Shapes of Clay | Page 5

Was wide acquainted. If ther' was a cuss We didn't know, the cause was--he knowed us.
"Maybe you had that claim adjoinin' mine Up thar in Calaveras. Was it you To which Long Mary took a mighty shine, An' throwed squar' off on Jake the Kangaroo? I guess if she could see ye now she'd take Her chance o' happiness along o' Jake.
"You ain't so purty now as you was then: Yer eyes is nothin' but two prospect holes, An' women which are hitched to better men Would hardly for sech glances damn their souls, As Lengthie did. By G----! I hope it's you, For" _(kicks the skull)_ "I'm Jake the Kangaroo."

A VISION OF DOOM.
I stood upon a hill. The setting sun Was crimson with a curse and a portent, And scarce his angry ray lit up the land That lay below, whose lurid gloom appeared Freaked with a moving mist, which, reeking up From dim tarns hateful with some horrid ban, Took shapes forbidden and without a name. Gigantic night-birds, rising from the reeds With cries discordant, startled all the air, And bodiless voices babbled in the gloom-- The ghosts of blasphemies long ages stilled, And shrieks of women, and men's curses. All These visible shapes, and sounds no mortal ear Had ever heard, some spiritual sense Interpreted, though brokenly; for I Was haunted by a consciousness of crime, Some giant guilt, but whose I knew not. All These things malign, by sight and sound revealed, Were sin-begotten; that I knew--no more-- And that but dimly, as in dreadful dreams The sleepy senses babble to the brain Imperfect witness. As I stood a voice, But whence it came I knew not, cried aloud Some words to me in a forgotten tongue, Yet straight I knew me for a ghost forlorn, Returned from the illimited inane. Again, but in a language that I knew, As in reply to something which in me Had shaped itself a thought, but found no words, It spake from the dread mystery about: "Immortal shadow of a mortal soul That perished with eternity, attend. What thou beholdest is as void as thou: The shadow of a poet's dream--himself As thou, his soul as thine, long dead, But not like thine outlasted by its shade. His dreams alone survive eternity As pictures in the unsubstantial void. Excepting thee and me (and we because The poet wove us in his thought) remains Of nature and the universe no part Or vestige but the poet's dreams. This dread, Unspeakable land about thy feet, with all Its desolation and its terrors--lo! 'T is but a phantom world. So long ago That God and all the angels since have died That poet lived--yourself long dead--his mind Filled with the light of a prophetic fire, And standing by the Western sea, above The youngest, fairest city in the world, Named in another tongue than his for one Ensainted, saw its populous domain Plague-smitten with a nameless shame. For there Red-handed murder rioted; and there The people gathered gold, nor cared to loose The assassin's fingers from the victim's throat, But said, each in his vile pursuit engrossed: 'Am I my brother's keeper? Let the Law Look to the matter.' But the Law did not. And there, O pitiful! the babe was slain Within its mother's breast and the same grave Held babe and mother; and the people smiled, Still gathering gold, and said: 'The Law, the Law,' Then the great poet, touched upon the lips With a live coal from Truth's high altar, raised His arms to heaven and sang a song of doom-- Sang of the time to be, when God should lean Indignant from the Throne and lift his hand, And that foul city be no more!--a tale, A dream, a desolation and a curse! No vestige of its glory should survive In fact or memory: its people dead, Its site forgotten, and its very name Disputed."
"Was the prophecy fulfilled?" The sullen disc of the declining sun Was crimson with a curse and a portent, And scarce his angry ray lit up the land That lay below, whose lurid gloom appeared Freaked with a moving mist, which, reeking up From dim tarns hateful with a horrid ban, Took shapes forbidden and without a name. Gigantic night-birds, rising from the reeds With cries discordant, startled all the air, And bodiless voices babbled in the gloom. But not to me came any voice again; And, covering my face with thin, dead hands, I wept, and woke, and cried aloud to God!

POLITICS.
That land full surely hastens to its end Where public sycophants in homage bend The populace to flatter, and repeat The doubled echoes of its loud conceit. Lowly their attitude but high their aim, They creep to eminence through paths of shame,