 
 Wanders, in all his antlered pride ; 
 While, on the sloping mountain s side, 
 Coy deer, in gray-blue coats of silk, 
 Loiter at will. In parks between 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 69 
 
 The fleet-limbed antelope are seen ; 
 
 While far above, with hoof that rings, 
 
 From crag to crag the wild goat springs ; 
 
 And, roaming restless far and near, 
 
 Like Satan mongst the Sons of Men, 
 
 Is found the giant grizzly. He, 
 
 A mountain mass of ugliness, 
 
 Of hideous strength, and all beside 
 
 That spread his cruel terrors wide, 
 
 Is all the shadow darkening down 
 
 On land from wrath and wrong so free. 
 
 I wandered here till months had fled; 
 
 Alone I ranged the mountains o er ; 
 
 Dreamed new, strange dreams; learned mystic lore 
 
 From nature s page, so fair outspread. 
 
 I saw that God is good ; that when 
 
 He, resting, said His works were good, 
 
 That they indeed were perfect. Men 
 
 May turn blind eyes that will not see, 
 
 May point weak fingers, scoffingly, 
 
 But are alone in their vain pride. 
 
 The towering pine, so princely, grand, 
 
 Is fittest for the mountain s side ; 
 
 But where, mid parched and fevered sand, 
 
 The cactus grows, fierce-barbed and mailed, 
 
 Not less a monument it stands 
 
 Of one design, that has not failed ! 
 
 And, far above the petty strife, 
 Where each seems to himself control, 
 jTe sits ; and molds each separate life 
 In one harmonious, perfect Whole. 
 
 
 
70 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 His men are Empires ; strong and great 
 
 They rise, live out their lives, and die ; 
 
 Or weak and faint, they yield to fate 
 
 Ere seems begun their destiny. 
 
 Still with a strong hand and a just, 
 
 Omnipotent, except to fail, 
 
 His ends are served when they are dust. 
 
 One day it chanced I wandered far 
 From my accustomed paths ; and stood 
 At eve upon a mountain s crest. 
 And, gazing out unto the West, 
 I felt within my veins the blood 
 Leap quick with gladness. Like a star 
 I saw a distant, glimmering light 
 Ear down beneath the chilly height, 
 And knew that I had neared again 
 The long-forsaken haunts of men. 
 The morrow I stood face to face 
 With a small fragment of a race 
 Through whom ran Montezuma s blood. 
 Gentle and trustful, they received 
 With welcoming hands the strange, white man, 
 And, nothing questioning, relieved 
 My wants, as due from man to man. 
 * 
 
 And I I stood as in a dream, 
 
 And listened to their voices low, 
 
 And musical, as is the flow 
 
 Of some pure, forest-broidered stream. 
 
 And like the stream, though all unknown 
 
 Its voiceless language, yet we know 
 
 It murmurs blessings in its flow, 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 71 
 
 So, without \vords, I understood 
 
 That they were pure of heart, and good. 
 
 Contented here I gladly stayed, 
 
 And learned full soon their simple speech; 
 
 Heard all their legends; saw them place, 
 
 With faith that shames who lean on Christ, 
 
 Each night a watchman, with his face 
 
 Turned to the Eist, lest He should come 
 
 Great Montezuma and should find 
 
 His people unprepared. They said 
 
 That some fair dawn, from out the East, 
 
 In robes like naming fire arrayed, 
 
 And on a steed milk-white, and fleet, 
 
 That He would come. If not to-night, 
 
 Why, then, to-morrow sometime. He 
 
 Had sworn to them, in ages past 
 
 That He would come, and they believed ! 
 
 They set apart a priestess, too ; 
 Great Montezuma s chosen bride ; 
 The fairest that their nation knew, 
 And wise, and pure of heart beside. 
 This one had large and lustrous eyes, 
 That shone as from some hidden fire ; 
 And hair of purple black, which fell 
 Down to her waist, with queenly grace. 
 I sought her out, and touched her heart 
 By kindly words, until one day, 
 She drew the veil aside, and lay 
 Before me all their mysteries. 
 
 "Once, long ago," so said the maid, 
 
 With her strange eyes that seemed to look 
 
7* DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 Adown the past, as in a book, 
 
 That she, and she alone, could read, 
 
 " Once, long ago, there was a time 
 
 " When God spake face to face with men, 
 
 " And men were pure and unafraid. 
 
 " But soon they sinned, and God withdrew 
 
 " For countless suns His sacred face ; 
 
 " He then forgave a chosen few, 
 
 " And these the fathers of my race. 
 
 "He swore to them that he would send 
 
 " His Son, to be an earthly king, 
 
 " To rule and bless, till time should end. 
 
 "They worshiped Him in many ways; 
 " By burning beasts ; by slaying doves ; 
 "By music, strangely, grandly sweet, 
 " Of many instruments. Their feet 
 " Kept time to holy songs of praise. 
 " They builded Him a temple grand, 
 " Where dwelt His priests, in sacred state. 
 " And all the people, far or near, 
 " Came up to worship every year. 
 
 "And so they lived ; until, at length, 
 
 " Brother gainst brother drew his sword, 
 
 " And fought with fierce, unholy strength. 
 
 "Our Fathers were defeated. They 
 
 "Then left the land that gave them birth, 
 
 " And wandered forth through this wide earth. 
 
 " Through blood, and tears, and famine, they, 
 
 "For myriad suns, kept on their course. 
 
 " And many perished, on the way 
 
 " Their swords carved out, with desperate force. 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 73 
 
 "At length, they conquered this fair land, 
 " And of their captives chose them wives 
 "The rest they slew. They builded them 
 "Grand palaces ; and chose for king 
 "Great Montezuma. 
 
 " All is gone 
 
 " Their strength, their greatness, with their lives 
 " Went out. And now a feeble band, 
 " Their children toil from sun to sun, 
 " Longing for that which is to be. 
 " With God s own son they now confound 
 " Great Montezuma. None but we, 
 " His priestesses, have kept alive 
 "The old, old faith. But He will come, 
 (How her dark eyes burned mine, like name ! ) 
 " God s glorious Son will surely come 
 " One day. What matters then, His name ] 
 " So let them be ; they are not wrong 
 "Who trust in God." 
 
 With this she turned 
 To feed a sacred flame, which burned 
 Less fierce than her mysterious eyes ! 
 
 Again the spirit of unrest 
 Returned, and bade me rise, and flee. 
 I turned tired feet unto the West, 
 And sought the grand, Pacific sea. 
 I stood where Colorado cleaves 
 Great granite mountains sheer in twain. 
 And, like a monster serpent, weaves 
 His devious way through desert plains. 
 I saw the rugged cacti stand, 
 
74 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 Stern as some mail-clarl sentinel j 
 I trod the ashen, fevered sands 
 Of Arizona s desert hell ; 
 1 traversed calm and stormy seas ; 
 I stood beneath the pine and palm ; 
 Yet Norland cares, nor tropic ease 
 Brought not forgetfulness, nor calm. 
 And in my heart, the whole day long, 
 Like fairy chime, so soft and clear, 
 I heard the echo of a song 
 "Thou art so far, and yet so near ! " 
 
 SONG. 
 
 I have conned o er the task thou hast set me 
 
 Again, and again. 
 I have burned thy sad words, " Forget me ! " 
 
 On heart and brain. 
 Yet, dear love, while memory liveth 
 
 Hope ever will stay ; 
 Unbidden her promise she giveth 
 
 For aye, and for aye ! 
 Oh, stay, then, thy words of rebuke, love, 
 
 Till memory be dead ; 
 And hope, with her visions so sweet, love, 
 
 Forever is fled ! 
 
 O er lands and o er seas I have wandered 
 In rest-seeking flight; 
 
 With mountains and plains have I sundered 
 Thy form from my sight. 
 
 Yet the sad waves, with low, ceaseless mumur 
 Are crooning thy name ; 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 75 
 
 And in the soft breezes of Summer 
 
 Tis whispered again. 
 Oh, pause, then, before chiding me, love, 
 
 For forgetting thy will, 
 And speak to the winds and the sea, love, 
 
 And bid them be still ! 
 
 So sad days dawned, in purple and in gold, 
 
 In gold and purple did the days expire : 
 
 And years (O life from death ! ) did slow unfold 
 
 Out of the mold of their unrealized desire. 
 
 And days and years, in vague unrest, 
 
 Lapsed by, to make a life unblest. 
 
 A life ! How passing strange it is ! 
 
 How like a song in unknown tongue, 
 
 By wandering minstrel sweetly sung, 
 
 Of which we hear the quivering notes, 
 
 As out upon the air it floats, 
 
 But not one word can understand ! 
 
 We pause, and muse, and wisely guess 
 
 What tale the bard would fain convey. 
 
 And if the song float clear and strong, 
 
 We cry, " Lo, this is triumph s lay ! 
 
 A song of love, which won its prize ; 
 
 A hymn of praise, by victor sung ; 
 
 Of hope, for fulfilled prophecies ; 
 
 Of bread returned, on waters flung !" 
 
 But if the tune die sad away, 
 
 " Lo, tis a funeral dirge, this lay ; 
 
 A tale of piteous distress ; 
 
 A wreck, far drifted out from land ; 
 
 A woe so hard none understand, 
 
 This minstrel s sad, sweet song," we sa 
 
76 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 Ah, well ! What is eternity 
 But years which circle, slow and grand, 
 Where ere the old comes twice to hand, 
 J Tis long forgot and therefore new ! 
 But circling years, though wheeling slow, 
 Tell out our lives with wondrous speed ; 
 So let them flit. We can but heed 
 The summons when it comes and go ! 
 * * * * * * 
 
 From far-off lands there comes a voice, 
 "Come back ! >; 0, lost, 0, love, rejoice ! 
 
POKMS OF HOiVIE. 
 
Many the gifts, and passing fair, 
 Hath God vouchsafed unto our race; 
 
 Yet mong st those that most precious are 
 Doth memory hold exalted place. 
 Dear memory, whose silent feet 
 Become the crutch of halting age, 
 
 We tax thee sore and oft ; yet sweet 
 And loving is thy vassalage. 
 
 O, nymph, who knows not time nor space. 
 Link hands and go with me to-day, 
 For I would wander far away, 
 And long-abandoned pathzvays trace. 
 
THE OLD HOMESTEAD. 
 
 A FRAGMENT. 
 
