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    East and West: Poems
    East and West: Poems
    East and West: Poems
    Ebook133 pages56 minutes

    East and West: Poems

    By Bret Harte

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 26, 2013
    East and West: Poems
    Author

    Bret Harte

    Bret Harte (1836–1902) was an author and poet known for his romantic depictions of the American West and the California gold rush. Born in New York, Harte moved to California when he was seventeen and worked as a miner, messenger, and journalist. In 1868 he became editor of the Overland Monthly, a literary journal in which he published his most famous work, “The Luck of Roaring Camp.” In 1871 Harte returned east to further his writing career. He spent his later years as an American diplomat in Germany and Britain.

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      Book preview

      East and West - Bret Harte

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of East and West: Poems, by Bret Harte

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license

      Title: East and West: Poems

      Author: Bret Harte

      Posting Date: November 17, 2012 [EBook #8402]

      Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8402]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EAST AND WEST: POEMS ***

      Produced by Curtis A. Weyant and The Online Distributed

      Proofreading Team

      East and West

      Poems.

      BY

      Bret Harte.

      Contents.

      Part I.

      A Greyport Legend

      A Newport Romance

      The Hawk's Nest

      In the Mission Garden

      The Old Major Explains

      Seventy-Nine

      Truthful James's Answer to Her Letter

      Further Language from Truthful James

      The Wonderful Spring of San Joaquin

      On a Cone of the Big Trees

      A Sanitary Message

      The Copperhead

      On a Pen of Thomas Starr King

      Lone Mountain

      California's Greeting to Seward

      The Two Ships

      The Goddess

      Address

      The Lost Galleon

      The Second Review of the Grand Army

      Part II.

      Before the Curtain

      The Stage-Driver's Story

      Aspiring Miss de Laine

      California Madrigal

      St. Thomas

      Ballad of Mr. Cooke

      Legends of the Rhine

      Mrs. Judge Jenkins: Sequel to Maud Muller

      Avitor

      A White Pine Ballad

      Little Red Riding-Hood

      The Ritualist

      A Moral Vindicator

      Songs without Sense

      Part I.

      A Greyport Legend.

      (1797.)

      They ran through the streets of the seaport town;

      They peered from the decks of the ships that lay:

      The cold sea-fog that came whitening down

      Was never as cold or white as they.

       "Ho, Starbuck and Pinckney and Tenterden!

        Run for your shallops, gather your men,

        Scatter your boats on the lower bay."

      Good cause for fear! In the thick midday

      The hulk that lay by the rotting pier,

      Filled with the children in happy play,

      Parted its moorings, and drifted clear,—

        Drifted clear beyond the reach or call,—

        Thirteen children they were in all,—

          All adrift in the lower bay!

      Said a hard-faced skipper, "God help us all!

      She will not float till the turning tide!"

      Said his wife, "My darling will hear my call,

      Whether in sea or heaven she bide:"

        And she lifted a quavering voice and high,

        Wild and strange as a sea-bird's cry,

          Till they shuddered and wondered at her side.

      The fog drove down on each laboring crew,

      Veiled each from each and the sky and shore:

      There was not a sound but the breath they drew,

      And the lap of water and creak of oar;

        And they felt the breath of the downs, fresh blown

        O'er leagues of clover and cold gray stone,

          But not from the lips that had gone before.

      They come no more. But they tell the tale,

      That, when fogs are thick on the harbor reef,

      The mackerel fishers shorten sail;

      For the signal they know will bring relief:

        For the voices of children, still at play

        In a phantom hulk that drifts alway

          Through channels whose waters never fail.

      It is but a foolish shipman's tale,

      A theme for a poet's idle page;

      But still, when the mists of doubt prevail,

      And we lie becalmed by the shores of Age,

        We hear from the misty troubled shore

        The voice of the children gone before,

          Drawing the soul to its anchorage.

      A Newport Romance.

      They say that she died of a broken heart

        (I tell the tale as 'twas told to me);

      But her spirit lives, and her soul is part

        Of this sad old house by the sea.

      Her lover was fickle and fine and French:

        It was nearly a hundred years ago

      When he sailed away from her arms—poor wench—

        With the Admiral Rochambeau.

      I marvel much what periwigged phrase

        Won the heart of this sentimental Quaker,

      At what golden-laced speech of those modish days

        She listened—the mischief take her!

      But she kept the posies of mignonette

        That he gave; and ever as their bloom failed

      And faded (though with her tears still wet)

        Her youth with their own exhaled.

      Till one night, when the sea-fog wrapped a shroud

        Round spar and spire and tarn and tree,

      Her soul went up on that lifted cloud

        From this sad old house by the sea.

      And ever since then, when the clock strikes two,

        She walks unbidden from room to room,

      And the air is filled that she passes through

        With a subtle, sad perfume.

      The delicate odor of mignonette,

        The ghost of a dead and gone bouquet,

      Is all that tells of her story; yet

        Could she think of a sweeter way?

      * * *

      I sit in the sad old house to-night,—

        Myself a ghost from a farther sea;

      And I trust that this Quaker woman might,

        In courtesy, visit me.

      For the

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