Frances Fuller Victor

“ I brought you beauty—but your boys invade
⁠My woman's realm of love with girlish airs;
I brought high gifts, and powers to persuade,
⁠To charm, to teach, with your philosophers.
But knowledge is man's realm alone, you hold,
⁠And I who am your equal am cast down
Level with those who sell themselves for gold—
⁠A crownless queen—a woman of the town.
Ye vain Athenians, know this, that I
⁠By your hard laws am only made more free;
Your unloved dames may sit at home and cry,
⁠But, being unwed, I meet you openly,
A foreigner, you cannot wed with me ”

“ Gone is the glimmer of the silent river,
⁠Hushed is the wind that op'ed the leaves today;
Alone through silence falls the crystal shiver
⁠Of the sweet starlight, on its earthward way.
And yet I wait, how vainly, for a token—
⁠A sigh, a touch, a whisper from the past;
Alas, I listen for a word unspoken,
⁠And wait for arms that have embraced their last.
I wish no more, as once I wished, each feeling
⁠To grow immortal in my happy breast;
Since not to feel will leave no wounds for healing—
⁠The pulse that thrills not has no need of rest. ”

“ But here in Athens, 'twixt philosophers
⁠Who reason on the nature of the soul,
And all the vain array of orators,
⁠Who strive to hold the people in control;
Between the poets, artists, critios, all,
⁠Who form a faction, or who found a school,
We weave Penelope s web with hearts of gall,
⁠And my poor brain is oft the weary tool.
Yet do I choose this life. What is to me
⁠Peace or good fame, away from all of these,
But living death? I do choose liberty,
⁠And leave to Athens dames their soulless ease. ”

“ Men madly do and dare,
In alternations of high hope and deep abysses
Of recklessnesses.
Painfully, and by violence,
Even as heaven is taken, thou wert dragged whence
Nature had hidden thee—whose face is worn
With anxious furrows, and her bosom torn
In the hard strife—and ever yet there lingers
Upon these hills work for the effacing fingers
Of time, the healer, who makes all things seem
A half forgotten dream;
Who smooths deep furrows and lone graves together,
By touch of wind and weather. ”

“ And exhaling frees to the amosphere
⁠The molecule of sun it has stayed in its flight,
So you lived in your beautiful body, Sweet,
⁠And shone through its white and dainty mould;
So you passed away from world's toil and heat
⁠To the glory that gathered you in its fold.
And I? Will my soul when it is free
⁠Discover the print of your spirit feet,
And follow and find? ”

“ And yet I pine;—this beautiful completeness
⁠Is incomplete, to my desiring heart;
'Tis Beauty's form, without her soul of sweetness—
⁠The pure, but chiseled loveliness of art.
There is no longer pleasure in emotion.
⁠I envy those dead souls no touch can thrill,
Who "painted ships upon a painted ocean,"—
⁠Seem to be moved, yet are forever still. ”

“ Oft he said softly, while melting eyes glistened,
⁠"Sweet is my life, love, with you ever near";
Morning and evening she waited and listened
⁠For a voice and a footstep that never came near.
Fainting at last on her threshold she found him;
⁠"Life is but ashes and bitter," he sighed. ”

“ Till memories that were long-time dead
⁠Revived at touch of loving hands.
"The sisters of these flowers," she said,
⁠"Are blooming in far-distant lands—
In earth the sun last looks upon,
⁠Where rolls the rock-vexed Oregon." ”

“ The night is wild, and the road is long,
⁠The scudding clouds fly fast,
The swift wind sings a dreary song
⁠And the trees creak in the blast;
The moon is down in the tossing sea,
⁠The stars shed not a ray,
The lightning flashes frightfully,
⁠But I must on my way. ”

“ This creature—being chief among men's sphinxes—
Is eloquent, and overflows with story,
⁠Beside thy silence hoary!
⁠Nevada, desert, waste,
Mighty, and inhospitable, and stern;
Hiding a meaning over which we yearn
⁠In eager, panting haste,
⁠Grasping and losing,
Still being deluded ever by our choosing,
Answer us Sphinx: What is thy meaning double
⁠But endless toil and trouble?
⁠Inscrutable, men strive
To rend thy secret from thy rocky breast;
Breaking their hearts, and periling heaven's rest
⁠For hopes that cannot thrive ”

“ To this sapphire sea and sky,
To the mountains towering o'er
Vales where shimmering harvests lie;
To this joyous land and free,
To my flowers, and to my heart,
Sing a jocund jubilee—
June is sweet, and life is short. ”

“ Through the long and weary years
⁠Have you never felt my hand
Brush away the bitter tears
⁠Duty, will, could not command?
Love, I doubt you not, and you
⁠Surely feel my presence near,
Through the years have I been true,
⁠Through the years have you been dear. ”

“ Turn with an envious longing evermore,
⁠Smiling back to the sky
Its own pink blush, and, floating out of sight,
⁠Bear south the softest dye
Of northern heavens to fade in southern night—
⁠My eyes but look the way my joys are gone,
⁠And the ice islands travel not alone. ”