 JT[is Winter s waning. Yesterday 
 
 A. A sleet storm howled the long day through 
 With stinging fury. Yet to-day 
 All is serene and fair to view. 
 Each tree, encased to utmost twig 
 Within an icy coat of mail, 
 Stands like an armored giant, big 
 With purposes that can not fail. 
 The clear, cold sun, so far that seems 
 Yet nearest is of all the year, 
 Makes the translucent armor gleam 
 And sparkle like a million spears. 
 See the still, frozen forest stretch 
 Its tangled branches leagues away 
 Here glittering to the sun s soft touch, 
 There shaded to a pearly gray. 
 Above the bare boughs interlace 
 And frame blue bits of sky between 
 No art their beauteous maze can trace, 
 Nor tongue describe the fairy scene. 
 Beneath a silence calm, profound, 
 As though all strife for aye had fled, 
 Save where with crushing, creaking sound 
 The snow resents the passer s tread ; 
 Or when, with sound like rifle crack, 
 A thawing tree fires snapping gun, 
 While distant echoes answering back, 
 Show Winter s reign is almost done ; 
 
So DRAFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 Or when, with earthquake-like report, 
 A forest monarch, proud and tall, 
 Judged by some elemental court, 
 Obeys with sudden, awful fall. 
 
 Surprised and timid, here and there, 
 
 The white-tailed rabbit leaps away, 
 
 With furry foot that treads on air, 
 
 So swift he skips and silently ; 
 
 And high above, with feet that cling, 
 
 The prairie chickens watchful sit, 
 
 Ready on whirring, sailing wing, 
 
 With quick alarm, away to flit. 
 
 Deep in the forest, hid from view, 
 
 A river lies, frost-bound and still 
 
 Upon whose breast of glassy hue 
 
 An army might encamp at will. 
 
 Here drooping willows line its banks, 
 
 With boughs caught in its cold embrace ; 
 
 Here cotton woods, in glorious ranks, 
 
 Rear high their heads, with stately graca 
 
 And on its banks, within a square 
 
 Hewn from the forest s heart, there stands 
 
 The farm-house, silvery in the glare 
 
 The snow reflects on every hand. 
 
 Around its eaves the icicles, 
 
 A beauteous cornice, thickly run ; 
 
 Stalactites tapering to pearls, 
 
 And lengthening in the warming sun. 
 
 Near by, with stiff, symmetric grace 
 The orchard trees rebellious grow, 
 Each leaning devious from its place, 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 8l 
 
 As if to spoil the hateful row. 
 
 A snowy hillock marks the spot 
 
 Where last Fall s fruit was stored away, 
 
 When pippin, bell-flower, Queen Charlott 
 
 In ruddy, golden glory lay, 
 
 Till, covered first with clean bright straw, 
 
 The earth was heaped with generous hand 
 
 So deep that Winter s frost or thaw, 
 
 Warm and secure, they could withstand. 
 
 And when the brief day s work is done 
 
 And the long, cosy evening near, 
 
 With eager joy, the children run 
 
 To plunder from the treasures here. 
 
 The frozen earth is dug away 
 
 By fingers numb and red with cold \ 
 
 Yet still they burrow carefully 
 
 Until the buried fruit they hold. 
 
 Then from the loft dry nuts are brought, 
 
 And on the grate the wood piled higher, 
 
 And snow and cold are set at naught 
 
 Before the sparkling, blazing fire. 
 
 The time slips by, and April days, 
 With fickle, chilly showers, are here, 
 And in the tangled woods a maze 
 Of swelling, fragrant buds appear. 
 While waiting not for leafy robes, 
 The dogwood bursts in sudden bloom 
 And willows, opening tiny lobes, 
 A fresh and tender green assume. 
 And in the sheltered, sunny spots 
 
32 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 A few wild flowers are nestling found : 
 Sweet Williams, and Forget-me-nots 
 Bestar the grass that creeps around. 
 The smoke curls blue from out the woods 
 Where dripping fast from cruel wounds, 
 The maple sap, in generous floods, 
 Outpours its amber sweets. Around 
 The wooden troughs are thickly placed, 
 And gatherers pass with hasty steps 
 Lest any overflow. The taste 
 With hollow reed to youthful lips 
 Is sweeter far than ever are 
 All future draughts that manhood sips. 
 
 Afield, the plow glides through the ground 
 
 Which last year generous crops returned ; 
 
 The earth purrs with a low, soft sound 
 
 As each black furrow is upturned. 
 
 The musing plowman scarcely heeds 
 
 The murmur of the yielding sod : 
 
 His soul, attuned to Nature s deeds, 
 
 Communes direct with Nature s God. 
 
 And feeh that since Creation s dawn 
 
 The fiat whence all beings springs 
 
 Has never ceased. The very stones 
 
 Thrill with the consciousness it brings. 
 
 Creation ceases not ; each day, 
 
 Each moment feels the eternal force. 
 
 And life in myriad, million ways 
 
 Obeys its sacred, hidden Source. 
 
 To live is Nature s Great First Law; 
 
 The base her being rests upon. 
 
 And towards some goal, of solemn awe, 
 
DRIFTING3 IN DREAMLAND. 83 
 
 Resistlessly life urges on. 
 
 Silent, apart, great Nature broods, 
 
 With matter plastic in her hands ; 
 
 And in her countless forms and moods 
 
 The finished thought reflected stands. 
 
 O, Mother-nature, Mother-god, 
 
 We press en towards thy holy shrine ! 
 
 The form is but the lifeless clod, 
 
 The soul, the heart, the purpose thine ! 
 
 The woods are now one dense, dark green, 
 
 The prairies lose their sullen dun, 
 
 And May, robed in her leafy sheen, 
 
 Thrills to the kisses of the sun. 
 
 Across the field, plowed deep and well, 
 
 Light furrows run at equal space, 
 
 And to the hasty droppers tell 
 
 Where they the golden grain must place. 
 
 Behind, with tardier, watohful care, 
 
 The coverers bury well the seed. 
 
 While blackbirds, circling through the air, 
 
 Plan many a wild foraying deed. 
 
 So sleep the grains, in darkness wrapped, 
 
 Till nature whispers soft, " Increase ! " 
 
 And breathes her wondrous secret, kept 
 
 Locked in her breast in solemn peace. 
 
 This Force withm the kernel rife 
 
 Which thrills, expands, bursts through the sods, 
 
 Is the forbidden Tree of Life, 
 
 Which, knowing, we shall be as gods ! 
 
 Then, Nature, guard thy secret well, 
 
8; DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 For men strive hard, with courage high ; 
 They press thee close, and who can tell 
 What hour may bring their triumph nigh? 
 What is the naming sword but sin, 
 Which blinds our eyes at Eden s gates ? 
 Lo, purity shall enter in, 
 Nor fear all adverse gods, nor fates ! 
 
 The days have passed in patient toil 
 All through the sunny month of June, 
 Thrice has the plow stirred fresh the soil 
 Between green rows, grown tall so soon. 
 And now July, with fervent heat, 
 And breathless days that mark its path, 
 Brings yellow fields of ripened wheat 
 The recompense of trust and faith. 
 "Man can live by faith alone." 
 Nay ; he each day by faith begins, 
 And ends by faith, and so atones 
 Unconsciously his conscious sins. 
 Each night he yields his soul to sleep 
 The mystic prototype of death 
 With faith that reason tryst will keep, 
 And float back on his wakening breath. 
 Through all the devious ways of life 
 Faith walks before and points the road, 
 And when we cease the unequal strife, 
 It leads at last to rest and God. 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 85 
 
 GULP A MIA. 
 
 ro cottages upon the green, 
 Agone, we built us, side by side ; 
 And what should brothers homes divide ? 
 So nothing there we placed between. 
 
 A little spark, I know not how, 
 
 Was fanned into a sudden flame. 
 
 I thought he wronged me, and there came 
 Harsh, bitter words between us now. 
 
 He could not brook that face to face 
 
 We stood, in passing out and in; 
 
 And so our little homes between 
 At last a cold, high wall did place. 
 
 I saw the stones piled up in pride ; 
 
 And I within my heart a wall 
 
 Higher and prouder built, to pall 
 The chambers once he occupied. 
 
 And then I wandered far away 
 
 For half a life we had not met ; 
 
 I thought to find the barrier yet 
 When I returned, one Summer day. 
 
 But, lo ! long since it crumbled, fell, 
 And nothing now our homes did part ; 
 And suddenly within my heart, 
 
 I felt its pride was gone, as well. 
 
 Like long-forgotten childhood s rhyme, 
 My brother s voice then softly said, 
 
86 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 " Time healeth all," With bowed head, 
 "Yea," whispered I, "and blessed be time !" 
 
 Yet though the iiesclless wound he heals, 
 Still there remains the cruel scar 
 On hearts and wasted years, to mar 
 
 The tear-blurred page the past reveals. 
 
 IN THE CHURCHYARD. 
 
 HE South wind was laden with dew 
 
 It had kissed from the lips of the clover, 
 While a faint breath of rose odors, too, 
 
 Betrayed the caress of fond lover, 
 As the gate op ed for two to pass through. 
 
 Two hearts that with sorrow were numb 
 To the graves of their dead were now come 
 
 To live all their grief again over : 
 And the South wind sighed low and was dumb. 
 
 One sought out a monument proud 
 
 Of marble, all sculptured and graven ; 
 That with cold, lifeless letters avowed 
 
 The tribute affection had given. 
 But the crushed, bleeding heart there that bowed 
 
 Only saw in the marble a shroud 
 That barred out all the sweet light of heaven. 
 
 And bitter she wept that the pall 
 Which had darkened her whole life, should fall 
 
 At the last o er ths tomb it had given. 
 
 The other paused by a low mound 
 
 O er whish green, matted grass was fresh growing 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 87 
 
 No pile of carved marble was found, 
 
 Either true or false praise vain bestowing; 
 But daisies and violets fair 
 
 Were nestling contentedly there, 
 And many a red rose was blowing. 
 
 And the heart of the mourner was glad i 
 
 When she saw the companions he had 
 
 Were the purest and best earth could bring; 
 For the loves of the life which has fled 
 
 Now cluster to cheer his lone bed, 
 And her grief hath no more its sharp sting. 
 
