Bret Harte

Coward, of heroic size,
In whose lazy muscles lies
Strength we fear and yet despise;
Savage, whose relentless tusks
Are content with acorn husks;
Robber, whose exploits ne’er soared
O’er the bee’s or squirrel’s hoard;
Whiskered chin and feeble nose,
Claws of steel on baby toes,
Here, in solitude and shade,
Shambling, shuffling plantigrade,
Be thy courses undismayed!

Here, where Nature makes thy bed,
Let thy rude, half-human tread
Point to hidden Indian springs,
Lost in ferns and fragrant grasses,
Hovered o’er by timid wings,
Where the wood-duck lightly passes,
Where the wild bee holds her sweets,
Epicurean retreats,
Fit for thee, and better than
Fearful spoils of dangerous man.
In thy fat-jowled deviltry
Friar Tuck shal...

Two low whistles, quaint and clear:
That was the signal the engineer
That was the signal that Guild, ’tis said
Gave to his wife at Providence,
As through the sleeping town, and thence,
Out in the night,
On to the light,
Down past the farms, lying white, he sped!

As a husband’s greeting, scant, no doubt,
Yet to the woman looking out,
Watching and waiting, no serenade,
Love-song, or midnight roundelay
Said what that whistle seemed to say:
“To my trust true,
So, love, to you!
Working or waiting, good-night!” it said.

Brisk young bagmen, tourists fine,
Old commuters along the line,
Brakemen and porters glanced ahead,
Smiled as the signal, sharp, intense,
Pierced through the shadows of Providence:
“Nothing amiss
Nothing! it...

“So she’s here, your unknown Dulcinea, the lady you met on the train,
And you really believe she would know you if you were to meet her again?”

“Of course,” he replied, “she would know me; there never was womankind yet
Forgot the effect she inspired. She excuses, but does not forget.”

“Then you told her your love?” asked the elder. The younger looked up with a smile:
“I sat by her side half an hour what else was I doing the while?

“What, sit by the side of a woman as fair as the sun in the sky,
And look somewhere else lest the dazzle flash back from your own to her eye?

“No, I hold that the speech of the tongue be as frank and as bold as the look,
And I held up herself to herself, that was more than she got from her book.”

“Young blood!” laughed the elder; “no...

June 4th! Do you know what that date means?
June 4th! By this air and these pines!
Well, only you know how I hate scenes,
These might be my very last lines!
For perhaps, sir, you’ll kindly remember
If some other things you’ve forgot
That you last wrote the 4th of december,
Just six months ago! from this spot;

From this spot, that you said was “the fairest
For once being held in my thought.”
Now, really I call that the barest
Of well, I won’t say what I ought!
For here I am back from my “riches,”
My “triumphs,” my “tours,” and all that;
And you’re not to be found in the ditches
Or temples of Poverty Flat!

From Paris we went for the season
To London, when Pa wired, “Stop.”
Mama says “his health” was the reason.
(I’ve heard that some th...

I’m sitting alone by the fire,
Dressed just as I came from the dance,
In a robe even you would admire,
It cost a cool thousand in France;
I’m be-diamonded out of all reason,
My hair is done up in a cue:
In short, sir, “the belle of the season”
Is wasting an hour upon you.

A dozen engagements I’ve broken;
I left in the midst of a set;
Likewise a proposal, half spoken,
That waits on the stairs for me yet.
They say he’ll be rich, when he grows up,
And then he adores me indeed;
And you, sir, are turning your nose up,
Three thousand miles off as you read.

“And how do I like my position?”
“And what do I think of New York?”
“And now, in my higher ambition,
With whom do I waltz, flirt, or talk?”
“And isn’t it nice to have riches,
A...

Being asked by an intimate party,
Which the same I would term as a friend,
Though his health it were vain to call hearty,
Since the mind to deceit it might lend;
For his arm it was broken quite recent,
And there’s something gone wrong with his lung,
Which is why it is proper and decent
I should write what he runs off his tongue.

First, he says, Miss, he’s read through your letter
To the end,    and “the end came too soon;”
That a “slight illness kept him your debtor,”
(Which for weeks he was wild as a loon);
That “his spirits are buoyant as yours is;”
That with you, Miss, he “challenges Fate,”
(Which the language that invalid uses
At times it were vain to relate).

