Woman
What were this human
World without woman?
Think –just a minute! –
Without one in it –
A Man-Edan only,
Wretchad and lonely.
True, there’s a story
Scarce to her glory
Therewith connected,
But ‘tis suspected
Man, after all,
Was quite ready to fall!
If fault, he condoned it—
And through the years since,
Eva has atoned it.
Woman! Be honor
Ever upon her,
Whether as maiden,
Shy, beauty-laden –
Daughter, wife, sister,
Who can resist her?
Or as that other
And greater, the Mother,
Her babe – blossoms moulding
To perfect unfolding –
The home-temple guarding
To riches rewarding.
Though none be purer,
Sweeter and surer,
Avenues wider
Now open beside her.
Each day some new way!
God send the true way
She may seek ever
With earnest endeavor.
Here to the dark, a light!
Here to the wrong, a right!
There the truth sifting!
A soul, here, uplifting!
Patient, prevailing.
With purpose unfailing,
Till at life’s portal
Through Love immortal,
Supremely she stands,
The World in her hands.
Woman! All honor
And blessing upon her!
Knowing her truly,
Knowing her fully,
All her completeness,
Tenderness, sweetness –
Though there be times, too,
Sweet hardly rhymes to,
All of the changes
Through which she ranges,
Moods, tenses, phases,
I sing her praises.
Bret Harte*
What wizardry is this? What necromance?
These forest-aisles, these mountains grim and vast?
These shadowy forms and faces that advance
From out of the misty past?
The old familiar faces, how they crowd!
Like ghosts returning from the farther shore!
These Beings without Being, yet endowed
With life for evermore.
Each in my own life-weft has woven part,
Whether or grave or gay; unkempt or shorn;
This one, ‘The Luck’ they call him, stole my heart
The day that he was born.
With these I sat beside the camp-fire’s glow
And heard, through untaught lips, old Homer tell
The Tale of Troy, till with the falling snow
God’s last white silence fell.
I knew the cabin in the lone ravine
Where she, the Fallen, far from mart and men,
Watched by the stricken and, unknown, made clean
Her garment’s hem again.
And these, the Partners in world-storm and stress,
With faithful love, unknowing selfish aim;
The friendship pure that grew not cold nor less
Through good or evil fame.
These, too (I loved them!) , reckless, debonair,
That life and fortune staked upon a cast;
The soul itself held lightly as the air,
To win or lose at last.
I tracked the mountain trail with them; the sweet
Cool smell of pines I breathed beneath the stars;
The laugh, the song I heard; the rhythmic feet
To tinkle of guitars.
I knew the Mission’s fragrant garden-close,
Heavy with blooms the wind might scarcely stir,
Its little laughing maid-Castilian rose! -
And saucy speech of her.
I knew them all-but best of all I knew
(Who in himself had something of all these)
The Man, within whose teeming fancy grew
These wondrous histories.
I see him often, with the brown hair half
Tossed from the leaning brow, the soft yet keen
Gray eyes uplifted with a tear or laugh
From the pen-pictured scene.
And hear the voice that read to me his dear
World-children-and I listen till I seem
Back in the olden days; they are the near
And these are but a dream.
O Prince of Song and Story! Thee we claim,
The first and dearest, still our very own!
We will not yield the glory of thy name
Nor share thy laureled throne!
Altho beneath a gray and alien sky,
Across long leagues of land and leagues of wave,
We may not reach thy dust with tear and sigh,
Nor deck thy lonely grave.
* Written for the Bret Harte Memorial Jinks of the Bohemian Club,
San Francisco, California; on which occasion the Jinks Room was
Transformed into a mining camp in the Sierras, and the chief
characters in Bret Hart’s works were represented by the club
members.
Gold Seekers, The *
Long weary leagues across the treacherous plain,
Long weary leagues across the treacherous sea,
Comrades with danger, clasping hands with pain,
Pathmakers, builders of the State to be.
Boys with their school texts still upon their lips,
And stalwart men in sinewy, bearded prime,
And feeble age-on, on where sunshine drips
Its golden splendors in a golden clime.
Gold! Gold! The glittering lure that beckoned them!
Not gold, as now, of fruit on hills and plains,
Fair, fragrant, luscious, upon bough and stem-
But Gold! The metal-blood of the earth’s grim veins.
Some, overmastered, laid them down and slept
The sleep unwakening in a prairie-grave;
And some restless tryst forever kept
With Death, beneath the unrecording wave.
And some like Israel of old, the Land
Of Promise reached, beheld and found it fair
Beyond the promise, and with greedy hand
Gathered great riches with its greater care-
And died, and passed forgotten to the grave;
And some, with nobler souls to think and feel
Gave back its treasures to the land which gave,
Building the pillars of the Commonweal.
But one there came, indeed, for Gold alone!
A gold which knew not tarnish nor alloy;
With luster bright as God’s own starry zone,
Unspoiled of time-that death might not destroy.
A gold he came to seek not, but to give;
The Gold of Knowledge. From the shattered spoils
Of all earth’s cares, ah, what alone may live
Of man’s achievements? Man’s unending toils?
Knowledge and Truth alone. All else is dust.
Treasure to ransom worlds but ruthless dross,
Swept by winds, fretted of mould and rust;
Thrones, empires, races-death, oblivion, loss.
And Knowledge is but Truth! A lighted way
Leading to heights supreme from lowest sod;
From morning twilight to immortal day-
From God’s creation to Creation’s God....
Long did he labor; knew the plenteous lack
Of that, the baser metal of man’s aim-
But wearied not, nor faltered, nor turned back,
And lo! at last fruition’s glory came.
He saw the humble School-Walls widen, grow,
And stand, proud halls upon the Berkley hills;
The tree-crowned slopes, the fields in emerald glow,
The throng that studious quietude that fills;
The Golden Gate by wave and sun caressed,
In outward look across the Bay’s blue floor,
And from those walls into the mighty west
Fair Science beckon from her open door.
His Gold had blossomed! Ah, what more for him
Could earth in folded days hold still concealed?
Happy, he passed beyond our Planet’s rim,
To where, in God, all Knowledge is revealed.
*In memory of Doctor Henry Durant, First president of the University of California.