 Then the South wind passed on till he came 
 
 To his own trusting sweethearts, the clover; 
 And the cheek of each bloom was aflame, 
 
 As she tiptoed to kiss her fond lover. 
 But why such rare, tender caress 
 
 He, lingering, gave none could guess ; 
 Bat the South wind this thought pondered over: 
 
 There is that which gold never can buy ; 
 Love demands love again, or twill die, 
 
 Whether rose-queen or humble, brown clover ! 
 So he stooped with another warm kiss 
 
 For the red lips which reached up to his 
 So gratefully fond, and from this 
 
 Gave he love to his lowliest lover. 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 PROMISE. 
 
 mHAT though the faded leaves are falling, falling, 
 Leaving the gnarled limbs comfortless and bare ; 
 What though the Winter winds are moaning, calling, 
 
 In tones where grief commingles with despair ; 
 Still there remains of Summer days a token, 
 
 A faint, quaint perfume where the flowers have been. 
 And frowning clouds by sometime rifts are broken 
 Through which a hint of Summer warmth drifts in. 
 
 What though our souls have failed of high enaeavor, 
 
 And grand and noble deeds be all foregone ; 
 What though our tired feet grope onward ever, 
 
 Well knowing that our goal can not be won ; 
 Still purposeful is life, and full of blessing 
 
 Which waits on patient, little deeds of love ; 
 And humble acts, if faith and truth possessing, 
 
 At last a richer recompense may prove. 
 
 IN MEMORIAM. 
 
 OR life is like a rosary, 
 
 Which we take up, and, mutt ring, say 
 Its o er worn beads; then haste away : 
 And life hath known its transient day. 
 
 And well for us if mayhap we 
 
 E en its few beads have fully told ; 
 
 For feeble is the thread, and old, 
 
 And oft breaks, ere they reach our hold. 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 89 
 
 Yet them did st tell them, one by one : 
 
 Sorrow and grief, and woe, and pain ; 
 
 Peace, rest and heart-balm ; love s sweet bane, 
 
 That slays to make alive again. 
 
 Aye, thou did st learn how passing sweet 
 (If bitter sweet, yet how sweet still ! ) 
 Was love, drunk to the very fill, 
 Giddy with joy and drowning ill. 
 
 The flower that blows to fade at noon, 
 
 The corn, upsprung while frosts still are, 
 A song voice, drifting swift afar, 
 Heedless of tip-toed listener 
 
 These were thy life. The sinking sun, 
 One-half his rays thrown lovingly 
 Toward us, and half as eagerly 
 On lands (O, blind ! ) we can not sec, 
 
 Such thy sweet death. Oh, if that we 
 
 Might part the veil that makes us twain 
 But one brief moment, how would pain, 
 And woe, and heartache sin s sad train 
 
 Give place and flee ! Life s mystery 
 
 Is death s scroll, closed remorselessly : 
 But one alone has read, and he 
 0, Christ-child, lean low now to me ! 
 
90 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 THE ECHO. 
 
 I knew a spot, in olden days, 
 
 Where I have laughed, in childish glee, 
 
 Or sang, or called defiantly, 
 
 And all my words came back to me. 
 
 Bytimes I wandered far away ; 
 
 The years sped by like wooing time ; 
 
 Came flower of youth, came manhood s prime, 
 
 Then came gray hairs, a silvery rime. 
 
 And then it chanced I drifted back, 
 
 And found, as wanderers always find, 
 All gone that linked me to my kind 
 Not one dear thing was left behind. 
 
 Life seemed a troubled dream to me ; 
 And in my dream I wandered on, 
 And as old scenes I mused upon, 
 Said sadly to myself, " All gone." 
 
 "All gone," returned a low, sad voice. 
 I started at the apt reply ; 
 "Yet you are faithful still," sighed I, 
 And " Faithful still," came, with my sigh. 
 
 Then, lo! a thing most passing strange, 
 The echo s voice died not away 
 With mine, as erst it did alway, 
 But whispered on, and this did say : 
 
 " Men live th^ir little, fleeting hour ; 
 
 They strive and war, with eyes afrown ; 
 
DRIFTING3 IN DREAMLAND. 91 
 
 They fill the earth with their renown 
 Sail bold and well, and then go down 
 
 "Into the hungry sea of death. 
 
 The world cries out an hour in pain, 
 Tlien turns to war and strive again ; 
 
 And I alone of all remain 
 
 i 
 
 " And what am I ! A hollow sound, 
 And empty, cruel mockery ; 
 Yet all of life is found in me 
 Fit type of unreality ! " 
 
 THE COUNTRY PARTY. 
 
 IN the "West, the dying day 
 Burned his gold to ashes red, 
 Blew the ashes with his breath 
 On the clouds that hung o erhead. 
 
 One by one the stars shone clear, 
 As we hastened on our way 
 To the farm house, where that night 
 Lads and maids from far and near 
 Met to spend in mirth and play, 
 Hours that sped wi h hasty flight 
 On their light-winged, happy way. 
 
 Came the lads in groups together, 
 Came the maids by twos and threes; 
 Every lad in se ret fearing 
 She, of all, might fail to come. 
 
92 DRIPTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 Every lassie wondering whether 
 
 He would ask to see her home. 
 
 Doubts, like May skies, quickly clearing, 
 
 Hers the form he soonest sees, 
 
 And the whispered question greets her 
 
 In the first nook where he meets her. 
 
 Soon the merry games begin 
 With an "office" full of letters. 
 Brown-haired lad steps prompt within, 
 And the dignified postmaster 
 Duly charged, a lassie calls, 
 With, "A letter here for you ! " 
 Beats the lassie s pulses faster, 
 As she steps within to get her 
 Swift-read, sweat, unwritten letter! 
 Then to write a fond reply, 
 Only, strangest of it all. 
 Not to him who wrote to her 
 Must she send it. No, indeed ; 
 Other lips must come and read ; 
 Forming thus a circle rare, 
 For once formed by that same token 
 Is its power forever broken. 
 Follow merry forfeits after : 
 "Heavy, heavy/ hanging ever 
 O er our heads, but falling never, 
 For mid ringing, joyous laughter, 
 Oddest penalties are paid 
 To redeem unlucky "fine/ 
 While tlie blushing, cv,ax:u^ maid 
 Lighter scapes for "superfine. 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 93 
 
 Then, a most mysterious thing, 
 
 Two wise maids declare that they 
 
 Own a grand menagerie, 
 
 And that we may quickly see 
 
 Any animal desired 
 
 If we will but blinded be, 
 
 And by fair hands captive led. 
 
 Every one of course is fired, 
 
 And the riddle must be read. 
 
 One by one they led us in 
 
 With the strictest secrecy ; 
 
 Came my turn, and when they asked 
 
 What fierce, wild beast they should bring, 
 
 For a while my brain I tasked, 
 
 Then I called for " baboon straight/ 
 
 Fell the bandage off my pate, 
 
 With a mirror stood an elf, 
 
 And I looked and saw myself ! 
 
 Followed games in quick succession ; 
 "Crooked Answer" to "Cross Question," 
 "Bridge of Sighs," and then "Surprised;" 
 Then two wights we " Mesmerised ; " 
 "Thimble," "Whistle," "Master Simon;" 
 "Hunt the Slipper," "Copenhagen;" 
 "Scandal" caused a precious stir; 
 Then "Master sent me to you, Sir." 
 " Proverbs" followed sagely after, 
 And " Seek the Ring" mid ringing laughter. 
 A " Lawyer" then we interviewed, 
 And a " Mummy" acted very rude. 
 A "Prophet" with our fates did chaff; 
 
94 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 And then, to try some nobler thing, 
 We formed a grave, long-visaged ring, 
 And had a "Scientific Laugh !" 
 
 Ah, how swift the moments fled 
 With the old folks snug in bed, 
 And we happy youngsters fre*i 
 To drink deep love s sweet witchery. 
 Who so cold as to resist 
 With red lips pouting to be kissed 
 Who so mailed that he withstands 
 Arrows sped by such fair hands ? 
 
 Yet whene er that happy time 
 Borne on memory s dreamy ships, 
 Backward drifts, as drifts the rhyme, 
 Prattled o er by childish lips, 
 One swift moment I recall, 
 Sweetest, dearest of them all, 
 When before her fathers s door, 
 Where the stars could only see, 
 She, my beauteous Eleanore, 
 Gave one little kiss to me ! 
 
 TO 
 
 PERHAPS on earth I ll ne er again behold, 
 With eye of sense, your outward form and semblaiu 
 Therefore, to me, you never will grow old, 
 But live, forever young, in my remembrance. 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 95 
 
 IN SILENCE. 
 
 TT7HERE are tears we dare not shed which are bitterer by far, 
 JL In their aching, ashen burning, than the freest flowing 
 
 are; 
 There are griefs we must keep hidden in the chambers of our 
 
 heart 
 
 That ara sharper than all others : bring a keener, deadlier smart. 
 And the wistful silence waiting on the words we may not say, 
 In its stillness, holds the fullness of all sorrows on our way. 
 For the surges of sad dirges half efface the grief they tell, 
 But the weary woes of silence list in vain a passing knell. 
 
 Yet the end is surely coming, and a brighter, fairer dawn 
 Shall illume the paths of darkness, which our feet now grope 
 
 upon. 
 
 Not for aye shall grief endure : pain and sorrow will have fled. 
 "Blessed are the mourners," saith He, "for they shall be 
 
 comforted." 
 
 And we clasp the promise to us as we float out on the tide, 
 For we may at least forget when we reach the other side. 
 
 BUT THIS. 
 
 TITHE world is full of song 
 
 J- As strong, sweet singers sweep the sounding strings 
 With chords, fulfilled, of holy, happy things. 
 I list, and long 
 But this ; to add one song 
 
 One song as yet unsung, of all the songs they sing. 
 
 The world is full of gooc 
 As brawny arms do battle for the Right, tfjjF ,^[ V* ^ 
 
 , 
 The world is full of good 
 
 *V? 
 
 ci^ 
 
6 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 And hydra-headed evil ceaseless smite. 
 
 I watch the fray 
 
 With folded arms ; yet sadly pray 
 But this : to strike one blow, ere fades my transient day. 
 
 IN THE GLOAMING. 
 
 Dow night s purple mantle falleth 
 Softly o er the dying day. 
 And the wooing twilight calleth 
 From the cares of life away. 
 
 And we lie contented, dreaming, 
 
 In the restful, tranquil lull, 
 Painting scenes through fancy gleaming, 
 
 Distant, flitting, beautiful. 
 
 Hark ! a song we loved in childoood, 
 
 From afar, floats to our ear. 
 Bringing meadow, glen and wildwood, 
 
 Drifting on the notes anear. 
 