And he says “that the mountains are fairer
For once being held in your thought;”...

Down the picket-guarded lane
Rolled the comfort-laden wain,
Cheered by shouts that shook the plain,
Soldier-like and merry:
Phrases such as camps may teach,
Sabre-cuts of Saxon speech,
Such as “Bully!” “Them’s the peach!”
“Wade in, Sanitary!”

Right and left the caissons drew
As the car went lumbering through,
Quick succeeding in review
Squadrons military;
Sunburnt men with beards like frieze,
Smooth-faced boys, and cries like these,
“U. S. San. Com.” “That’s the cheese!”
“Pass in, Sanitary!”

In such cheer it struggled on
Till the battle front was won:
Then the car, its journey done,
Lo! was stationary;
And where bullets whistling fly
Came the sadder, fainter cry,
“Help us, brothers, ere we die,
Save us, Sanitary!”...

Father Felipe

I speak not the English well, but Pachita,
She speak for me; is it not so, my Pancha?
Eh, little rogue? Come, salute me the stranger
Americano.

Sir, in my country we say, “Where the heart is,
There live the speech.” Ah! you not understand? So!
Pardon an old man, what you call “old fogy,”
Padre Felipe!

Old, Señor, old! just so old as the Mission.
You see that pear-tree? How old you think, Señor?
Fifteen year? Twenty? Ah, Senor, just fifty
Gone since I plant him!

You like the wine? It is some at the Mission,
Made from the grape of the year eighteen hundred;
All the same time when the earthquake he come to
San Juan Bautista.

But Pancha is twelve, and she is the rose-tree;
And I am the olive, and this is...

Didn’t know Flynn,
Flynn of Virginia,
Long as he’s been ’yar?
Look ’ee here, stranger,
Whar hev you been?

Here in this tunnel
He was my pardner,
That same Tom Flynn,
Working together,
In wind and weather,
Day out and in.

Didn’t know Flynn!
Well, that is queer;
Why, it’s a sin
To think of Tom Flynn,
Tom with his cheer,
Tom without fear,
Stranger, look ’yar!

Thar in the drift,
Back to the wall,
He held the timbers
Ready to fall;
Then in the darkness
I heard him call:
“Run for your life, Jake!
Run for your wife’s sake!
Don’t wait for me.”
And that was all
Heard in the din,
Heard of Tom Flynn,
Flynn of Virginia.

That’s all about
Flynn of Virginia.
That lets...

Shrewdly you question, Senor, and I fancy
You are no novice. Confess that to little
Of my poor gossip of Mission and Pueblo
You are a stranger!

Am I not right? Ah! believe me, that ever
Since we joined company at the posada
I’ve watched you closely, and pardon an old priest
I’ve caught you smiling!

Smiling to hear an old fellow like me talk
Gossip of pillage and robbers, and even
Air his opinion of law and alcaldes
Like any other!

Now! by that twist of the wrist on the bridle,
By that straight line from the heel to the shoulder,
By that curt speech, nay! nay! no offense, son,
You are a soldier?

No? Then a man of affairs? San Sebastian!
’Twould serve me right if I prattled thus wildly
To say a sheriff? No? just caballero?
...

Say there! P’r’aps
Some on you chaps
Might know Jim Wild?
Well, no offense:
Thar ain’t no sense
In gittin’ riled!

Jim was my chum
Up on the Bar:
That’s why I come
Down from up yar,
Lookin’ for Jim.
Thank ye, sir! You
Ain’t of that crew,
Blest if you are!

Money? Not much:
That ain’t my kind;
I ain’t no such.
Rum? I don’t mind,
Seein’ it’s you.

Well, this yer Jim,
Did you know him?
Jes’ ’bout your size;
Same kind of eyes;
Well, that is strange:
Why, it’s two year
Since he came here,
Sick, for a change.

Well, here’s to us:
Eh?
The h    you say!
Dead?
That little cuss?

What makes you star’,
You over thar?
Can’t a man drop
’s glass in yer sho...

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...

