East and West

By Bret Harte

Short collection of poetry. According to Wikipedia: "Bret Harte (August 25, 1836[2] – May 6, 1902) was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California. He was born in Albany, New York. ... He moved to California in 1853, later working there in a number of capacities, including miner, teacher, messenger, and journalist. He spent part of his life in the northern California coast town now known as Arcata, then just a mining camp on Humboldt Bay.His first literary efforts, including poetry and prose, appeared in The Californian, an early literary journal edited by Charles Henry Webb. In 1868 he became editor of The Overland Monthly, another new literary magazine, but this one more in tune with the pioneering spirit of excitement in California. His story, "The Luck of Roaring Camp," appeared in the magazine's second edition, propelling Harte to nationwide fame... Determined to pursue his literary career, in 1871 he and his family traveled back East, to New York and eventually to Boston, where he contracted with the publisher of The Atlantic Monthly for an annual salary of $10,000, "an unprecedented sum at the time." His popularity waned, however, and by the end of 1872 he was without a publishing contract and increasingly desperate. He spent the next few years struggling to publish new work (or republish old), delivering lectures about the gold rush, and even selling an advertising jingle to a soap company. In 1878 Harte was appointed to the position of United States Consul in the town of Krefeld, Germany and then to Glasgow in 1880. In 1885 he settled in London. During the thirty years he spent in Europe, he never abandoned writing, and maintained a prodigious output of stories that retained the freshness of his earlier work. He died in England in 1902 of throat cancer and is buried at Frimley."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seltzer Books
• Release date: Mar 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781455387342

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.

Book preview

EAST AND WEST POEMS BY BRET HARTE

published by Samizdat Express, Orange, CT, USA

established in 1974, offering over 14,000 books

Westerns by Bret Harte --

Argonauts of North Liberty

Bell-Ringer of Angel's

By Shore and Sedge

Clarence

Colonel Starbottle's Client

Cressy

Crusade of the Exselsior

Devil's Ford

Dickens in Camp

A Drift from Redwood Camp

Drift from Two Shores

East and West Poems

A First Family of Tasajara

Flip

Found at Blazng Star

From Sand Hill to Pine

Frontier Storis

The Heritage of Dadlow March

In a Hollow of the Hills

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Part 1

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 2

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 1

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