 Peopling silent halls with faces 
 
 That have long slept with the dead, 
 
 Yet within our hearts whose places 
 Still remain untenanted. 
 
 Broken dreams of joy or sorrow, 
 Fade before night s thickening ray. 
 
 Let us rest, and meet to-morrow 
 With the hope born of to-day. 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 IVY. 
 
 TlAMiLY-laden, 
 
 -F Wee, wise maiden 
 Knits her brow in dainty knots. 
 
 How to dolly 
 
 Cure of folly 
 Occupies her busy thoughts. 
 
 " Dolly s wet her 
 
 Feet, to get her 
 Posies in the morning dew. 
 
 Sure to be sick 
 
 Cold or colic ; 
 Like as not the measles, too ! 
 
 " There is Freddy 
 
 Always ready 
 Into awful fairs to fall : 
 
 Bad as Rosy 
 
 Doodness I 
 Don t know how to manage, tall 1 
 
 " Jack or Norah s 
 
 Telled a story ! 
 One or t uver s ate ma s cake ; 
 
 While there s silly 
 
 Greedy Willy 
 Got a drefful stomach ache 1 
 
 " Naughty Bessie 
 Tored her dress ; she 
 Wants anuver one, I spose ; 
 I tell you what, 
 
98 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 It takes a lot 
 Of work to keep my dolls in t lose I 
 
 Look, she lays her 
 
 Down by Caesar 
 "What can be the matter now ? 
 
 Blue eyes closing, 
 
 Winking, dozing, 
 
 Wee, white hands and lily brow- 
 Cheeks so waxen. 
 
 Tresses flaxen, 
 Footstep, that a fairy s seems 
 
 All now wander 
 
 Over yonder, 
 In the happy land of dreams 1 
 
 CONTENTMENT. 
 
 fTTHERE is an island hidden far 
 JL Beyond the gray horizon s rim 
 And sometimes wandering ships there are 
 Who see its shores rise, white and dim. 
 
 And some have turned them from their way, 
 With wistful eyes, and sailed anigh ; 
 
 And looked and longed a Summer s day 
 Then passed the isle forever by. 
 
 Of these, some said, on grassy banks 
 Stood palaces, all white and fair ; 
 
 And tropic trees, in stately ranks, 
 
 And gold, and precious stones were there. 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 And others said : Nob so ; the isle 
 Resounds but to the trump of fame, 
 
 Where legions strive for fortune s smile, 
 And honor s death-surviving name. 
 
 And others, weary-eyed, did see 
 
 Fair homes, where wives and children were j 
 Said others : There green woodlands be, 
 
 Afar from every haunt of care. 
 
 And each sighed : Oh, that I might cast 
 
 My anchor in its coral bays ! 
 My life would be fulfilled at last, 
 
 And peace be mine, through all my days ! 
 
 But some there were who from the rest 
 
 Stood sa:l apart, and silently; 
 Yet questioned close, at last confessed 
 
 That they had touched its shores, one day. 
 
 "A cruel mirage," whispered these, 
 "Where many a vision fair is shown ; 
 
 But all who reach its bovvers of ease 
 Find burning wastes of sand alone ! " 
 
 EL CABO DE TODOS. 
 
 7FXDER the pines where the zephyrs blew by 
 ^ Filled with faint fragrance of sweet-smelling gum, 
 And odors of delicate flowers anigh, 
 
 He stood, and dreamed of the days to come. 
 Fair as the isles of Hespe rides 
 
 A future of wealth and fame upsprung ; 
 
ioo DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 And o er and o er, like a pulse of the seas, 
 
 His heart beat loud, " I am young ; I am young ! " 
 
 Under an oak, in the Summer heat, 
 
 With a bird glancing down, with a side-turned head, 
 And the breeze filled with perfume of maize and wheat, 
 
 He stood, and in used o er the years that had fled. 
 His dreams of wealth had faded away, 
 
 And fame had passed by, like a street-caroled song ; 
 Yet fairer than they seemed contentment to-day, 
 
 And his heart beat firm, "I am strong; I am strong ! 
 
 o 
 
 Under the willow, whose quivering leaves 
 
 Tremble and shake, like an old man s hands, 
 \yiiere the only odor the wind receives 
 
 Is the earthy scent of the fallowed lands, 
 He stands, and mumbles a broken thread 
 
 Of words, as rosary beads are told ; 
 His dreams, unrealized, all are dead, 
 
 And his heart feebly beats, u I am old ; I am old ! 
 
 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 LO, EARTH is portsntious with omens, 
 And the skies answer back with a frown ; 
 Men whisper distrustful ; and no man 
 Secure lieth down. 
 
 For the mutter of gathering legions 
 
 Is heard from mounta in to sea ; 
 Near at hand, and from far-away regions 
 Wherever men be. 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 Not for battles of czars, kings or princes, 
 
 Where brother gainst brother is led, 
 But the desperate fight for existence 
 The struggle for bread ! 
 
 For the lordlings and rich scourge and flay us, 
 
 And squander the fruits of our toil ; 
 And our rulers despise and betray us, 
 And bind us for spoil. 
 
 Our teachers corrupt and delude us ; 
 
 Our counselors lead us astray ; 
 Our law-makers strip and denude us ; 
 Our priests wha.t are they ? 
 
 Their souls, lean with longings and famine, 
 
 They cry up, and offer for sale ; 
 They are bought with the lucre of Mammon, 
 They are prophets of Baal ! 
 
 UNRECOGNIZED. 
 
 banyan tree, in Afric lands, 
 A traveller rested from the heat. 
 Half buried in the burning sands, 
 
 A pebble sparkled at his feet. 
 He picked it up, and toyed with it ; 
 
 Tossed it aloft, in idle play, 
 Then in a dreamy, absent fit, 
 
 He careless threw it far away. 
 He who had roamed o er every land, 
 
 With thirst for gold his only guide^y ^y 4 
 
102 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 When it lay fair within his hand, 
 The wealth of Ind had nung aside I 
 
 Within her bower a maiden fair 
 
 Lay, dreaming of a love to be ; 
 A love as pure as lilies are, 
 
 As constant as the changeless sea. 
 And while she dreamed, that summer morn, 
 
 A lover came and knelt to her ; 
 She laughed his humble suit to scorn, 
 
 And banished thus her worshiper. 
 She who but dreamed as poets do 
 
 Of love alone, the live-long day, 
 Now failed to recognize the true, 
 
 And cast her whole life s love away ! 
 
 0, blind, blind Fate, thou leadest men 
 
 By ways too hard to understand ! 
 Thy mysteries we cannot ken, 
 
 Nor loose the grip of thy strong hand. 
 0, goddess cruel, goddess blind ! 
 
 Thou who hast led us all our days, 
 Art sure that thou the way canst find, 
 
 That lies beyond life s tangled maze ? 
 See, thou hast wrecked full many a ship 
 
 By steering where wild waves o ervvhelm ; 
 Oh, loosen, then, thy fatal grip 
 
 And to our hands resign the helm ! 
 
YOUTHFUL POBMS. 
 
POSSESSION. 
 
 THOU art mine own, love ! Thy heart 
 Beats time to mine, with throbbings sweet 
 And musical as coming feet 
 Of loved ones, after years apart. 
 
 Thou art mine own, sweet ! Thy lips 
 Melt into mine, with kisses rare 
 As Arab s magic balm, that slips 
 
 Straight to the heart, to banish care. 
 
 Thou are mine own, fond ! Thy head 
 Resting so lightly on my breasfc 
 Brings dreams as rare as ever sped 
 
 To bless a wanderer s toil-won rest. 
 
 IN GOLDEN GATE PARK. 
 
 V\AY,do nob turn away your head, 
 
 -*- Love ; I must speak, and you shall hear ! 
 
 Here, midst this faint, sweet perfume, clear, 
 I cannot leave one word unsaid. 
 
 Will you still stand, with drooping lid, 
 
 And lips, where frowns such pretty pout 1 
 Nay, I will kiss their shadow out; 
 
 See, we are flower-engulfed, and hid ! 
 
io6 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 For if you wished that I should go 
 
 With all my love sealed in my heart 
 A tomb grass-grown, unknown, apart 
 
 You had not brought me here, I know. 
 
 For this is love s own dream of love, 
 
 Voiced into life ; these splendid banks, 
 So starry-hued, are serried ranks 
 
 Of votaries his truth that prove ! 
 
 And here, amid the pines and firs, 
 
 Neath drooping fuschias, all aflame 
 With love s delicious, tender shame, 
 
 And incense on each breath that stirs 
 
 Of roses, and of mignonette, 
 
 Of larkspurs, ranged with martial pride, 
 In purple hoods, the way beside, 
 And of the blue-eyed violet, 
 
 Love, I must speak, or faint and die ! 
 
 For I have loved you, loved you so, 
 With love as pure as is the snow 
 
 Of these white lilies, sailing by. 
 
 (0, breath of balmy, tropic air, 
 
 O, maze of plantain and of palm, 
 
 O, sleeping ferns, your wondrous calm 
 
 Is as a spirit s, freed from care ! ) 
 
 (0, birds, that warble tuneful lays, 
 
 O, gold-fish, swimming soft below, 
 Your lives are dreams of love, I know, 
 
 And peace, and joy haunt all your days ! ) 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 107 
 
 And here mid beauty s regal reign, 
 
 Where this fair Park, sea-girt, yet free, 
 Reaches white fingers to the .sea, 
 
 Which leans and yearns to her again. 
 
 Sweet, you shall surely answer ! Hark ! 
 O, voice, low-tuned to lover s ear, 
 "I cannot say thee nay here, dear !" 
 
 Now, heaven bless the Golden Park i 
 
 A PICTURE. 
 
 sit you here, and I will paint 
 Your picture, fair and true, for you. 
 For poets must be painters, too ; 
 And some are grand ones; some are quaint; 
 And many paint so strangly true. 
 
 Yes, you are beautiful. A brow 
 
 As white as snow white lilies are ; 
 
 And large, blue eyes, enshaded now, 
 
 Now gazing absently afar ; 
 
 A mouth so like a rose-bud, ripe 
 
 From sun kiss and the rain s warm love ; 
 
 A face of Greece s oval type 
 
 From pointed chin to brow above ; 
 
 A swan-like neck ; a sylph-like form ; 
 
 A skin as satin soft and warm 
 
 All, alt are beautiful ; but, hold ! 
 
