Alfred Castner King

“ Frail child of earthly clay, thou too must die to know.
What are your tidings, O ye raging Seas?
Do your waves wash the islands of the blest,
Or view the Gardens of Hesperides?
Know you the unborn spirits' place of rest?
And do your waters lave that unknown shore?
And when the night is gone,
Shall the freed spirit, tired and faint no more,
Behold the dawn?
The sad sea murmured, as its waves rolled high:
As all those gone before, thou, too, to know, must die.
The Suicide.
What anguish rankled 'neath that silent breast? ”

“ Go, slay your neighbors, pillage, sack and burn,
But never while the golden sun doth shine
Be welcomed home as son and heir of mine.'
I felt but little longing to return,
And less desire to pillage, sack and burn.
And yet,—those cruel orders I must give,
No power had I to voice the negative.
In commonplace affairs of life, 'tis true,
Men may elect to do, or not to do.
In military operations, they
Have no alternative, but to obey. ”

“ When the poor, erring woman sought
In tears the Master's feet,
Her breast, with deep contrition fraught,
Repentance, full, complete,
Divine compassion filled His eyes,
He spake, says Sacred Lore,—
"O, erring heart, forgiven, rise,
Go, thou, and sin no more."
The tear of contrite sorrow, shed
By penitence, cast down,
Shall flash, when solar rays have fled,
In an eternal crown;
That tear shall scintillate, and shine,
When comets cease to soar;
If thou would'st wear that gem divine,
Go, thou, and sin no more! ”

“ Of the mountain cabin sinking in decay,
With its threshold overgrown with vegetation,
With its door unhinged and mouldering away.
There's a weird and most disconsolate expression
In the sashless windows with their vacant stare,
As in mute appeal, or taciturn confession
Of a wild and inconsolable despair.
With its ridgepole bent and broken in the centre,
From its roof of dirt and weight of winter snows;
Where the only voice to greet you as you enter
Is the wind which down the crumbling fireplace blows ”

“ Portend the sure and swift approach of Death,
Hope holds the spirit in its house of clay,
And with that spirit only, soars away.
The guilty wretch, for murder doomed to die,
Hoped, in his dungeon as the death watch paced,
Hoped, as the death cap veiled his evil eye,
Hoped, as the noose around his neck was placed,
Hoped, as the chaplain read his final prayer,
Hoped, as he struggled in the viewless air.
In the glad sunshine of life's vernal spring,
Hope buoys the spirit with expectancy;
Hope with her dulcet voice and fluttering wing,
Sings of life's goal with siren harmony ”

“ A keen observer of the play of life,
Withal a nether factor in its strife.
Watching existence as a game of chess,
Where love, hate, smile, tear, insult and caress
Hold us by turns in various forms of check;
Some sort of yoke is worn by every neck.
Kings, queens and knights, exalted castles see,
Undone by pawns and powers of base degree.
Positions gained at a tremendous cost,
By one false move may be forever lost;
Each studied movement, each strategic course,
Is shaped by contact with opposing force,
And moves which seem fortuitous and blind
Are often those most cunningly designed. ”

“ Ill fares the heart, when hope has fled;
That heart is as some ruin old,
With ancient arch and wall, o'erspread
With moss, and desolating mold;
Whose banquet halls, where once the sound
Of revelry rang unconfined,
Now, with the hoot of owls resound,
Or echo back the mournful wind;
In whose foul nooks the gruesome bat is found.
The heart a ruin is, when unresigned;
No hope before, and but regret behind.
"Its noble form magnificent and proud,
Doth prostrate lie, nor ever riseth more."
IRONTON PARK, OURAY COUNTY, COLORADO.
Ill fares the heart, when hope has fled ”

“ And the scene is wrapped in somnolence and rest.
From a solitary star, in the realms of space afar,
Faintly twinkling through the shadows of the night,
See the stellar force increased, till the scintillating east
Seems a galaxy of constellations bright. 127
With its glittering display, see the gorgeous Milky Way,
Which in twain the vaulted universe divides,
As the bridal veil serene of some fair celestial queen,
Who, in jewelled state, o'er astral space presides.
All the heavens seem in tune, and the vacillating moon
Bathes the landscape with her floods of silvery light ”

“ The spirit of freedom is born of the mountains,
In gorge and in cañon it hovers and dwells;
Pervading the torrents and crystalline fountains,
Which dash through the valleys and forest clad dells.
The spirit of freedom, so firm and impliant,
Is borne on the breeze, whose invisible waves
Descend from the mountain peaks, stern and defiant—
Created for freemen, but never for slaves.
The Valley of the San Miguel.
In the golden West, by fond Nature blest,
Lies a vale which my heart holds dear ”

