Chapter XXIII

I love the lyric muse!
For when mankind ran wild in groves,
Came holy Orpheus with his songs
And turned men's hearts from bestial loves,
From brutal force and savage wrongs;
Came Amphion, too, and on his lyre
Made such sweet music all the day
That rocks, instinct with warm desire,
Pursued him in his glorious way.

I love the lyric muse!
Hers was the wisdom that of yore
Taught man the rights of fellow-man--
Taught him to worship God the more
And to revere love's holy ban;
Hers was the hand that jotted down
The laws correcting divers wrongs--
And so came honor and renown
To bards and to their noble songs.

I love the lyric muse!
Old Homer sung unto the lyre,
Tyrtaeus, too, in ancient days--
Still, warmed by their immortal fire,
How doth our patriot spirit blaze!
The oracle, when questioned, sings--
So we our way in life are taught;
In verse we soothe the pride of kings,
In verse the drama has been wrought.

I love the lyric muse!
Be not ashamed, O noble friend,
In honest gratitude to pay
Thy homage to the gods that send
This boon to charm all ill away.
With solemn tenderness revere
This voiceful glory as a shrine
Wherein the quickened heart may hear
The counsels of a voice divine!

MARTHY'S YOUNKIT.

The mountain brook sung lonesomelike
And loitered on its way
Ez if it waited for a child
To jine it in its play;
The wild flowers of the hillside
Bent down their heads to hear
The music of the little feet
That had, somehow, grown so dear;
The magpies, like winged shadders,
Wuz a-flutterin' to and fro
Among the rocks and holler stumps
In the ragged gulch below;
The pines 'nd hemlock tosst their boughs
(Like they wuz arms) 'nd made
Soft, sollum music on the slope
Where he had often played.
But for these lonesome, sollum voices
On the mountain side,
There wuz no sound the summer day
That Marthy's younkit died.

We called him Marthy's younkit,
For Marthy wuz the name
Uv her ez wuz his mar, the wife
Uv Sorry Tom--the same
Ez taught the school-house on the hill
Way back in sixty-nine
When she married Sorry Tom wich ownt
The Gosh-all-Hemlock mine;
And Marthy's younkit wuz their first,
Wich, bein' how it meant
The first on Red Hoss mountain,
Wuz trooly a event!
The miners sawed off short on work
Es soon ez they got word
That Dock Devine allowed to Casey
What had just occurred;
We loaded 'nd whooped around
Until we all wuz hoarse,
Salutin' the arrival,
Wich weighed ten pounds, uv course!

Three years, and sech a pretty child!
His mother's counterpart--
Three years, and sech a holt ez he
Had got on every heart!
A peert and likely little tyke
With hair ez red ez gold,
A laughin', toddlin' everywhere--
And only three years old!
Up yonder, sometimes, to the store,
And sometimes down the hill
He kited (boys _is_ boys, you know--
You couldn't keep him still!)
And there he'd play beside the brook
Where purpel wild flowers grew
And the mountain pines 'nd hemlocks
A kindly shadder threw
And sung soft, sollum toons to him,
While in the gulch below
The magpies, like strange sperrits,
Went flutterin' to and fro.

Three years, and then the fever come;
It wuzn't right, you know,
With all us _old_ ones in the camp,
For that little child to go!
It's right the old should die, but that
A harmless little child
Should miss the joy uv life 'nd love--
_That_ can't be reconciled!
That's what we thought that summer day,
And that is what we said
Ez we looked upon the piteous face
Uv Marthy's younkit dead;
But for his mother sobbin'
The house wuz very still,
And Sorry Tom wuz lookin' through
The winder down the hill
To the patch beneath the hemlocks
Where his darlin' used to play,
And the mountain brook sung lonesomelike
And loitered on its way.

A preacher come from Roarin' Forks
To comfort 'em 'nd pray,
And all the camp wuz present
At the obsequies next day,
A female teacher staged it twenty miles
To sing a hymn,
And we jined her in the chorus--
Big, husky men 'nd grim
Sung "Jesus, Lover uv my Soul,"
And then the preacher prayed
And preacht a sermon on the death
Uv that fair blossom laid
Among them other flow'rs he loved--
Which sermon set sech weight
On sinners bein' always heelt
Against the future state
That, though it had been fash'nable
To swear a perfect streak,
There warnt no swearin' in the camp
For pretty nigh a week!

Last thing uv all, six strappin' men
Took up the little load
And bore it tenderly along
The windin' rocky road
To where the coroner had dug
A grave beside the brook--
In sight uv Marthy's winder, where
The same could set and look
And wonder if his cradle in
That green patch long 'nd wide
Wuz ez soothin' ez the cradle that
Wuz empty at her side;
And wonder of the mournful songs
The pines wuz singin' then
Wuz ez tender ez the lullabies
She'd never sing again;
And if the bosom uv the earth
In which he lay at rest
Wuz half ez lovin' 'nd ez warm
Ez wuz his mother's breast.

The camp is gone, but Red Hoss mountain
Rears its kindly head
And looks down sort uv tenderly,
Upon its cherished dead;
And I reckon that, through all the years
That little boy wich died
Sleeps sweetly 'nd contentedly
Upon the mountain-side;
That the wild flowers of the summer time
Bend down their heads to hear
The footfall uv a little friend they
Know not slumbers near;
That the magpies on the sollum rocks
Strange flutterin' shadders make.
And the pines 'nd hemlocks wonder that
The sleeper doesn't wake;
That the mountain brook sings lonesomelike
And loiters on its way
Ez if it waited f'r a child
To jine it in its play.

ABU MIDJAN.

"When Father Time swings round his scythe,
Intomb me 'neath the bounteous vine,
So that its juices, red and blithe,
May cheer these thirsty bones of mine.

"Elsewise with tears and bated breath
Should I survey the life to be.
But oh! How should I hail the death
That brings that vinous grace to me!"

So sung the dauntless Saracen,
Whereat the Prophet-Chief ordains
That, curst of Allah, loathed of men,
The faithless one shall die in chains.

But one vile Christian slave that lay
A prisoner near that prisoner saith;
"God willing, I will plant some day
A vine where thou liest in death."

Lo, over Abu Midjan's grave
With purpling fruit a vine-tree grows;
Where rots the martyred Christian slave
Allah, and only Allah, knows!

THE DYING YEAR.

The year has been a tedious one--
A weary round of toil and sorrow,
And, since it now at last is gone,
We say farewell and hail the morrow.

Yet o'er the wreck which time has wrought
A sweet, consoling ray is shimmered--
The one but compensating thought
That literary life has glimmered.

Struggling with hunger and with cold
The world contemptuously beheld 'er;
The little thing was one year old--
But who'd have cared had she been elder?

DEAD ROSES.

He placed a rose in my nut-brown hair--
A deep red rose with a fragrant heart
And said: "We'll set this day apart,
So sunny, so wondrous fair."

His face was full of a happy light,
His voice was tender and low and sweet,
The daisies and the violets grew at our feet--
Alas, for the coming of night!

The rose is black and withered and dead!
'Tis hid in a tiny box away;
The nut-brown hair is turning to gray,
And the light of the day is fled!

The light of the beautiful day is fled,
Hush'd is the voice so sweet and low--
And I--ah, me! I loved him so--
And the daisies grow over his head!