 (A painter close and hard must look,) 
 
 That snow-white brow as snow is cold, 
 
 And selfish lines, as in a book, 
 
io8 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 Are written there ; and in your eyes 
 There is a cunning, inward look, 
 As though in men you had no faith, 
 But met their lies with other lies 
 Which sweeter were to you than truth ! 
 
 those hard eyes how plain are writ 
 Lines which no man can e er mistake ! 
 Your love, a feeble reed, will break 
 And pierce him through who leans on it. 
 For like a vane, with fickle whim, 
 
 You veer to every passing breeze. 
 Your God is Self, and e en in him 
 You put no trust nor faith, Louise. 
 
 And I have loved you. I who bring 
 The deep love of a child of song ; 
 For to the throng of those who sing 
 By many a tie I do belong. 
 By birthright ; by the blood that runs 
 From Scotia s hills, in fiery strains, 
 And heated hot neath Southland suns 
 Leaps fast and dizzy through my veins ; 
 By that baptismal font of fire 
 Where Sorrow consecrates her own, 
 When, faint from unattained desire, 
 They kneel low at her sable throne ; 
 By that proud will of those who dare 
 To look on that Throne s dazzling light 
 And question Him who sitteth there 
 If earth is ruled by Wrong or Right ; 
 By each of these, by more than these, 
 
 1 know well what I arn. Alas ! 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 109 
 
 You are so far beneath, Louise, 
 And I have loved you : let it pass. 
 
 No mantle old of prophecy 
 Upon my shoulders needs to fall, 
 No wierd, strange gift of minstrelsy 
 To aid my ken have I to call, 
 To read the fate that waits for you 
 As waits the dead the funeral pall. 
 While beauty s flame is yet alight 
 Weak moths will circle near its glare, 
 But when that light is set in night, 
 How dark will be your desp despair ! 
 How you will barn with bitter moan 
 That man just claims ha^ upon man, 
 And who live for themselves alone 
 Must die alone, as best they can ! 
 When you are loveless, friendless, old, 
 Will you look back and long for these 1 
 it may be not ; you are so cold 
 You may not care at all, Louise 1 
 
 RETRIBUTION. 
 
 O OFTLY the moonmist fell down and enshrouded you, 
 ^ Wrapped you around with its silvery light. 
 Passionless, cold as the beams that beclouded you, 
 Turned you away from my pleading that night 
 Turned my day into night ! 
 
 I who from sorrow s dark portals had fled to you, 
 Eled at your call, as a moth to the light. 
 
no DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 Himg rmg for love s long-delayed feast, I sped to you, 
 Sped as the blind sped of old for their sight 
 To the Master for sight. 
 
 Then for a time, like a pleased child, you toyed with me 
 Filling my soul with a maddening delight ; 
 
 Not for a moment I dreamed you were cloyed with me, 
 Not till the moonrays enrobed you that night 
 With their cold, loveless light. 
 
 Wounded to daath, then I turned me away from you, 
 Turned as the Lost turn from heaven s sweet light. 
 
 Bitter as seemed it forever to stay from you, 
 Bitterer far to remain in your sight, 
 In your cold, cruel sight. 
 
 So. As one walks among tombs am I wandering, 
 Plucking Daai Sea fruit from morn until night. 
 Daily my Wrthright for pottage am squandering, 
 For the blighted must blight. 
 
 Arid you Life is naught but a ripple of song to you. 
 Lover moths, fresh, are e er seeking your light. 
 
 Yet sometime ! I envy not thoughts which must throng to you 
 When the tide turns and life ebbs into night 
 Black, desolate night. 
 
 AFTER CHURCH. 
 
 Where a tiny path 
 
 Threaded through the heather, 
 
 Lizzie walked with me - 
 Very close together. 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DRKAMLAND. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Bluebells nodded wisely 
 
 To the daisies, lowly, 
 As they watched us, going 
 
 Hom3 so slowly, slowly. 
 Aye ; they nodded, nodded, 
 
 Till their heads were dizzy, 
 Did they know she loved me, 
 
 Witching, winsome Lizzie ? 
 Yet I durst not ask them 
 
 She had heard me, surely ; 
 Maiden at my side, 
 
 Walking so demurely. 
 So we passed along 
 
 Through the feathery heather, 
 Talking of the fashions, 
 
 Talking of the weather. 
 Saying naught of loving, 
 
 Though my thoughts were busy 
 Conning something over 
 
 I must tell to Lizzie, 
 When we reached the gate, 
 
 Suddenly bold-hearted, 
 Plead I for a kiss 
 
 Just one ere we parted. 
 O er her swept a thrill 
 
 Would she chide, resist me 1 
 Sudden, while I doubted, 
 
 Tiptoed she, and kissed me ! 
 
 Kissed, and ran away 
 
 Both ere scarce I knew it, 
 
 Fond, yet half in terror 
 That she e er should do it. 
 
H2 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 And I walked blithe back, 
 
 With the daisies wond ring 
 Why I seemed so happy 
 
 O er such sudden sund ring. 
 But a saucy bluebird 
 
 Stoutly did insist him 
 Chirruped loud, " I know, 
 
 Lizzie kissed him, kissed him !" 
 
 WINONA. 
 
 SHIMMER of star glints; a heaven of amber, 
 Arching the brilliants of God s diadem : 
 Dim outlines of meadows whose uncertain shadows 
 Change and shift, as we gaze, like an opaline gem. 
 
 A song in the wind, as of far-away singer 
 
 Low voicing a joy that will not be controlled ; 
 
 A hinting of perfumes, that loiter and linger ; 
 A dream that links heaven and earth in its hold. 
 
 For she stood beside me, while, breeze-blown and lightly, 
 Her curls tossed and rippled against my fond breast ; 
 
 As with pretty rebellion, so faintly, so lightly, 
 The beautiful head fluttered down to its rest. 
 
 Then the stars drifted up from the East, and then over ; 
 
 And the meadows grew gray wastes of shadowy swells ; 
 And the song in the wind, as it swept o er the clover, 
 
 Changed into the clamor of glad wedding bells. 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 113 
 
 A DREAM OF THE TROPICS. 
 
 BRET of surf, which ceaseth never 
 From its moaning, soft and low ; 
 Lap of tides, which ever, ever 
 
 Com 3 and go, come and go ; 
 Emerald-vestured shores of coral, 
 
 Broidered rich with golden beams ; 
 Forests dumb, or only oral 
 
 With the voiceless tones of dreams ; 
 Lo ! with slow steps, doubting taken, 
 
 To your peaceful shrines E come. 
 Let me not your dreams awaken ; 
 
 I am dumb; I am dumb. 
 
 Strange, rare songsters flit before me, 
 
 Noiseless as the shadows creep, 
 And, in star-crowned palm trees o er me, 
 
 Leaf-hid, sit in dreamless sleep ; 
 Dew-kissed, incense-breathing flowers 
 
 Scatter perfume as I tread ; 
 Wild, blue creepers twine o er bowers 
 
 With white lilies carpeted ; 
 Cockatoos, rare green and golden, 
 
 Climbing, swing by amber beak ; 
 Or, among the branches olden, 
 
 Hide and seek ; hide and seek. 
 
 At my feet the gray Iguanas 
 
 Startled, ope dim eyes of pearls, 
 Glide and hide where dense bananas 
 
 Thrust their crowding, clustering whorls ; 
 Oranges, gold-dusted, yellow, 
 
"4 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 Tempt me with their fruitage sweet; 
 Drooping plantains, creamy, mellow, 
 
 Whisper, " Eat ; take and eat ! " 
 Palms with milk-full cocoas laden, 
 
 Drop their nuts with rustling clink ; 
 Saying, " Toil not ; here is Aiclenn ; 
 
 Take and drink ; take and drink !" 
 
 Mid the pure white lily ocean, 
 
 Lovely, brown-skinned maidens move ; 
 Every graceful, sylph-like motion 
 
 Breathing, " Love ; look, and love ! " 
 Voices soft as echo, calling 
 
 O er and o er its low replies ; 
 Warm, round bosoms, rising, falling, 
 
 With love s rapt, delighted sighs ; 
 Soul-pure di earners, knowing never 
 
 Blush of shame or sting of sin, 
 Dream on ; dream sweet dreams forever j 
 
 Only pause and dream me in ! 
 
 UNREST. 
 
 OH, the weary, weary yearning burning through my heart 
 and brain ! 
 
 Beat my pulses dirge-like throbbings, sobbings of a stifled pain : 
 For my love is still delaying, staying all these empty years. 
 Though I ve waited patient, trusting, thrusting back hot, un 
 wept tears. 
 
 Fades the Spring to Summer weary, dreary comes brown Au 
 tumn then ; 
 Bitter winds of Winter blow, and lo ! the Spring is here again 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 115 
 
 Bringing only with its coming, humming of a far-off song 
 Love-song of a maiden saintly, faintly borne the breeze along. 
 
 Bloom the roses in the valleys, dallies each with lover fond ; 
 Stoops the breeze to kiss the lily, stilly nestling on the pond ; 
 Every dove his love is wooing, cooing o er the building nest, 
 And the robin s notes are trilling, thrilling through his mate s 
 fond breast. 
 
 Only I am lorn and lonely, only I am desolate ; 
 
 Hasten, then, long-tarrying maiden, laden with my song of 
 
 fate. 
 Hasten for the years are hasting, wasting like the snows of 
 
 June 
 Come, and still my life s harsh discords and my soul with 
 
 thine attune 1 
 
 SONNET. ACROSTIC. 
 
 TTfO FEEL that life is sweet ; to hear 
 A. One endless song the long day through, 
 Low toned and soft, as when from far, 
 O er moonlit waters, deep and blue, 
 Vespers of eve float to the ear, 
 Encantring joys of pregnant yeara 
 In one sharp hour of present bliss 
 Sweet as an age of heaven is ! 
 To love till life, and love grow one 
 Oh, this is life, and only this. 
 Life which before was barren grain 
 Impregnate is by love s warm sun ; 
 VaticinaL it shall remain 
 E en till eternal life is done 1 
 
n6 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 A BURIAL HYMN. 
 
 DEAD. Let the days as with Autumn leaves cover it ; 
 Days blown like leaves from the great tree of Time. 
 Bid the light breezes to chant dirges over it ; 
 Bid frosts to enshroud it with delicate rime. 
 
