Shapes of Clay | Page 5

we was resolved In
sech diversions not to be involved.

"Maybe I knowed you; seems to me I've seed Your face afore. I don't
forget a face, But names I disremember--I'm that breed Of owls. I'm
talking some'at into space An' maybe my remarks is too derned free,
Seein' yer name is unbeknown to me.
"Ther' was a time, I reckon, when I knowed Nigh onto every dern
galoot in town. That was as late as '50. Now she's growed Surprisin'!
Yes, me an' my pardner, Brown, 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