E. L. Huggins

“ The birds that fled last fall our wintry skies
People again the woods on joyous wing;
At dawn soft rustling pinions waken me,
And swallows darken window-pane and door;
Breathless I listen, gazing wistfully,
Alas, the bird I wait for comes no more.
A high ambition swept my pulses through;
Gazing one day upon the eagle’s flight,
I pierced with him the heaven’s o’erarching blue,
And beat my pinions at the gates of light.
To-day the bird of Jove alone defies
The sun-god’s burning glance, the tempest’s roar;
I watch his flight unmoved, with listless eyes,
The bird I fondly wait for comes no more. ”

“ Bird, bubble, butterfly on light wing straying,
With changing tints of crimson, blue, and gold,
Upon warm waves of summer sunlight swaying,
When thy frail, flaming wing the boy shall hold,
Alas, how soon its fragile charms expire!
E’en so when strong men seize their soul’s desire.
Rend not with ruthless hand the lily’s bell,
To gather all its sweetness at a breath;
Spill not the pearl deep in its bosom’s cell,
The crystal gift Aurora’s tears bequeath.
So shall a delicate perfume be thine,
Through all the weary hours of day’s decline. ”

“ In eddies round us, and our leader’s roar
Smote peal on peal, and from their bases flung
The rocks that towered along the trembling shore.
A Thunder-Bird—alas, my chosen friend,
But even so a warrior’s life should end,—
A Thunder-Bird was stricken; his bright beak,
Cleaving the tumult like a lightning streak,
Smote with a fiery hiss the watery plain;
His upturned breast, where gleamed one fleck of red,
His sable wings, one moment wide outspread,
Blackened the whirlpool o’er his sinking head.
The Water-Demon’s sons by scores were slain
By our swift arrows falling like the rain ”

“ All Earth is but a tomb whence life has passed.
A common sepulchre for bad and good,
Upon this wave no ark of safety rides,
Bitter with tears and red with human blood.
No second patriarch his vessel guides,
A hive of life; a swelling fountain head,
To burst upon Ararat’s rugged sides.
Atlas has fallen! hark, O hark! o’erhead
The crack of doom, the supports of the world
Are snapped like reeds beneath Behemoth’s tread. [112]
Our Mother Earth, by storms of chaos whirled,
Reels like a drunken harlot down through space,
By wanton buffets from her orbit hurled. ”

“ Thy ashes shall be scattered far and wide.
No circling rings shall break the sullen gloom
Of the dark pool that closes o’er thy head,
No widowed soul shall hover o’er thy tomb.
For the chaste secrets which thy soul hath wed,
With thee the pit shall bury them from view,
Fathoms below the deepest deep-sea lead.
Our Mother, Nature, hath her favorites too,
Like any other dame, spoiled children they;
Unwelcome waif, why should they share with you?
Upon them fall the myrtle and the bay,
E’en in the desert they would find at need
Enchanted palaces along their way. ”

“ Time breaks at last the lyre’s sweetest strings,
And palls the sweetest note the minstrel sings,
And riches fly away on falcon wings:
Love only to his trust unchanging clings.
Then be my song of whatsoe’er degree,
And gifts however bright and fair to see,
Rare trophies peril won by land and sea,
Yet Love his own chief offering must be.
All that the flower of Love may yield is thine,
From blushing bud to clusters on the vine,
With colors rich as rubies from the mine,
And odors mounting to the soul like wine. ”

“ On a rude bier, the conjurer’s body lay
Adorned and decked in funeral array.
She flung a handful of her sable hair,
And wept such tears above the painted clay [14]
As weeps a youthful widow, only heir,
Over the coffin of a millionaire.
Moons waxed to fulness and to sickles waned.
The gossips still conversed with bated breath.
The appalling mystery of Gray Cloud’s death,
Wrapped in impenetrable gloom, remained
A blighting shadow o’er the village spread.
But youthful spirits are invincible,
Nor fear nor superstition long can quell
The bubbling flow of that perennial well ”

“ E’en as one day some race of stronger birth
Will sweep our children’s children from the earth.
More noxious than the fabled upas tree,
We blight his virtues first, and then with scorn
Repel the hands extended once to save
Our exiled fathers, fleeing o’er the wave.
Yet in his deepest fall, the warrior, born
Of warrior lineage fetterless and free,
Retains unquenched in his unyielding soul
A secret flame in spite of all control.
He brooks no slavish, ignominious toil,
By scourger driven to till the white man’s soil. ”

