Bret Harte

“ There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is Death,
Though the mist is miasm, the Upas tree's breath,
Though no echo awakes to the cooing of doves,—
There is peace: yes, the peace that the Copperhead loves!
Go seek him: he coils in the ooze and the drip
Like a thong idly flung from the slave-driver's whip;
But beware the false footstep,—the stumble that brings
A deadlier lash than the overseer swings. ”

“ Then he faced the ocean blast, And he strode the cable last Touched by Cooke.
Vainly roared the angry seas; Vainly blew the ocean breeze; But, alas! the walker's knees Had a crook;
And before he reached the rock Did they both together knock, And he stumbled with a shock— Unlike Cooke!
Downward dropping in the dark, Like an arrow to its mark, Or a fish-pole when a shark Bites the hook,
Dropped the pole he could not save, Dropped the walker, and the wave Swift ingulfed the rival brave Of J. Cooke! ”

“ Whether slave, or proud planter, who braves that dull crest,
Woe to him who shall trouble the Copperhead's rest!
Then why waste your labors, brave hearts and strong men,
In tracking a trail to the Copperhead's den?
Lay your axe to the cypress, hew open the shade
To the free sky and sunshine Jehovah has made;
Let the breeze of the North sweep the vapors away,
Till the stagnant lake ripples, the freed waters play ”

“ Still frenziedly points from the wide window-sill
Into space and the night; for Miss Addie was gone!
Gone like the bubble that bursts in the sun;
Gone like the grain when the reaper is done;
Gone like the dew on the fresh morning grass;
Gone without parting farewell; and alas!
Gone with a flavor of Hydrogen Gas.
When the weather is pleasant, you frequently meet
A white-headed man slowly pacing the street;
His trembling hand shading his lack-lustre eye,
Half blind with continually scanning the sky. ”

“ Said Brown, as the lady came to a full stop,
And glanced round the shelves of the little back shop.
"Well, I want—I want something to fill out the skirt
To the proper dimension, without being girt
In a stiff crinoline, or caged in a hoop
That shows through one's skirt like the bars of a coop;
Something light, that a lady may waltz in, or polk,
With a freedom that none but you masculine folk
Ever know. For, however poor woman aspires,
She's always bound down to the earth by these wires. ”

“ Speed was our only chance, when again came the ominous rattle:
Crack, and another wheel slipped away, and was lost in the darkness.
Two only now were left; yet such was our fearful momentum,
Upright, erect, and sustained on two wheels, the vehicle thundered.
As some huge boulder, unloosed from its rocky shelf on the mountain,
Drives before it the hare and the timorous squirrel, far-leaping,
So down the Geiger Grade rushed the Pioneer coach, and before it
Leaped the wild horses, and shrieked in advance of the danger impending. ”

“ Whisks the fair circumvolving Miss Addie De Laine.
Taglioni and Cerito well might have pined
For the vigor and ease that her movements combined;
E'en Rigelboche never flung higher her robe
In the naughtiest city that's known on the globe.
'Twas amazing, 'twas scandalous: lost in surprise,
Some opened their mouths, and a few shut their eyes.
But hark! At the moment Miss Addie De Laine,
Circling round at the outer edge of an ellipse,
Which brought her fair form to the window again,
From the arms of her partner incautiously slips! ”

“ But not all of Johnson's folly, although multiplied by nine,
Could compare with Milton Perkins, late an owner in White Pine.
Johnson's folly—to be candid—was a wild desire to treat
Every able male white citizen he met upon the street;
And there being several thousand—but this subject why pursue?
'Tis with Perkins, and not Johnson, that to-day we have to do.
No: not wild promiscuous treating, not the winecup's ruby flow,
But the female of his species brought the noble Perkins low. ”

“ Is the way my name I trace: Shall a youth of noble race In affairs of love give place To a Cooke?"
"Clifford Snook, I know thy claim To that lineage and name, And I think I've read the same In Horne Tooke;
But I swear, by all divine, Never, never to be thine, 'Till thou canst upon yon line Walk like Cooke." ”

“ To see his harvest all complete,
His dream fulfilled, his duty done,—
The one flag streaming from the pole,
The one faith borne from sea to sea,—
For such a triumph, and such goal,
Poor must our human greeting be. ”

“ That greet our fair maiden wherever she goes,
Brown slipped like a shadow, grim, silent, and black,
With a look of anxiety, close in her track.
Once he whispered aside in her delicate ear,
A sentence of warning,—it might be of fear:
"Don't stand in a draught, if you value your life." ”

“ Yet thenceforward, from that day, He his figure would display In some wild athletic way, After Cooke.
On some household eminence, On a clothes-line or a fence, Over ditches, drains, and thence O'er a brook,
He, by high ambition led, Ever walked and balanced; Till the people, wondering, said, "How like Cooke!" ”