 Dead. Will it ever be covered, be hidden, 
 
 This love, o er which dead days are sighing and falling 1 
 Will the sharp gusts of memory, unwelcome, unbidden, 
 
 For aye lift the pall, with such cruel recalling 1 
 
 Dead. Do dull dirges drown doubt s dumb despairing 
 When, heart-faint and hopeless, we bury our dead 1 
 
 Shall I ever forget 1 Shall I sometime cease caring 1 
 Oh, answer, y cleaves that I crush with my tread ! 
 
 ADIOS. 
 
 "ITT GOD -" The Spaniard s soft good bye 
 
 -* Seems fittest for the parting word, 
 The sad, sad word, which must be heard 
 While men shall" live and love, and die. 
 We dreamed the old, old dream a time; 
 We heard the old, old wooing song ; 
 The hours we weaved in happy rhyme, 
 And days were years, and years were long, 
 And full of joy as clinging kiss 
 Which meed of faithful waiting is ! 
 
 "To God." For us the sounding sea 
 Shall make no more sweet melody. 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. n? 
 
 No more its waves drime soothing songs, 
 Nor proud ships float its tides along ; 
 No more shall birds sing soft ; no more 
 Fair flowers spring our paths before. 
 
 Ah, well ! What other dreams we dream, 
 Still strangely sweet will this one seem 
 This one dead dream, which now we lay 
 So deep within its grave away. 
 
 May roses bloom above the sod, 
 
 And thou 0, lost, my love, "To God 1" 
 
 IN AN ALBUM. 
 
 JTTHis experience has taught me ; that we on the beach 
 -* Of friendship s wide ocean our names are e er tracing, 
 Nor heed that time s tide, in its next hungry reach, 
 As fast as we write our fond words is effacing. 
 
 Yet sometimes the sands change to stone, and the trace 
 Remains firm and clear throughout ages and ages. 
 
 So affection s fond lines time can never efface 
 
 Though Death lay his hand on the heart s folded pages. 
 
 IN RETROSPECT. 
 
 OSOUL, I speak you fair to-night, 
 5 As one would with a brother speak, 
 For I am faint of heart, and weak, 
 And cannot see my way aright. 
 
il8 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 When I am weak, thou must be strong, 
 And take the helm with steady hand, 
 For we have sailed together long, 
 And both must sink, or both make land ! 
 O er what strange seas have we not roamed, 
 What fierce storms we have weathered through, 
 What fair, green isles dawned to our view, 
 What bleak, bare coasts a-lee have loomed ! 
 
 Yet would not I, if I might choose 
 To trace the same track out again, 
 Or still drift on an unknown main, 
 The unknown for the known refuse. 
 No ; life has not been good to me 
 Nor yet has it been over bad. 
 The joys and griefs which it has had 
 Have fallen not unequally. 
 If sorrow s waves have o er me rolled, 
 So pleasures, too, have filled my sail 
 With perfumed winds, from forests old 
 As time, and dripping, like white hail, 
 Their fragrant gums. Then will not I 
 Lift hand, nor make complaining cry 
 E en tho I sink o er whelmed and die. 
 
 For life unchastened yet by woe, 
 By sorrow unbaptized, and grief, 
 Not yet is life. We cannot know 
 Nay, to the deepest springs of life 
 Pale sorrow shows alone the way. 
 And whom she farthest leads are they 
 Who best know why this fitful gleam 
 
DRIFTIN 
 
 Of consciousness, this passing dream 
 Is given us ; who penetrate 
 Somewhat the gloom enshrouding fate 
 In her dark rites Initiate ! 
 
 DRIFT WITH THE TIDE. 
 
 raIIEREFORE should we pull weary oar 
 Against the tide that bears us on, 
 When, of the shores that lie before, 
 We know not which we ll drift upon? 
 For aught we know our boats will go, 
 Straight steered, if slow, to fairy seas, 
 Where tropic trees give to the breeze 
 Sweet perfume, as with dreamy ease 
 We glide by isles where Summer smiles, 
 And joy beguiles forever more. 
 
 Nay, looking back along our track 
 Or bright or black, through life s wide sea, 
 Have our own hands held fa^t the helml 
 Are we now where we thought to be ? 
 Some steered for Pleasure s rose-strewn shores, 
 Some sailed for Duty s rock-bound coast ; 
 For greed or gain some pulled strong oars, 
 And some sought storms glad to be lost. 
 Yet these the waves would not o erwhelm, 
 And those, who have not gone awreck, 
 Drift wide their hopes, at fate s sterm beck. 
 
 One unshipped oars and set a sail, 
 
 And said, " Let North or South winds blow, 
 
iao DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 My boat shall sail before the gale ; 
 And where it blows, there will I go." 
 Lo ! fairies shaped each envious breeze 
 To guide that helmless boat aright; 
 It drifted straight to dreamy seas, 
 Shored in by lands of strange delight. 
 Oh, when before may lie such shore, 
 Wherefore, O tired, pull weary oar ? " 
 
 MADONNA MIA. 
 
 OTHE love of loving woman ! 
 5 Who can tell, 
 Who can measure or compute 
 All the heights and depths it reaches, 
 All the paths its rays illumine ! 
 
 How like reaching, clinging tendril 
 Of the vine, 
 
 Silently and softly twining, 
 Hiding neath its leafy veil 
 Where our rugged natures fail. 
 And the wine 
 
 Of its crushed and bleeding fruit 
 How it floweth red, and goeth 
 Straightway to our thirsty hearts, 
 Warming, thrilling in its filling ! 
 Sin may mar it, 
 Yet it sits a desolate queen- 
 Sits a pale, mute Magdalene, 
 Beady, swift at mercy s call 
 
S IN DREAMLAND. 121 
 
 To atone its awful fall. 
 Not the chill of prison bars, 
 Not the taint of crime or shame, 
 Tho the world s fierce howling jars, 
 Can obscure or dim its flame. 
 
 Let it burn | 
 
 In its strength we faintly see 
 
 Type of that unfathomed love 
 
 Which above 
 
 Holds within its boundless sea 
 
 Promise of eternity ! 
 
 EVENING AND MORNING. 
 
 T AST night the sun sank red ; the sky, 
 H Purpled and mottled as with human gore, 
 Frowned back his lurid glances ; saw him die, 
 And bade him bitter speed, and I 
 
 I cried, "O, sun, sink now for aye; wake me to pain no 
 more ! " 
 
 This morn he rose, with brilliant hues, 
 
 And nature all forgotten last eve s mood 
 
 Greeted him gladly ; did not e en refuse 
 
 Her rosiest kisses. How could I but choose 
 
 To heed the lesson ; to forget past woes in present good ! 
 
122 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 FICKLE SORROW. 
 
 ONCE a fairy called Hope, came and dwelt in my heart, 
 And cheerily sang all one long Winter s day ; 
 And, softly I said, "Thou wilt never depart, 
 
 For love with his charms shall compel thee to stay." 
 So I built her a throne, 
 And crowned her a queen ; 
 And a fairer, I ween, 
 Than mine was there none. 
 
 But the morning brought Spring, with its buds and its flowers, 
 
 And my Hope grew aweary of crown and of throne ; 
 And longed for new kingdoms, new blossoms, new bowers, 
 And ever sighed, plaintive, " Oh, let me be gone 1 " 
 But I answered her Nay ; 
 And bade Love forge a chain 
 She might not snap in twain, 
 And so bound her for aye. 
 
 Then I called Love, and said : "Be thou keeper, and see 
 
 That our captive has all heart can ask ; 
 None can teach her but thou not too long to be free, 
 So do thou, gentle Love, take this task. 
 Alas, 1 know not 
 How cruel Love is ! 
 How he slays with a kiss 
 When that kiss is unsought ! 
 
 And so, ere I dreamed it, my sweet Hope was dead ; 
 
 And gently I loosened the chain, 
 That but bound a pale corse, whose spirit had fled 
 
 Forever from me, and her pain. 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 123 
 
 So I built her a tomb 
 In my heart, leal and true ; 
 Shut out from my view, 
 Shut in by deep gloom. 
 
 Then Sorrow I charged with its keeping, and said : 
 
 "See. I wander for rest far away ; 
 Keep sacred this chamber where lieth my dead 
 Till the time of my coming, I pray." 
 Then the moments new by 
 Till a year had been told ; 
 And the world seemed less cold ; 
 Less dark the blue sky. 
 
 Then Sorrow I called, and again sought the gloom 
 
 Of my tomb. Lo, no tomb was there ! 
 Only warbling of song-birds and roses in bloom, 
 And perfume and joy in the air ! 
 
 Not a stone marked my deadj 
 And I turned fierce around 
 To chide Sorrow, and found 
 That she, too, had fled ! 
 
 A FRAGMENT. 
 
 ICC TTND I am old, and life for me 
 
 / Has naught of love nor hope nor joy 1 
 Nay ; ne er were years so fair, so free 
 
 From all that love and hope destroy. 
 
 For when I ceased to strive and war, 
 Lo ! life no more flung bloody gage ; 
 
124 DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 
 
 But bade me lift mine eyes afar 
 And view my glorious heritage. 
 
 The joy that shines in her pure eyes 
 
 Whose marriage morn her lover brings ; 
 
 Of her who bends her, tender wise, 
 And o er her first born softly sings ; 
 
 The thrill of those who hear once more 
 The echoes of the hastening tread, 
 
 When frozen deep or coral shore 
 
 Reluctant yield those mourned as dead 
 
 All, all are mine ! I hear the songs 
 
 Of lovers who have their own have won ; 
 
 Glad paeans over righted wrongs ; 
 Soft dirges o er a fallen one. 
 
 And so I sit, with folded hands, 
 Contented, on life s utmost shore; 
 
 I see the loom of shining lands, 
 I wait the boat that bears me o er. 
 
 And, waiting, turn with tender care, 
 
 Life s leaves, grown yellow now and dim. 
 
 On every page fair records are 
 
 Of love to me and mine from Him. 
 
 There is no grief . Lo, unbelief 
 
 May wince beneath the chastening rod ; 
 
 But faith beneath the trial brief 
 Discerns the upward path to God. 
 
DRIFTINGS IN DREAMLAND. 125 
 
 There is no pain. Lo, life again 
 
 Takes up the burden of its song, 
 And faith and hope and trust remain 
 
 To light the soul its way along. 
 
 A MEMORY. 
 
 CTT SMALL white hand, whose timid touch 
 
 yJ- Conceals so much, reveals so much ; 
 
 A face lit with the tender pride 
 
 Of not one wish unsatisfied ; 
 
 And silence that is musical 
 
 Y/ith worrdless songs and that is all ! 
 
