Alfred Castner King

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ As he toils in the shaft, in the stope or raise,
'Mid dangers which lurk, but elude the gaze,
His nerves with no terrors thrill.
Clink! Clink! Clink!
For the heart of the miner is strong and brave;
Though the rocks may fall, and the shaft may cave
And become his dungeon, if not his grave,
He braves every thought of ill.
Clink! Clink! Clink!
The song of the hammer and drill!
But the heart which is beating in unison
With the steady stroke, e'er the shift is done,
May be cold and forever still. ”

“ 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? ”

“ O'er the heart that is breaking a smile may appear,
For the sternest anguish forbids a tear.
O, a Beautiful Thing Is the Flower That Fadeth!
O, a beautiful thing is the flower that fadeth,
And perishing, smiles on the chill autumn wind;
A sweet desolation its ruin pervadeth,
A fragrant remembrance still lingers behind.
O, a beautiful thing is the glad consummation
Of a life that is upright, untarnished and pure;
That spirit, when freed from this earth's animation,
Shall live, as the heavens eternal endure! ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ While yet their eyes discern;
Why waste their fragrance on the dead
Who no fond smile return?
The heaving breast with sorrow aches,
Comfort the throbbing heart which breaks.
Mother.—Alpha and Omega.
Mother! Mother!
The startled cry of childish fright
Rang through the silence of the night,
As but the mother's fond caress
Could soothe its infantile distress;
And the mother answered, with loving stroke
Of her gentle hand, as she softly spoke:
"Hush, hush, my child, that troubled cry;
What evil can harm thee, with mother nigh?"
Mother! Mother! ”

“ For others, the pathway of life is strewn
With many a thorn, for each rose or bud;
And their journey o'er mountain, o'er moor, and dune,
Can be plainly tracked by footprints of blood;
But deeper still lies the hidden smart
Of some secret sorrow, which gnaws the heart,
And rankles under a surface clear;
For the sternest anguish forbids a tear. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Or rugged freaks of mountain peaks,
Enjoy their solitude.
The heavens hold a sphere of gold,
A full and placid moon,
Suspended high, in cloudless sky,
With constellations strewn;
Its mellow beam, on rill and stream,
In silvery sheen I see;
Before its light, the shades of night
As evil spirits, flee.
In space afar, a shooting star,
With swift, uncertain course,
In dazzling sparks its passage marks,
As it expends its force ”

“ With the sobs of the rain as the black heavens weep;
Where the whispering zephyr, and murmuring breeze,
Unite with the soft, listless sigh of the trees;
And where to the fancy, the voices of air
Wail in tones of distress, or in shrieks of despair;
Where mourneth the night wind, with desolate breath,
In accents suggestive of sorrow and death;
As falls from the heavens, so fleecy and light,
The winter's immaculate mantle of white;
Wherever I wander, these sounds greet my ears,
And the silvery San Juan to my fancy appears.
FOOTNOTES:
[E]
Pronounced San Wan. ”

“ Upon the guilty cities [G] of the plain,
Surcharged with lust and the extremes of sin,
Which Holy Writ avers, when 'neath the shower
Of well deserved combustion from the skies,
They sunk in conflagration with their vice;
And perishing, to ages yet to come
Bequeathed a foul and blasted heritage,
An infamous and execrated name?
Art thou to human anguish so inured
That thou hast neither sentiment of grief
Nor sense of pity for terrestrial ills?
Can agonizing and heart-rending scenes
Relax thy obdurate and placid face
To semblance of emotion? ”

“ Detract from this heart, if with thine intertwined.
I love thee, my darling, with sacred affection,
Which death, nor the cycles of time shall efface;
Nor from my heart's mirror, erase thy reflection,
Nor tear thy fond heart from its fervent embrace.
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust.
Is there a Death? The light of day
At eventide shall fade away;
From out the sod's eternal gloom
The flowers, in their season, bloom;
Bud, bloom and fade, and soon the spot
Whereon they flourished knows them not ”

“ Hast thou, observant from thy astral poise,
Thy ever-changing station in the skies,
Beheld the wastes of earth, of air and space—
Ruling the waters, and the sombre night?
Pale queen of night, fair coquette of the skies,
Thou, who with fickle, sweet inconstancy
Receives the smile from the admiring sun,
And straight transmits it to the sordid earth,—
How many cycles of the silent past
Hast thou beheld the rise and fall of man,
His proud ascendency and swift decline;
His zenith and his pitiful decay;
E'er he emerged from out the dismal cave,
His habitation rude and primitive ”