“ And unseen to mortal eyes, Purged of grosser earthly ties, Now at last in spirit guise Outdoes Cooke.
Still the sturdy ocean breeze Sweeps the spray of roaring seas, Where the Cliff-House balconies Overlook ”

“ Or Falstaff's bulk, or Denmark's youthful pride.
Ah, well! no passion walks its humble boards;
O'er it no king nor valiant Hector lords:
The simplest skill is all its space affords.
The song and jest, the dance and trifling play,
The local hit at follies of the day,
The trick to pass an idle hour away,—
For these, no trumpets that announce the Moor,
No blast that makes the hero's welcome sure,—
A single fiddle in the overture!
The Stage-Driver's Story. ”

“ If grace may exist minus feeling or brains.
Of course the young lady had beaux by the score,
All that she wanted,—what girl could ask more?
Lovers that sighed, and lovers that swore,
Lovers that danced, and lovers that played,
Men of profession, of leisure, and trade;
But one, who was destined to take the high part
Of holding that mythical treasure, her heart,—
This lover—the wonder and envy of town—
Was a practising chemist,—a fellow called Brown.
I might here remark that 'twas doubted by many,
In regard to the heart, if Miss Addie had any ”

“ The entrance of Brown and Miss Addie De Laine.
She entered: but oh, how imperfect the verb
To express to the senses her movement superb!
To say that she "sailed in" more clearly might tell
Her grace in its buoyant and billowy swell.
Her robe was a vague circumambient space,
With shadowy boundaries made of point-lace.
The rest was but guess-work, and well might defy
The power of critical feminine eye
To define or describe: 'twere as futile to try
The gossamer web of the cirrus to trace,
Floating far in the blue of a warm summer sky. ”

“ And the lady departed. But just at the door
Something happened,—'tis true, it had happened before
In this sanctum of science,—a sibilant sound,
Like some element just from its trammels unbound,
Or two substances that their affinities found.
The night of the anxiously looked-for soirée
Had come, with its fair ones in gorgeous array;
With the rattle of wheels, and the tinkle of bells,
And the "How do ye dos," and the "Hope you are wells;"
And the crash in the passage, and last lingering look
You give as you hang your best hat on the hook;
The rush of hot air as the door opens wide ”

“ And it isn't the thing to see; for, whatever he's been and done,
Starvation isn't the plan as he's to be saved upon.
For he cannot rough it like me; and he hasn't the stamps, I guess,
To buy him his extry grub outside o' the pris'n mess.
And perhaps if a gent like you, with whom I've been sorter free,
Would—thank you! But, say, look here! Oh, blast it, don't give it to ME! ”

“ In this tale of Milton Perkins,—late an owner in White Pine,—
You shall see that wealth and women are deceitful, just the same;
And the tear of sensibility has salted many a claim.
What the Wolf Really Said to Little Red Riding-Hood.
Wondering maiden, so puzzled and fair,
Why dost thou murmur and ponder and stare? ”

“ The men whose wasted figures fill
The patriot graves of the nation.
And there came the nameless dead,—the men
Who perished in fever swamp and fen,
The slowly-starved of the prison-pen;
And, marching beside the others,
Came the dusky martyrs of Pillow's fight,
With limbs enfranchised and bearing bright ”

“ But you're a werry lively young pup, and you ain't to be played upon!
Wot's that you got—tobacco? I'm cussed but I thought 'twas a tract.
Thank ye. A chap t'other day—now, look'ee, this is a fact,
Slings me a tract on the evils o' keepin' bad company,
As if all the saints was howlin' to stay here along's we.
No: I hain't no complaints. Stop, yes; do you see that chap,—
Him standin' over there,—a hidin' his eves in his cap?
Well, that man's stumick is weak, and he can't stand the pris'n fare;
For the coffee is just half beans, and the sugar ain't no where. ”

“ Never a tear bedims the eye
That time and patience will not dry; ”

“ But, whatsoe'er they do or say, I'll build a Christian's hope
On incense and on altar-lights, on chasuble and cope.
Let others prove, by precedent, the faith that they profess:
"His can't be wrong" that's symbolized by such becoming dress. ”

“ And, as far as complexion went, she had a heart.
But this, par parenthesis. Brown was the man
Preferred of all others to carry her fan,
Hook her glove, drape her shawl, and do all that a belle
May demand of the lover she wants to treat well.
Folks wondered and stared that a fellow called Brown—
Abstracted and solemn, in manner a clown,
Ill dressed, with a lingering smell of the shop—
Should appear as her escort at party or hop. ”

“ How's Thompson? What! will he be there? Well, now, I want to know!
The first man in the rebel works! they called him 'Swearing Joe:'
A wild young fellow, sir, I fear the rascal was; but then—
Well, short of heaven, there wa'n't a place he dursn't lead his men. ”

“ Judge Jenkins: Sequel to Maud Muller Avitor A White Pine Ballad Little Red Riding-Hood The Ritualist A Moral Vindicator Songs without Sense Part I. 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! ”

“ 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 II. 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. ”