“ A dream is a reflex view of life,
A blending of fancy with solemn truth,
A retrospection of mundane strife,
Old age re-living the scenes of youth.
Our dreams are but mirrors for our desires;
The proud ambition, the lofty aim
Achieved in our sleep, but the night expires
And the dull existence plods on the same.
A dream is a feeble ray of light,
A rift in the shadows through which we grope,
An evidence that eternal night
Can never extinguish the star of hope. ”

“ My spirit flees, as night enwraps,
To its reward;
The earth recedes, I feel it lapse;
I sink as dissolution snaps
The silver cord.
O, Thou whose presence I can feel
Each hour I live,
While passing through death's stern ordeal,
Wilt Thou Thy mercy still reveal,
And still forgive?
Deprive This Strange and Complex World.
Deprive this strange and complex world
Of all the charms of art;
Deprive it of those sweeter joys
Which music doth impart;
But oh, preserve that smile, which tells
The secret of the heart!
The world may lose its massive piles
Which point their spires above ”

“ Mankind in all conditions and degrees
Of culture, affluence and penury,
Of multiform endowments and desires,
With differing talents and proclivities,
Yea, all varieties and types of men,
With pathways various and diversified,
Have found their paths converging at the grave.
Each, as the gathering shadows of the night,
In solemn chaos of unfathomed gloom,
Descend in sombre, melancholy pall,
And mark apace life's transitory eve,
Must quaff, alike, the bitter draught of death, 136
The one libation in which all who breathe
May in all equity participate. ”

“ Wherever I wander, my spirit still dwells,
In the silvery San Juan [E] with its streamlet and dells;
Whose mountainous summits, so rugged and high,
With their pinnacles pierce the ethereal sky;
Where the daisy, the rose, and the sweet columbine
Blend their colors with those of the sober hued pine;
Where the ceaseless erosions of measureless time,
Have chiseled the grotto and canon sublime;
Have sculptured the cliff, and the stern mountain wall;
Have formed the bold turret, impressive and tall;
Have cut the deep gorge with its wonderful caves,
Sepulchral and gloomy ”

“ For no message is flashed from the lustreless eyes,
When clos-ed so languid and weary,
And no voice from the darkness re-echoes our cries,
In response to the agonized query!
We gaze at the solemn mysterious shroud
With a vague and insatiate yearning,
And perceive but the sombre exterior cloud,
With our vision of no discerning.
Not a whispering sound, not a glimmer of light,
From that shadowy strand uncertain;
But He who ordained the day and night,
Framed also Death's silent curtain.
Hope.
Hope is the shadowy essence of a wish,
A fond desire which floats before our eyes ”

“ Books have, from time immemorial, been the conservators of human wisdom, the repositories of information, the mentors of youth and adolescence, the counsellors of manhood, the comfort and companionship of age.
The experience of an individual, school or era, when committed to book form, becomes the common property of all succeeding time, and the accumulated knowledge of the past, transmitted from generation to generation, through the medium of books, may with justice be regarded as the most valuable of human heritages. ”

“ E'er my spirit shall plunge through the shadowy vale,
My lips shall this wish have expressed,
That all which remains of mortality frail,
In some fair enclosure may rest;
Where disorganized, this pale form shall sustain
The fragrant and beautiful flowers,
And reproduce beauty, again and again,
Through nature's grand organic powers.
Battle Hymn.
Almighty Power! Who through the past
Our Nation's course has safely led;
Behold again the sky o'ercast,
Again is heard the martial tread!
Our stay in each contingency,
Our Father's God, we turn to thee! ”

“ Spring the toadstools, with their foul and fungous growth.
Void of symmetry and semblance of equation, 124
Through the chinkless cracks, the silvery moon and stars
And the sun, at each matutinal invasion,
Shine as through a dismal dungeon's grated bars.
But no predatory hand in wanton malice
Hath in vandal hour this dereliction wrought,
But the hand which crumbles pyramid and palace,
The hand of Time with rust and ruin fraught;
Thus the proud or unpretentious habitation
Shall succumb to age and melancholy mould ”

“ Perpetuate an unjust cause.
Eternal Justice, still prevail
And stay this menace ere too late!
Ere sturdy manhood droop and fail,
The law, immutable, of fate;
No foe can daunt the stalwart heart
Of him who guards that sacred ground
Where every hero owns a part,
Where each an ample home has found.
No more shall battle's lurid gleam
The cloudless sky of peace obscure;
Nor blood becrimson field, or stream,
Nor avarice grind down the poor;
But onward let thy progress be
A pageant, beautiful and grand;
May He who e'er has guided thee
Protect thee still, my native land! ”