Addressed the few remarks that follow here: 'Who are you? Did you come 'der blains agross,' Or 'Horn aroundt'? In days o' '49 Did them thar eye-holes see the Southern Cross From the Antarctic Sea git up an' shine? Or did you drive a bull team 'all the way From Pike,' with Mr. Joseph Bowers?—say! 'Was you in Frisco when the water came Up to Montgum'ry street? and do you mind The time when Peters run the faro game— Jim Peters from old Mississip—behind Wells Fargo's, where he subsequent was bust By Sandy, as regards both bank and crust? 'I wonder was you here when Casey shot James King o' William? And did you attend The neck-tie dance ensuin'? I did not, But j'ined the rush to Go Creek with my friend Ed'ard McGowan; for 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