“ With yells of rage they sank beneath the wave
That ran all redly now, but could not save. [17]
We asked not mercy, mercy never gave;
Our flaming darts lit up the farthest caves,
Fathoms below the reach of deepest line;
Our cruel spears, taller than mountain pine,
Mingled their life blood with the ruddy wave.
The combat ceased, the Thunder-Birds had won.
The Water-Demon with one favorite son
Fled from the carnage and escaped our wrath.
The vapors, thinly curling from the shore,
Faint musky odors to our nostrils bore. ”

“ Closing our pathway, lo, we find a door,
The entrance to a narrow house that still
Blocks up the way of every human will.
Wander where’er we may, this self-same goal
Is reached at last by every weary soul.
Our burdens fall unheeded, and our gains,—
This is the end of all our toil and pains.
Over the threshold hangs a shrunken lute,
Upon a tree where grows nor flower nor fruit;
Bewildering odors fill the heavy air,
The nightshade and the wolf’s-bane mingle there ”

“ While, mounting on their bones, some brazen cheat
Reaches the very pinnacle of Fame.
Destiny mocks them from her lofty seat,
Dipping their sponge in vinegar and gall:
Want grinds them in the dust with iron feet.
Hard by the accursed sea whose waves appal,
A scape-goat lone, beneath the wingless skies,
They wander where the ashen apples fall.
Night takes for them a thousand baleful eyes,
Piercing at once their deepest hiding-place:
Straight to their heart each poisoned arrow flies. ”

“ A god might gaze and tremble at the sight
Of our array that turned the day to night;
With bow and shield and flame-tipped arrows all,
Rushing together at our leader’s call,
Like storm clouds sweeping round a mountain height.
The lofty cliffs our warlike muster saw,
Hard by the village of great Wabashaw, [8]
Where through a lake the Mississippi flows;
Far o’er the dwelling of our ancient foes,
The hated Water-Demon [9] and his sons,
Cold, dark and deep the sluggish current runs. ”

“ Through the wave inscrutable,
Joy of heaven or woe of hell?
Cruel swan, why mock me so?
Scornful sailing to and fro,
Answering not my questionings,
While above thy snowy breast
Rises haughty neck and crest.
Sure, beneath thy folded wings,
Knowledge lies of many things—
Secrets that I long to know.
Voices of the hollow wave,
Whispering as from a grave,
Murmur to thy listening ear
Secrets that I fain would hear. [82]
Lo, I see another crest
Mirrored in the wave below,
And a bosom white as snow
Sails majestical and slow,
Unto thine ’tis closely pressed ”

“ Tramples no more the growing corn and vine,
And nesting birds pour forth their raptures where
The thunder-bolts of battle rent the air. [138]
But still remain in many hearts we know
The ghastly scars of twenty years ago.
How many a comrade’s widow treads alone
A narrow path by cruel thorns o’ergrown!
’Tis long since song of mating bird has thrilled
That lonely heart, with tender memories filled,—
Memories still speeding backward to the time
When, brave and beautiful in manhood’s prime,
Her bridegroom more than twenty years ago
Sprang at the bugle call to meet the foe. ”

“ He who would climb Fame’s towering mountain height
Must have a double gift, a genius rare:
Unto a happy star he must unite.
Poet, alas! and lover, brethren are;
Twins of the soul, each hath his cherished dream,
Some saint ideal, worshipped from afar; [109]
Some fount of youth, some pure Pactolian stream,
Some orb that beams with strange unearthly ray,
Some flaming vision potent to redeem.
The fount is dry, the vision fades away;
The mystic light that led them through the night
Dies in a marsh, and leaves them far astray. ”

“ Two trades occult upon which knaves have thriven,
Almost since man from Paradise was driven;
Padding with pompous phrases worn and old
Their scanty esoteric science dim,
And gravely selling, at their weight in gold,
Placebos colored to their patients’ whim.
Man’s noblest mission here too oft is made,
In heathen as in Christian lands, a trade.
Holy the task to comfort and console
The tortured body and the sin-sick soul,
But pain and sorrow, even prayer and creed,
Are turned too oft to instruments of greed. ”