When I bought you for a song,
Years ago Lord knows how long!
I was struck I may be wrong
By your features,
And a something in your air
That I couldn’t quite compare
To my other plain or fair
Fellow creatures.

In your simple, oval frame
You were not well known to fame,
But to me ’twas all the same
Whoe’er drew you;
For your face I can’t forget,
Though I oftentimes regret
That, somehow, I never yet
Saw quite through you.

Yet each morning, when I rise,
I go first to greet your eyes;
And, in turn, you scrutinize
My presentment.
And when shades of evening fall,
As you hang upon my wall,
You’re the last thing I recall
With contentment.

It is weakness, yet I know
That I never turned to go
Anywhere, f...

This is that hill of awe
That Persian Sindbad saw,
The mount magnetic;
And on its seaward face,
Scattered along its base,
The wrecks prophetic.

Here come the argosies
Blown by each idle breeze,
To and fro shifting;
Yet to the hill of Fate
All drawing, soon or late,
Day by day drifting;

Drifting forever here
Barks that for many a year
Braved wind and weather;
Shallops but yesterday
Launched on yon shining bay,
Drawn all together.

This is the end of all:
Sun thyself by the wall,
O poorer Hindbad!
Envy not Sindbad’s fame:
Here come alike the same
Hindbad and Sindbad.

Wot’s that you’re readin’? a novel? A novel! well, darn my skin!
You a man grown and bearded and histin’ such stuff ez that in
Stuff about gals and their sweethearts! No wonder you’re thin ez a knife.
Look at me clar two hundred and never read one in my life!

That’s my opinion o’ novels. And ez to their lyin’ round here,
They belong to the Jedge’s daughter the Jedge who came up last year
On account of his lungs and the mountains and the balsam o’ pine and fir;
And his daughter well, she read novels, and that’s what’s the matter with her.

Yet she was sweet on the Jedge, and stuck by him day and night,
Alone in the cabin up ‘yer till she grew like a ghost, all white.
She wus only a slip of a thing, ez light and ez up and away
Ez rifle smoke blown through the woods, but she w...

Captain of the Western wood,
Thou that apest Robin Hood!
Green above thy scarlet hose,
How thy velvet mantle shows!
Never tree like thee arrayed,
O thou gallant of the glade!

When the fervid August sun
Scorches all it looks upon,
And the balsam of the pine
Drips from stem to needle fine,
Round thy compact shade arranged,
Not a leaf of thee is changed!

When the yellow autumn sun
Saddens all it looks upon,
Spreads its sackcloth on the hills,
Strews its ashes in the rills,
Thou thy scarlet hose dost doff,
And in limbs of purest buff
Challengest the sombre glade
For a sylvan masquerade.

Where, oh, where, shall he begin
Who would paint thee, Harlequin?
With thy waxen burnished leaf,
With thy branches’ red relief,...

It was spring the first time that I saw her, for her papa and mamma moved in
Next door, just as skating was over, and marbles about to begin;
For the fence in our back yard was broken, and I saw, as I peeped through the slat,
There were “Johnny-jump-ups” all around her, and I knew it was spring just by that.

I never knew whether she saw me, for she didn’t say nothing to me,
But “Ma! here’s a slat in the fence broke, and the boy that is next door can see.”
But the next day I climbed on our wood-shed, as you know Mamma says I’ve a right,
And she calls out, “Well, peekin’ is manners!” and I answered her, “Sass is perlite!”

But I wasn’t a bit mad, no, Papa, and to prove it, the very next day,
When she ran past our fence in the morning I happened to get in her way,
For you know I am...

And you are the poet, and so you want
Something what is it? a theme, a fancy?
Something or other the Muse won’t grant
To your old poetical necromancy;
Why, one half you poets you can’t deny
Don’t know the Muse when you chance to meet her,
But sit in your attics and mope and sigh
For a faineant goddess to drop from the sky,
When flesh and blood may be standing by
Quite at your service, should you but greet her.

What if I told you my own romance?
Women are poets, if you so take them,
One third poet, the rest what chance
Of man and marriage may choose to make them.
Give me ten minutes before you go,
Here at the window we’ll sit together,
Watching the currents that ebb and flow;
Watching the world as it drifts below
Up the hot Avenue’s dusty glow:<...