Complete Poetical Works | Page 4

a number of prose sketches and tales and in one or two poems; but life abroad never dimmed the vividness of the impressions made on him by the experience of his early manhood when he partook of the elixir vitae of California, and the stories which from year to year flowed from an apparently inexhaustible fountain glittered with the gold washed down from the mountain slopes of that country which through his imagination he had made so peculiarly his own.
Mr. Harte died suddenly at Camberley, England, May 6, 1902.
CONTENTS
I. NATIONAL.
JOHN BURNS OF GETTYSBURG
"HOW ARE YOU, SANITARY?"
BATTLE BUNNY
THE REVEILLE
OUR PRIVILEGE
RELIEVING GUARD
THE GODDESS
ON A PEN OF THOMAS STARR KING
A SECOND REVIEW OF THE GRAND ARMY
THE COPPERHEAD
A SANITARY MESSAGE
THE OLD MAJOR EXPLAINS
CALIFORNIA'S GREETING TO SEWARD
THE AGED STRANGER
THE IDYL OP BATTLE HOLLOW
CALDWELL OF SPRINGFIELD
POEM, DELIVERED ON THE FOURTEENTH ANNIVERSARY OF CALIFORNIA'S ADMISSION INTO THE UNION
MISS BLANCHE SAYS
AN ARCTIC VISION
ST. THOMAS
OFF SCARBOROUGH
CADET GREY
II. SPANISH IDYLS AND LEGENDS.
THE MIRACLE OF PADRE JUNIPERO
THE WONDERFUL SPRING OF SAN JOAQUIN
THE ANGELUS
CONCEPCION DE ARGUELLO
"FOR THE KING"
RAMON
DON DIEGO OF THE SOUTH
AT THE HACIENDA
FRIAR PEDRO'S RIDE
IN THE MISSION GARDEN
THE LOST GALLEON
III. IN DIALECT.
"JIM"
CHIQUITA
DOW'S FLAT
IN THE TUNNEL
"CICELY"
PENELOPE
PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES
THE SOCIETY UPON THE STANISLAUS
LUKE
"THE BABES IN THE WOODS"
THE LATEST CHINESE OUTRAGE
TRUTHFUL JAMES TO THE EDITOR
AN IDYL OF THE ROAD
THOMPSON OF ANGELS
THE HAWK'S NEST
HER LETTER
HIS ANSWER TO "HER LETTER"
"THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS"
FURTHER LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES
AFTER THE ACCIDENT
THE GHOST THAT JIM SAW
"SEVENTY-NINE"
THE STAGE-DRIVER'S STORY
A QUESTION OF PRIVILEGE
THE THOUGHT-READER OF ANGELS
THE SPELLING BEE AT ANGELS
ARTEMIS IN SIERRA
JACK OF THE TULES
IV. MISCELLANEOUS.
A GREYPORT LEGEND
A NEWPORT ROMANCE
SAN FRANCISCO
THE MOUNTAIN HEART'S-EASE
GRIZZLY
MADRONO
COYOTE
TO A SEA-BIRD
WHAT THE CHIMNEY SANG
DICKENS IN CAMP
TWENTY YEARS
FATE
GRANDMOTHER TENTERDEN
GUILD'S SIGNAL
ASPIRING MISS DELAINE
A LEGEND OF COLOGNE
THE TALE OF A PONY
ON A CONE OF THE BIG TREES
LONE MOUNTAIN
ALNASCHAR
THE TWO SHIPS
ADDRESS (OPENING OF THE CALIFORNIA THEATRE, SAN FRANCISCO, JANUARY 19, 1870)
DOLLY VARDEN
TELEMACHUS VERSUS MENTOR
WHAT THE WOLF REALLY SAID TO LITTLE RED RIDING-HOOD
HALF AN HOUR BEFORE SUPPER
WHAT THE BULLET SANG
THE OLD CAMP-FIRE
THE STATION-MASTER OF LONE PRAIRIE
THE MISSION BELLS OF MONTEREY
"CROTALUS"
ON WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT
THE BIRDS OF CIRENCESTER
LINES TO A PORTRAIT, BY A SUPERIOR PERSON
HER LAST LETTER: BEING A REPLY TO "HIS ANSWER"
V. PARODIES.
BEFORE THE CURTAIN
TO THE PLIOCENE SKULL
THE BALLAD OF MR. COOKE
THE BALLAD OF THE EMEU
MRS. JUDGE JENKINS
A GEOLOGICAL MADRIGAL
AVITOR
THE WILLOWS
NORTH BEACH
THE LOST TAILS OF MILETUS
THE RITUALIST
A MORAL VINDICATOR
CALIFORNIA MADRIGAL
WHAT THE ENGINES SAID
THE LEGENDS OF THE RHINE
SONGS WITHOUT SENSE
VI. LITTLE POSTERITY.
MASTER JOHNNY'S NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR
MISS EDITH'S MODEST REQUEST
MISS EDITH MAKES IT PLEASANT FOR BROTHER JACK
MISS EDITH MAKES ANOTHER FRIEND
WHAT MISS EDITH SAW FROM HER WINDOW
ON THE LANDING
NOTES
POEMS
I. NATIONAL
JOHN BURNS OF GETTYSBURG
Have you heard the story that gossips tell?Of Burns of Gettysburg?--No? Ah, well:?Brief is the glory that hero earns,?Briefer the story of poor John Burns.?He was the fellow who won renown,--?The only man who didn't back down?When the rebels rode through his native town;?But held his own in the fight next day,?When all his townsfolk ran away.?That was in July sixty-three,?The very day that General Lee,?Flower of Southern chivalry,?Baffled and beaten, backward reeled?From a stubborn Meade and a barren field.
I might tell how but the day before?John Burns stood at his cottage door,?Looking down the village street,?Where, in the shade of his peaceful vine,?He heard the low of his gathered kine,?And felt their breath with incense sweet;?Or I might say, when the sunset burned?The old farm gable, he thought it turned?The milk that fell like a babbling flood?Into the milk-pail red as blood!?Or how he fancied the hum of bees?Were bullets buzzing among the trees.?But all such fanciful thoughts as these?Were strange to a practical man like Burns,?Who minded only his own concerns,?Troubled no more by fancies fine?Than one of his calm-eyed, long-tailed kine,--?Quite old-fashioned and matter-of-fact,?Slow to argue, but quick to act.?That was the reason, as some folk say,?He fought so well on that terrible day.
And it was terrible. On the right?Raged for hours the heady fight,?Thundered the battery's double bass,--?Difficult music for men to face?While on the left--where now the graves?Undulate like the living waves?That all that day unceasing swept?Up to the pits the rebels kept--?Round shot ploughed the upland glades,?Sown with bullets, reaped with blades;?Shattered fences here and there?Tossed their splinters in the air;?The very trees were stripped and bare;?The barns that once held yellow grain?Were heaped with harvests of the slain;?The cattle bellowed on the plain,?The turkeys screamed with might and main,?And brooding barn-fowl left their rest?With strange shells bursting in each nest.
Just where the tide of battle turns,?Erect and lonely stood old John Burns.?How do you think the man was dressed??He wore an ancient long buff vest,?Yellow as saffron,--but his best;?And buttoned over his manly breast?Was a bright blue coat, with a rolling collar,?And large gilt buttons,--size of a dollar,--?With tails that the country-folk called "swaller."?He wore a broad-brimmed, bell-crowned hat,?White as the locks on which it sat.?Never had such a sight been seen?For forty years on the village green,?Since old John Burns was a country beau,?And