 All. Yet our lives may ebb and flow, 
 And loves may come and loves may go, 
 Nor life, nor love again confess 
 A moment of such perfectness. 
 Life may be long, and love abide, 
 Yet neither wholly satisfied. 
 
 Ah, well ! All this is past, I wean, 
 And harsh thoughts interpose between. 
 Yet nought can ever have the power 
 To dim the memory of that hour 
 That hour so full of all life brings 
 To hush our yearning questionings. 
 
 And when there comes the unbidden thought 
 
 Of you, all else shall be forgot ; 
 
 And I will paint you with the grace 
 
 Of that dear hour upon your face; 
 
 A grace too perfect to abide, 
 
 Of love fulfilled and satisfied ! 
 
Epitome of 
 
 Theosophy, the Wisdom-Religion, has existed from immemorial time. It 
 offers us a theory of nature and of life which is founded upon knowledge ac 
 quired by the Sages of the past, more especially those of the East ; and its 
 higher students claim that this knowledge is not something imagined or inferred, 
 but that it is seen and known by those who are willing to comply with the con 
 ditions. Some of its fundamental propositions are : 
 
 i That the spirit in man is the only real and permanent part of his being ; 
 the rest of his nature being variously compounded, and decay being 
 incident to all composite things, everything in man but his spirit is 
 impermanent. 
 
 Further, that the universe being one thing and not diverse, and 
 everything within it being connected with the whole and with every 
 other, of which upon the upper plane, above referred to, there is a per 
 fect knowledge, no act or thought occurs without each portion of the 
 great whole perceiving and noting it. Hence all are inseparably bound 
 together by the tie of Brotherhood 
 
 2. That below the spirit and above the intellect is a plane of consciousness in 
 which experiences are noted, commonly called man s "spiritual nature"! 
 this is as susceptible of culture as his body or his intellect. 
 3. That this spiritual culture is only attainable as the grosser interests, pas 
 sions, and demands of the flesh are subordinated to the interests, aspira 
 tions, and needs of the higher nature ; and that this is a matter of both 
 system and established law 
 
 4. That men thus systematically trained attain to clear insight into the 
 immaterial, spiritual world, their interior faculties apprehending Truth 
 as immediately and readily as physical faculties grasp the things of sense, 
 or mental faculties those of reason ; and hence that their testimony to 
 such Truth is as trustworthy as is that of scientists or philosophers to 
 truth in their respective fields. 
 
 5. That in the course of this spiritual training such men acquire perception of 
 and control over various forces in Nature unknown to others, and thus 
 are able to perform -works usually called "miraculous," though realty 
 but the result of larger knowledge of Natural l*w^ 
 
 6. That their testimony as to super-sensuous truth, verified by their possession 
 of such powers, challenges candid examination from every religious 
 mind. 
 
Turning ow to the system expounded by these Sages, we find as its main 
 
 points : 
 
 i. An account of cosmogony, the past and future of this earth and other 
 planets; the evolution of life through mineral, vegetable, animal and hu 
 man forms. 
 
 2. That the affairs of this world and its people are subject to cyclic laws, and 
 that during any one cycle the rate or quality of progress appertaining to 
 a different cycle is not possible. 
 
 3. The existence of a universally diffused and highly ethereal medium, called 
 the "Astral Light" or " Akasa," which is the repository of all past, 
 present and future events, and which records the effects of spiritual 
 causes and of all acts and thoughts from the direction of either spirit or 
 matter. It may be called the Book of the Recording Angel. 
 
 4. The origin, history, development and destiny of mankind. 
 Upon the subject of Man it teaches: 
 
 i. That each spirit is a manifestation of the One Spirit, and thus a part of all. 
 It passes through a series of experiences on incarnation, and is destined 
 to ultimate re-union with the Divine. 
 
 2. That this incarnation is not single but repeated, each individuality becom 
 ing re-embodied during numerous existences in successive races and 
 planets, and accumulating the experiences of each incarnation towards its 
 perfection. 
 
 3. That between adjacent incarnations, after grosser elements are first purged 
 away, comes a period of comparative rest and refreshment, the spirit be 
 ing therein prepared for its next advent into material life. 
 
 4. That the nature of each incarnation depends upon the merit and demerit 
 of the previous life or lives, upon the way in which the man has lived 
 and thought; and that this law is inflexible and wholly just. 
 
 5. That " Karma," a term signifying two things, the law of ethical causation 
 (Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap,) and the balance or 
 excess of merit or demerit in any individual, determines also the main ex 
 periences of joy and sorrow in each incarnation, so that what men call 
 " luck" is in reality " desert", desert acquired in past existence. 
 
 6. That the process of evolution up to re-union with the Divine contemplates 
 successive elevations from rank to rank of power and usefulness, the 
 most exalted beings still in the flesh being known as Sages, Rishees, 
 Brothers, Masters, their great function being the preservation at all 
 times, and, when cyclic laws permit, the extension, of spiritual knowl 
 edge and influence among humanity. 
 
 y.-r-That when union with the Divine is effected, all the events and experiences 
 
 of each incarnation are known; * . 
 
 As to the process of spiritual development it teaches: * 
 
 i : That the essence of the process lies in the securing of supremacy to the 
 highest, the spiritual, element of man s nature. 
 
2. That this is attained along four lines, among others, 
 
 (a) The eradication of selfishness, in all forms, and the cultivation of 
 broad, generous sympathy in and effort for the good of others. 
 (t) The cultivation of the inner, spiritual man by meditation, communion 
 with the Divine, and exercise. 
 
 (c) The control of fleshly appetites and desires; alllower, material interests 
 being deliberately subordinated to the behests of the spirit. 
 
 (d) The careful performance of every duty belonging to one s station in life, 
 without desire for reward, leaving results to Divine law. 
 
 3. That while the above is incumbent on and practicable by all religiously- 
 disposed men, a yet higher plane of spiritual attainment is conditioned 
 upon a specific course of training physical, intellectual and spiritual, by 
 which the internal faculties are first aroused and then developed. 
 
 4. That an extension of this process is reached in Adeptship, an exalted stage 
 attained by laborious self-discipline and hardship, protracted through pos 
 sibly many incarnations, and with many degrees of initiation and pre 
 ferment, beyond which are yet other stages ever approaching the Divine. 
 As to the rationale of spiritual development it asserts: 
 
 i. That the process is entirely within the individual himself, the motive, the 
 effort, the result being distinctly personal. 
 
 2. That, however personal and interior, this process is not unaided, being 
 possible, in fact, only through close communion with the Supreme Source 
 of all strength. 
 As to the degree of advancement in incarnations it holds: 
 
 i. That even a mere intellectual acquaintance with Theosophic truth has 
 great value in fitting the individual for a step upwards in his next earth- 
 life, as it gives an impulse in that direction. 
 
 2. That still more is gained by a career of duty, piety and beneficence. 
 
 3 . That a still greater advance is attained by the attentive and devoted use of 
 
 trie means to spiritual culture heretofore stated. 
 
 It may be added that Theosophy is the only system of religion and philos 
 ophy which gives a satisfactory explanation of such problems as these: 
 
 i. The object, use, and inhabitation of other planets than this earth. 
 
 2. The geological cataclysms of earth; the frequent absence of intermediate 
 types in its fauna; the occurrence of architectural and other relics of 
 races now lost, and as to which ordinary science has nothing but vain 
 conjecture ; the nature of extinct civilizations and the causes of their ex 
 tinction ; the persistence of savagery and the unequal development of 
 existing civilization ; the differences, physical and internal, between the 
 various races of men ; the line of future development. 
 
 3. The contrasts and unisons of the world s faiths, and the common founda 
 tion underlying them all. 
 
 4. The existence of evil, of suffering, and of sorrow a hopeless puzzle to the 
 mere philanthropist or theologian. 
 
5- The inequalities in social condition and privilege ; the sharp contrasts be 
 tween wealth and poverty, intelligence and stupidity, culture and ignor 
 ance, virtue and vileness ; the appearance of men of genius in families 
 destitute of it, as well as other facts in conflict with the law of heredity ; 
 the frequent cases of unfitness of environment around individuals, so sore 
 as to embitter disposition, hamper aspiration and paralyze endeavor ; the 
 violent antithesis between character and condition ; the occurrence of ac 
 cident, misfortune, and untimely death all of them problems solvable 
 only by either the conventional theory of Divine caprice or the Theo- 
 sophic doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation. 
 6. The possession by individuals of psychic powers clairvoyance, clairaudi- 
 
 ence, etc., as well as the phenomena of psychometry and statuvolism. 
 7. The true nature of genuine phenomena in spiritualism, and the proper an 
 tidote to superstition and to exaggerated expectation. 
 
 8.: The failure of conventional religions to greatly extend their areas, reform 
 abuses, re-organize society, expand the idea of brotherhood, abate dis 
 content, diminish crime, and elevate humanity ; and an apparent inade 
 quacy to realize in individual lives the ideal they professedly uphold. 
 i . That of intellectual inquiry to be met by works in Public Libraries, etc. 
 2. That of desire for personal culture to be met partly by the books prepared 
 for that specific end, partly by the periodical Magazines expounding 
 Theosophy. 
 
 3 That of personal identification with the Theosophical Society, an associa 
 tion formed in 1875 with three aims to be the nucleus of a Universal 
 Brotherhood ; to promote the study of Aryan and other Eastern litera 
 tures, religions and sciences ; to investigate unexplained laws of nature 
 and the psychical ppwers latent in man. Adhesion to the first only is a 
 prerequisite to membership, the others being optional. The Society 
 represents no particular creed, is entirely unsectarian, and includes pro 
 fessors of all faiths, only exacting from each member that toleration of 
 the beliefs of others which he desires them to exhibit towards his own. 
 Membership in the Theosophical Society may be either at large" or in a lo 
 cal Branch. Applications for membership in a Branch should be addressed to 
 th local President or Secretary ; those "at large" to any Branch President or 
 to the General Secretary, Wm. Q. Judge, 144 Madison Ave., New York, and the 
 latter should inclose $2.00 for entrance fee and 50 cents for diploma, and$i.oo 
 yearly dues. Information as to organization and other points may also be 
 obtained from Secretary Pacific Coast Corporation, Mercantile Library Building, 
 San Francisco. 
 
 There are now, 1894, one hundred Branches in the United States, includ 
 ing all the principal cities, among which may be noted New York, Philadel 
 phia, Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Washing 
 ton, Cincinnati, Boston, Omaha, San Diego, Denver, Salt Lake, New Orleans, 
 etc. 
 