“ The heart's sincerest offering of praise;
Intuitive, unuttered prayers arise
Without the outstretched arms, or reverently clos-ed eyes.
Down deep within the soul's mysterious seat,
The voice of reason, and inherent sense,
Admits Thy Sovereign Power, and doth entreat
The guidance of a Just Omnipotence;
Thus doth the human essence e'er depend
On that Supreme. Eternal. Without End.
Supreme, Mysterious Power! Whate'er Thou be,
Can e'er our mortal natures comprehend,
This side the veil which shrouds futurity,
Thy Wisdom, Power, and Love? ”

“ I love thee, my darling, both now and forever,
My heart feels the thralldom of love's mystic spell,
'Tis fettered with shackles which nothing can sever,
To the heart which responds to its passionate swell.
I love thee, my darling, with love that is stronger,
Than all the fond ties which the heart holds enshrined ”

“ 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! ”

“ He cleansed his blackened spirit by degrees,
And purified it from its vanities;
And as he prayed, the spectre's gruesome scowl
Grew day by day less hideous and foul,
As he waxed holy, it became more bright ”

“ The clank of shackles and the captives groan,
As marched the vanquished forth to servitude,
To ceaseless toil rewarded by the scourge;
To stand within the slave marts and endure
The taunts and bear the chains of slavery.
Did'st thou look down with neutral radiance
On that incursion from the Scythian plain,
A surging multitude beyond the power
Of mental computation and which seemed
A seething mass of spears and shapes of war,
A sea of bellicose barbarity,
O'erwhelming helpless and ill-fated Tyre
With a resistless deluge of the sword? ”

“ Savors more of the wormwood and gall.
They say that all nature is smiling and gay,
But the groan may dissemble the laugh;
E'en now from the meadow is wafted the sound
Of a bovine bewailing her calf.
They say that all nature is smiling and gay,
But the moss often covers the rock;
Every animal form is beset by a foe,
For the wolf always follows the flock.
For the animal holds all inferior flesh
As its just and legitimate prey;
Every scream of the eagle a panic creates
As the weaker things scamper away. ”

“ Did'st thou behold that sacrilegious tower,
Which reared its massive form on Babel's plain,
Built by misguided and presumptuous men,
In vain and ineffectual attempt
To scale the heavens surreptitiously?
E'er the completion of the impious pile,
Thou mayest have heard, with silent nonchalance,
That strange catastrophe of human speech,
That dire confusion of the languages,
Confounding all the tongues and dialects
To unknown chaos of peculiar sounds. ”

“ In babbling harmony,
And soothe to rest my tranquil breast,
With Nature's lullaby.
"Where the torrent falls o'er the mountain wall."
BRIDAL VEIL FALLS, NEAR TELLURIDE, SAN MIGUEL COUNTY, COLORADO.
The Spirit of freedom is Born of the Mountains. ”

“ When passing years have streaked with frost
These tresses now as jet,
When life's meridian is crossed
And beauty's sun has set,
When youth's last fleeting charm is lost,
Wilt thou be constant yet,
Nor time thy sentiment exhaust
And cause thee to forget? ”

“ Poetry has always occupied a unique position in literature; and though from a pecuniary stand-point usually unprofitable, it enjoys the decided advantage of longevity.
The mysterious ages of antiquity have bequeathed to all succeeding time several of earth's noblest epics, while the contemporaneous prose, if any existed, has long lain buried in the inscrutable archives of the remote past. ”

“ Discerned but a movable speck in the skies.
When the shades of the evening, so listless and dreary,
Descend on the valley, his wing never flags,
As through the dark shadows he soars to his eyerie,
Which nestles among the impregnable crags. ”

“ Waiving the question as to whether it is right or not to compose poetry, he who aspires in that direction can reasonably expect no material recompense, though the experience of Dante, Cervantes, Leigh Hunt, and others, proves conclusively that poets do not always escape punishment. In fact, about the only emolument to be expected is the gratification of an inherent and indefinable impulse, which impels one to the task with equal force, whether the ultimate result be affluence or a dungeon. ”