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.
ALNASCHAR
Here's yer toy balloons! All sizes!
Twenty cents for that. It rises Jest as quick as that 'ere, Miss, Twice as big. Ye see it is Some more fancy. Make it square Fifty for 'em both. That's fair.
That's the sixth I've sold since noon.
Trade's reviving. Just as soon As this lot's worked off, I'll take Wholesale figgers. Make or break,--That's my motto! Then I'll buy In some first-class lottery One half ticket, numbered right--As I dreamed about last night.
That'll fetch it. Don't tell me!
When a man's in luck, you see, All things help him. Every chance Hits him like an avalanche.
Here's your toy balloons, Miss. Eh?
You won't turn your face this way?
Mebbe you'll be glad some day.
With that clear ten thousand prize This 'yer trade I'll drop, and rise Into wholesale. No! I'll take Stocks in Wall Street. Make or break,--That's my motto! With my luck, Where's the chance of being stuck?
Call it sixty thousand, clear, Made in Wall Street in one year.
Sixty thousand! Umph! Let's see!
Bond and mortgage'll do for me.
Good! That gal that passed me by Scornful like--why, mebbe I Some day'll hold in pawn--why not?--All her father's prop. She'll spot What's my little game, and see What I'm after's HER. He! he!
He! he! When she comes to sue--Let's see! What's the thing to do?
Kick her? No! There's the perliss!
Sorter throw her off like this.
Hello! Stop! Help! Murder! Hey!
There's my whole stock got away, Kiting on the house-tops! Lost!
All a poor man's fortin! Cost?
Twenty dollars! Eh! What's this?
Fifty cents! God bless ye, Miss!
THE TWO SHIPS
As I stand by the cross on the lone mountain's crest, Looking over the ultimate sea, In the gloom of the mountain a ship lies at rest, And one sails away from the lea:
One spreads its white wings on a far-reaching track, With pennant and sheet flowing free;
One hides in the shadow with sails laid aback,--The ship that is waiting for me!
But lo! in the distance the clouds break away, The Gate's glowing portals I see;
And I hear from the outgoing ship in the bay The song of the sailors in glee.
So I think of the luminous footprints that bore The comfort o'er dark Galilee, And wait for the signal to go to the shore, To the ship that is waiting for me.
ADDRESS
(OPENING OF THE CALIFORNIA THEATRE, SAN FRANCISCO, JANUARY 19, 1870)
Brief words, when actions wait, are well:
The prompter's hand is on his bell;
The coming heroes, lovers, kings, Are idly lounging at the wings;
Behind the curtain's mystic fold The glowing future lies unrolled;
And yet, one moment for the Past, One retrospect,--the first and last.
"The world's a stage," the Master said.
To-night a mightier truth is read:
Not in the shifting canvas screen, The flash of gas or tinsel sheen;
Not in the skill whose signal calls From empty boards baronial halls;
But, fronting sea and curving bay, Behold the players and the play.
Ah, friends! beneath your real skies The actor's short-lived triumph dies:
On that broad stage of empire won, Whose footlights were the setting sun, Whose flats a distant background rose In trackless peaks of endless snows;
Here genius bows, and talent waits To copy that but One creates.
Your shifting scenes: the league of sand, An avenue by ocean spanned;
The narrow beach of straggling tents, A mile of stately monuments;
Your standard, lo! a flag unfurled, Whose clinging folds clasp half the world,--This is your drama, built on facts, With "twenty years between the acts."
One moment more: if here we raise The oft-sung hymn of local praise, Before the curtain facts must sway;
HERE waits the moral of your play.
Glassed in the poet's thought, you view What money can, yet cannot do;
The faith that soars, the deeds that shine, Above the gold that builds the shrine.
And oh! when others take our place, And Earth's green curtain hides our face, Ere on the stage, so silent now, The last new hero makes his bow:
So may our deeds, recalled once more In Memory's sweet but brief encore, Down all the circling ages run, With the world's plaudit of "Well done!"
DOLLY VARDEN
Dear Dolly! who does not recall The thrilling page that pictured all Those charms that held our sense in thrall Just as the artist caught her,--As down that English lane she tripped, In bowered chintz, hat sideways tipped, Trim-bodiced, bright-eyed, roguish-lipped,--The locksmith's pretty daughter?
Sweet fragment of the Master's art!
O simple faith! O rustic heart!
O maid that hath no counterpart In life's dry, dog-eared pages!
Where shall we find thy like? Ah, stay!
Methinks I saw her yesterday In chintz that flowered, as one might say, Perennial for ages.
Her father's modest cot was stone, Five stories high; in style and tone Composite, and, I frankly own, Within its walls revealing Some certain novel, strange ideas:
A Gothic door with Roman piers, And floors removed some thousand years, From their Pompeian ceiling.
The small salon where she received Was Louis Quatorze, and relieved By Chinese cabinets, conceived Grotesquely by the heathen;
The sofas were a classic sight,--The Roman bench (sedilia hight);
The chairs were French in gold and white, And one Elizabethan.
And she, the goddess of that shrine, Two ringed fingers placed in mine,--The stones were many carats fine, And of the purest water,--Then dropped a curtsy, far enough To fairly fill her cretonne puff And show the petticoat's rich stuff That her fond parent bought her.
Her speech was simple as her dress,--Not French the more, but English less, She loved; yet sometimes, I confess, I scarce could comprehend her.
Her manners were quite far from shy.
