Dreams and Days | Page 8

warm?With the dying tempest's breath;?And, as I walk the lonely strand?With sea-weed strewn, my forehead fanned?By wet salt-winds, I watch the breakers,?Furious sporting, tossed and tumbling,?Shatter here with a dreadful rumbling--?Watch, and muse, and vainly listen?To the inarticulate mumbling?Of the hoary-headed deep;?For who may tell me what it saith,?Muttering, moaning as in sleep?
Slowly and heavily?Comes in the sea,?With memories of storm o'erfreighted,?With heaving heart and breath abated,?Pregnant with some mysterious, endless sorrow,?And seamed with many a gaping, sighing furrow.
Slowly and heavily?Grows the green water-mound;?But drawing ever nigher,?Towering ever higher,?Swollen with an inward rage?Naught but ruin can assuage,?Swift, now, without sound,?Creeps stealthily?Up to the shore--?Creeps, creeps and undulates;?As one dissimulates?Till, swayed by hateful frenzy,?Through passion grown immense, he?Bursts forth hostilely;?And rising, a smooth billow--?Its swelling, sunlit dome?Thinned to a tumid ledge?With keen, curved edge?Like the scornful curl?Of lips that snarl--?O'ertops itself and breaks?Into a raving foam;?So springs upon the shore?With a hungry roar;?Its first fierce anger slakes?On the stony shallow;?And runs up on the land,?Licking the smooth, hard sand,?Relentless, cold, yet wroth;?And dies in savage froth.
Then with its backward swirl?The sands and the stones, how they whirl!?O, fiercely doth it draw?Them to its chasm'd maw,?And against it in vain?They linger and strain;?And as they slip away?Into the seething gray?Fill all the thunderous air?With the horror of their despair,?And their wild terror wreak?In one hoarse, wailing shriek.
But scarce is this done,?When another one?Falls like the bolt from a bellowing gun,?And sucks away the shore?As that did before:?And another shall smother it o'er.
Then there's a lull--a half-hush;?And forward the little waves rush,?Toppling and hurrying,?Each other worrying,?And in their haste?Run to waste.
Yet again is heard the trample?Of the surges high and ample:?Their dreadful meeting--?The wild and sudden breaking--?The dinting, and battering, and beating,?And swift forsaking.
And ever they burst and boom,?A numberless host;?Like heralds of doom?To the trembling coast;?And ever the tangled spray?Is tossed from the fierce affray,?And, as with spectral arms?That taunt and beckon and mock,?And scatter vague alarms,?Clasps and unclasps the rock;?Listlessly over it wanders;?Moodily, madly maunders,?And hissingly falls?From the glistening walls.
So all day along the shore?Shout the breakers, green and hoar,?Weaving out their weird tune;?Till at night the full moon?Weds the dark with that ring?Of gold that you see her fling?On the misty air.?Then homeward slow returning?To slumbers deep I fare,?Filled with an infinite yearning,?With thoughts that rise and fall?To the sound of the sea's hollow call,?Breathed now from white-lit waves that reach?Cold fingers o'er the damp, dark beach,?To scatter a spray on my dreams;?Till the slow and measured rote?Brings a drowsy ease?To my spirit, and seems?To set it soothingly afloat?On broad and buoyant seas?Of endless rest, lulled by the dirge?Of the melancholy surge.
BLACKMOUTH, OF COLORADO
"Who is Blackmouth?" Well, that's hard to say.?Mebbe he might ha' told you, 't other day,?If you'd been here. Now,--he's gone away.?Come to think on, 't wouldn't ha' been no use?If you'd called here earlier. His excuse?Always was, whenever folks would ask him?Where he hailed from, an' would tease an' task him;--?What d' you s'pose? He just said, "I don' know."
That was truth. He came here long ago;?But, before that, he'd been born somewhere:?The conundrum started first, right there.?Little shaver--afore he knew his name?Or the place from whereabouts he came--?On a wagon-train the Apaches caught him.?Killed the old folks! But this cus'--they brought him?Safe away from fire an' knife an' arrows.?So'thin' 'bout him must have touched their marrows:?They was merciful;--treated him real good;?Brought him up to man's age well's they could.?Now, d' you b'lieve me, that there likely lad,?For all they used him so, went to the bad:?Leastways left the red men, that he knew,?'N' come to look for folks like me an' you;--?Goldarned white folks that he never saw.?Queerest thing was--though he loved a squaw,?'T was on her account he planned escape;?Shook the Apaches, an' took up red tape?With the U. S. gov'ment arter a while;?Tho' they do say gov'ment may be vile,?Mean an' treacherous an' deceivin'. Well,?_I_ ain't sayin' our gov'ment is a sell.
Bocanegra--Spanish term--I've heard?Stands for "Blackmouth." Now this curious bird,?Known as Bocanegra, gave his life?Most for others. First, he saved his wife;?Her I spoke of;--nothin' but a squaw.?You might wonder by what sort of law?He, a white man born, should come to love her.?But 't was somehow so: he did discover?Beauty in her, of the holding kind.?Some men love the light, an' some the shade.?Round that little Indian girl there played?Soft an' shadowy tremblings, like the dark?Under trees; yet now an' then a spark,?Quick 's a firefly, flashing from her eyes,?Made you think of summer-midnight skies.?She was faithful, too, like midnight stars.?As for Blackmouth, if you'd seen the scars?Made by wounds he suffered for her sake,?You'd have called him true, and no mistake.
Growin' up a man, he scarcely met?Other white folks; an' his heart was set?On this red girl. Yet he said: "We'll