“ There sleep shall seize and bind us, sleep supreme,
That knows no waking morn, no troubled dream.
The years shall swiftly cover us from sight,
In silence and insuperable night.
[63]
MOODS.
My wayward youth had drained the cup of Life,
Wasting its treasures in the fitful strife,
The mad revolt of a rebellious soul,
That beats the stubborn bars of Fate’s control.
My foolish heart whispered, there is no God,
And if there is, let cravens fear his rod:
Be thy own god, slake thy imperious thirst
Where’er thou wilt, no fountain is accurst. ”

“ But let them pass nor mourn the solitude:
Far sweeter than the whole fantastic brood
Is one weak, loving woman’s human form.
A woman’s voice, low, tremulous, and warm,
Hath a more potent spell to lull the charm
Than Orphean lute, or siren’s song, where passed
The wave-worn mariner lashed to his mast. ”

“ Clad in soft light as from an inner flame,
And held an ebon cross whereon there bled
A great white Christ, with loving arms outspread.
Singing afar a tender voice I heard,
Faintly the accents fell, “Flee as a bird.”
Then, as the spring-tides yearning to the moon,
Flood the dry hollows where we walked at noon, [68]
E’en so the tidal-wave of feeling rose,
And memories wakened from their long repose,
And rushing back through many a dusty year
Left me again a reverent child at prayer. ”

“ Glints through the gloom that shrouds them evermore,
A chilling cloud obscures th’ unwonted ray.
The wisest plans but mock their hopes the more,
Bringing them to derision and dismay:
The sea engulfs them though they hug the shore.
The tree shall crush them, hollow with decay,
Whose grateful shade invites them to draw nigh:
The heart they lean on wins them to betray. ”

“ Flung from thy pen as from a magic wand.
Had all thy wondrous powers to song been given,
What floods of melody had filled the air—
Eros’ and Psyche’s voices mingling there.
Alas! the wine is spilled, the lyre is riven,
Stern Albion’s son, thy soft Italian name
Lives only in the Pantheon of Fame. ”

“ That lifts its crest,
While an abyss of untold horror lies
Beneath its breast.
Some loving souls at birth are consecrated
To pain and grief;
Through gloomy vales they stray, unknown, unmated,
Without relief.
I seek no longer these sad mysteries
To penetrate;
I must not murmur at the high decrees
That fix my fate.
They say that God regards with pitying eye
The poor and weak,
Smiting the haughty head, and passing by
The low and meek. ”

“ Such air of poesy, whose influence
Subdues with such a charm our every sense,
How many loving hearts have loved and died!
How many souls as lofty and intense
As those whose names throughout the whole world ring,
In the high songs the olden minstrels sing!
Who hears those voices e’en but for a day,
The sound remains a part of him alway:
Penelope the constant; Hero sweet;
Briseis weeping at Achilles’ feet;
Andromeda by wingèd Perseus found— [8]
Bright blossom to the sea-girt rock fast bound;
The Lesbian queen of song, but passion’s slave,
Who quenched her burning torch beneath the wave ”

“ Constancy and the Phœnix, birds that dwell
In the bright realms of song, happy his fate
Who elsewhere meets with one, for, mark it well,
Sooner or later he will find its mate.
[60]
THE PALACE OF REPOSE.
Helpless we start before the break of day,
And grope along an unknown path our way,
Or follow leaders blind, and many fall;
But on we press, heedless and joyous all,
As happy fledglings fluttering in the brake,
That nothing reck of prowling fox or snake.
When over us at last the daylight dawns,
We bear the marks of many cruel thorns ”

“ The Thunder-Birds [1] along the tempest roared;
Or swept the plain, but saw no Indian slave
From the Pacific to Atlantic wave.
Fair Minnetonka, thou art changed, and yet
I know not if ’twere matter for regret.
Thou wast a maid untried, with yielding heart,
With flowing hair, and ample sheltering arms,
And unabashed contours, whose rosy charms
Were all untrammelled by the hand of art,
And eyes of dreamy mystery, wherein
E’en then thy triumphs dimly were foreseen;
A worldly-wise and queenly woman now,
Adorned with spoil of many victories, [6]
And flush of further conquest on thy brow ”

“ But fast and faster from our sight they fail,
A few belated stragglers feebly hail
Along the banks of Styx the boatman pale.
Where’er they are, once more we pledge them all,
Ere from the thinning ranks we too shall fall.
Lift high the cup, a generous current pour,
Libations to the chosen friends of yore,
Who wander on the dim Plutonian shore.
A mist arises from the wine-stained ground,
And lo, what phantom faces gather round!
Like storm-blown wreaths they flit—e’en so must we
Soon pass like vapors blown across the sea. ”