REINCARNATION. 
 
 A STUDY OF THE HUO)Afl SOUL 
 
 IN ITS RELATION TO RE-BIRTH, EVOLUTION, POST-MORTEM 
 
 STATES, THE COMPOUND NATURE OP MAN, 
 
 HYPNOTISM, ETC. 
 
 BY JEROME A. ANDERSON, M. D., F. T. S. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. The Nature and Origin of the Soul. The three 
 
 Absolute Hypostases Consciousness, Substance, Force CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Physiological Evidence of the Existence of the Soul. No Physiological 
 Basis for the Unity of Consciousness Memory Feeling, Etc. Mechanical 
 
 Motion Cannot Originate Sensation //. The Psychological Evidence of the 
 
 Existence of the Soul. The Nature of Dream Trance Clairvoyance 
 
 Thought Transference, Etc HI. The Evolution of the Soul.The Unit 
 
 of Consciousness from Atom to God by the Widening of the Conscious 
 
 Area Through Experience, Etc IV. The Individualization of the 
 
 Soul. Centers of Consciousness Freed by Pralayas the Cycle of Necessity 
 
 V. Reincarnation Philosophic and Logical Evidence. Failure of One 
 
 Birth Theories Life only to be Explained Philosophically by Reincarna 
 tion. . . . VI . Reincarnation The Scientific Evidence. Bulbs Seeds Met 
 amorphosis of Insects Genius Idiocy Prodigies, Etc .... VII. The Com 
 posite Nature of the Soul. The Seven Aspects of the One Center of Con 
 sciousness. . . . VIII. The Reincarnating Ego. The Nature and Functions 
 of the Higher Ego IX. The Personality. The Animal Man How Re 
 lated to the Divine Man .... X. Post-Mortem States of Consciousness. De- 
 
 vachan Kama Loca and Nirvana Nature of XI. Hypnotism and the 
 
 Human Soul. Hypnotic Processes and States of Consciousness.....^//. 
 Objections to Reincarnation. Loss of Memory Explained Other Objections 
 
 Answered XIII. Karma. The Law of Cause and Effect on all Planes 
 
 XIV. Ethical Conclusions. APPENDIX A. Reincarnation as Applied 
 
 to the Sex Problem APPENDIX B. Embryology and Reincarnation 
 
 The Nutrition of the Fetus. 
 
 JPI^The above work, containing 200 pages, handsomely bound, 
 sent postpaid on receipt of price: 
 
 Cloth, (Blue and Gold,) $1.00. 
 
 Same in Paper Covers, .50. 
 
 Address the Author, 
 
 JEROME A. ANDERSON, M. D., 
 
 1170 Market St., San Francisco, Gal. 
 
THKOSOPHY. 
 
 The Pacific Coast Committee for Theosophic work has 
 opened a Repository of Books at the Theosophical Headquarters, 
 Mercantile Library Building, San Francisco. 
 
 Experience indicates the following as a good series of books in a preliminary 
 course : 
 
 What is Theosophy ? Besant-Olds $ .35 
 
 Short Glossary of Theosophical Terms, 
 
 cloth, 750 ; paper 50 
 
 Theosophy and its Evidences, A. Besant 10 
 
 Wilkesbarre Letters on Theosophy, Alex. Fullerton 10 
 
 Echoes from the Orient, W. Q. Judge 50 
 
 Ocean of Theosophy, W. Q. Judge i.oo 
 
 Seven Principles of Man, Annie Besant 35 
 
 Reincarnation, Dr. J. A. Anderson, i .00 
 
 Death and After, Annie Besant 35 
 
 Reincarnation, Annie Besant 35 
 
 Letters that Have Helped Me, Jasper Neimand 50 
 
 Voice of the Silence, H. P. Blavatsky 75 
 
 Bhagavad Gita (pocket edition, morocco), W. Q. Judge i .00 
 
 Esoteric Buddhism, A. P. Sinnett i .00 
 
 The Key to Theosophy, H. P. Blavatsky i .50 
 
 Isis Unveiled, 2 vols 7 . 50 
 
 The Secret Doctrine, 2 vols i-5o 
 
 In addition to the above the following is a partial list of books which will also 
 be sent post-paid on receipt of price. Complete lists, including many leaflets 
 
 and cheap but very useful tracts, papers by Oriental Pundits, sent on applica 
 tion: 
 
 Addresses at American Convention, Chicago, April, 1892 20 
 
 Adventure Among the Rosicrucians, F. Hartman cloth, 750; paper, .50 
 
 Astral Light, Nizida 75 
 
 A Rough Outline of Theosophy, Besant 10 
 
 A Study of Man, Dr. J. D. Buck 2.50 
 
 Bhagavad Gita, Mohini s Translation and Notes 2.00 
 
 Burial Service 50 
 
 Buddhism, Rhys Davids i.oo 
 
 Buddhist Catechism (H. S. Olcott) 40 
 
 Blossom and the Fruit, M. C. Cloth, $1.00; paper, 40 
 
 Buddhist Diet Book -. .50 
 
 Christos, J. D. Buck 75 
 
 Divine Pymander, Hermes Trismegistus 3.00 
 
 Discourses on the Bhagavad Gita, Subba Row 75 
 
Dreams and Dream Stories, Kingsford, Cloth, $1.00; paper 50 
 
 Dreams of the Dead, Stanton. Paper, 500; cloth i .00 
 
 Five Years of Theosophy 5.00 
 
 From the Caves and Jungles of Hindoostan, H . B. Blavatsky 2.50 
 
 Gems from the East, a Birthday Book, H. P. Blavatsky i.oo 
 
 Guide to Theosophy i.oo 
 
 History of the Rosicrucians, Waite 2.50 
 
 Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky, A. P. Sinnett 3.00 
 
 Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme, Hartman 2.50 
 
 Life of Buddha, Lillie 2.00 
 
 Light on the Path, M. C. Cloth, 400; paper 25 
 
 Magic, White and Black, Dr. Hartman. Cloth, $i .00; paper 50 
 
 My Books (H. P. B.) 10 
 
 Memorial Vol. to H. P. B .35 
 
 Nature s Finer Forces i.oo 
 
 Neila Sen, A Novel i .00 
 
 Nine Months at T. S. Headquarters, Franz Hartman 75 
 
 Nightmare Tales, H . P. B 35 
 
 Numbers; Their Occult Power and Mystic Virtue 1.25 
 
 OCEAN OF THEOSOPHY (New), Wm. Q. Judge. Paper, SQC; cloth i.oo 
 
 Occult Science in India, Jaccolliot 3-00 
 
 Paracelsus, Franz Hartman. Paper, 500 ; cloth i.oo 
 
 Pearls of Faith, Edwin Arnold i .00 
 
 Philosophy of Mysticism, Du Prel 7-5 
 
 Pilgrim and the Shrine, Maitland. Paper 50 
 
 Principles of Astrological Geomancy, Hartman i.oo 
 
 Posthumus Humanity, D Assier. Cloth 2 . 50 
 
 Problems of the Hidden Life, Pilgrim : i .75 
 
 Psychometry and Thought Transference 30 
 
 Purpurses of Theosophy, Mrs. A . P. Sinnett. Paper 15 
 
 Reincarnation, E. D. Walker. Cloth, $1,00; paper 50 
 
 REINCARNATION (NEW), DR. J. A. ANDERSON. Cloth, $1.00; paper .50 
 
 Sankhya Karika, with commentary 1.25 
 
 Sources of Measure, Skinner 5.00 
 
 Through the Gates of Gold 50 
 
 The Nature and Aim of Theosophy, Dr. J. D. Buck . Cloth 75 
 
 The Occult World, A. P. Sinnett i .00 
 
 Theosophy, Religion and Occult Science, H. S. Olcott 2.00 
 
 The Perfect Way, Kingsford and Maitland. Cloth, $1,00; paper 50 
 
 Transactions of Blavatsky Lodge. Paper, No. i, 500; No. 2 35 
 
 Theosophical Glossary, H. P. Blavatsky 3.50 
 
 The Mystic Quest, William Kingsland. ... T !.. ... i.oo 
 
 The Life of the Buddha, Early History of the Order. Translated by 
 
 Rockhill 3.00 
 
 1 Wonder Light and Other Stories," for Children, J. Campbell Ver Planck .50 
 
Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali, American edition . Flexible 80 
 
 Any of the above books, as well as the periodicals below, may be obtained 
 by remitting the price to Secretary Pacific Coast Theosophic Corporation, Mer 
 cantile Library Building, San Francisco. 
 
 . Periodicals. 
 
 Subscriptions will be received for the following Magazines: 
 
 Price per annum. 
 
 The Path," $2.00 
 
 " Lucifer," 4.40 
 
 " The Theosophist," 5.00 
 
 " Theosophical Sittings, " 1.25 
 
 " Pacific Theosophist, i.oo 
 
 THE 
 
 OGEJIN * OF * THKOSOPHV 
 
 BY 
 
 WM. Q. JUDGE, F. T. S. 
 
 This work is designed to give the general reader some knowlege of the most 
 important Theosophical Doctrines, and at the same time it will be of great 
 value to students in the Theosophical Society. It contains seventeen chapters 
 and gives a clear idea of the fundamental principles of the Wisdom Religion. 
 The following is a brief synopsis of the book: 
 
 Chapter I deals with the general aspects of Theosophy, and that ever-inter 
 esting subject, the MASTERS Chap. II Is a concise presentation of Evolu 
 tion and its records in ancient chronologies. .. .Chap. Ill Deals with our 
 Earth more particularly shows its septenary nature, and its relation to other 
 planets of our plane. . . .Chap. IV Applies this septenary division to man, and 
 deals with his " Principles" in a general way. . . .Chap V Takes up the Body 
 and Astral Body .... Chap. VI Examines the nature of Kama .... Chap. VI I 
 Of Manas, or the Thinking Principle; all together, forming, perhaps, the clear 
 est explanation yet written of the nature and functions of these Principles .... 
 Chaps. VIII , IX and X deal with Reincarnation and its evidences .... Chap. XI 
 With Karma.... Chaps. XII and XIII With Post-Mortem Existence.... 
 
 Chap. XIV With Cycles Chap. XV With the Derivation of Man, the 
 
 Apes, etc. . . .Chaps. XVI and XVII With Psychic Force, "Spiritualism," and 
 allied topics. 
 
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