“ With the ocean at dead calm—
The joy of love is loving.
Because the sun did sire thee,
The ocean nurse thy youth,
Because the stars desire thee,
The warm winds whisper truth,
Shall nothing ever fire thee? ”

“ Yours with a sigh that life is not the same.
What parted us to leave you in the valley,
⁠And send me struggling to the mountain top;
Too weak for duty, even love failed to rally
⁠The manhood that should float your pinions up. ”

“ And a river that did lave
⁠Banks o'ergrown with wondrous flowers,
⁠And a sky more fair than ours.
Then she asked with such a smile
⁠As a seraph's face might wear,
If she watched a long, long while,
⁠She should see her mother there,
⁠Walking in the groves so fair? ”

“ That which we lose, we think we choose,
Oft, from slavery to use.
Shocks that break our chains, tho' rude,
Open paths to highest good:
Wise, my sister soul, is she
Who takes of life the proffered key. ”

“ Serene 'twixt earth and heaven, with the grace
⁠Of both to make you grand,—
⁠Your loveliness leaves place
⁠For nothing fairer, fair,
⁠And complete beyond compare,
O, lovely purple hills! O, first day of November,
⁠Be sure that I remember. ”

“ With all the colors of heaven's signal-bow.
⁠The fitful breezes die
Into a gentle whisper, and then sleep;
⁠And sweetly, mournfully,
Starting to sight, in the transparent sky,
⁠Lone in the upper deep,
Sad Hesper pours its beams upon the eye ”

“ If he may soothe the baleful pang
⁠With juices of this "holy tree."
How do we all, in life's wild ways,
⁠Which oft we traverse lost and lone,
Need that which heavenward draws the gaze,
⁠Some Palo Santo of our own! ”

“ And sounds of flutes that make pale Silence glow,
⁠Shall I their rapture know.
⁠Farewell, ye stately palms
⁠Clashing your cymbal tones
⁠In thro' the mystic moans
⁠Of pines at solemn psalms;
Ye myrtles, singing Love's inspired song,
⁠We part, and part for long. ”

“ Who treads the lonesome sand beach,
⁠With wet, disordered hair,
With garments tangled with seaweed,
⁠And cheeks more pale than fair?
O blue-eyed, white-browed maiden,
⁠He will keep love's tryst no more ”

“ Shuts its bright eye, and yields to slumber's power.
⁠Soon, with a dusky face,
Pensive and proud as an East Indian queen,
⁠And with a solemn grace,
The moon ascends, and takes her royal place
⁠In the fair evening scene,
While all the reverential stars, apace,
Take up their march through the cool fields of space,
⁠And wed in the sweet day with night serene. ”

“ That shrines thy history!
Yet 'tis of little consequence,
Today, to know how them wert made, or whence
Earthquake and flood have brought thee; them art here,
At once the master that men love and fear ”

“ I say to my soul, "In vain
⁠You beat your restless wings
⁠'Gainst the cruel bars of things
That imprison and restrain;
⁠Turn your eyes away, be strong,
⁠Captive shall you be not long,
But your prisen rent in twain."
That life should be, ah me!
⁠Longing, and never joy ”

“ While in my heart the question strove.
⁠The fire-flies flashed like wandering stars—
I thought some sprang from out his eyes—
⁠Surely some spirit makes or mars
At will our earthly destinies.
"Speak, Maud!" At length I turned away;
⁠He must have thought it woman's fear ”

“ Withal should peril come tonight
⁠God have us in his care,
For all alone, and without light
⁠The boldest well beware.
Now, on, my steeds; the lightning's flash
⁠An instant gilds our way;
But steady! by that fearful crash
⁠The heavens seem rent away. ”

“ And I my paradise have lost
⁠Forsooth because I am not wise.
O, vain traditions, small the aid
⁠We women gather from your lore;
Why, when the world was lost, did death
⁠Not come our children's birth before? ”

“ What then?" "They passed to where
⁠Columbia's waters foam and flow,
And parted company. I spare
⁠The sickening tale. Enough to know
They with their husbands went among
⁠The restless wild men of the plains,
And taught that love returned for wrong
⁠Will bring reward in priceless gains;
Taught, with alternate hopes and fears,
⁠Their Christian faith for ten long years.
"Then came the end. The wild men tired
⁠Of straining after thoughts too high
For their low level, and conspired
⁠To blot all out, and all deny.
Narcissa Whitman fell. ”

“ Of hecatombs of beasts and men,
⁠By weariness, want, and foes in ambush slain.
This by the way. I stood, in time,
⁠By Walla Walla's gentle stream,
In Wa-ii-lat-pu's vale, where crime
⁠Struck down a good man, and his dream. ”

“ Far sweeter language speaks the eye,
⁠And truer than the pliant tongue;
And by this we are friends for aye.
I see your gentle heart, and you
⁠Are sure that mine is kind and strong
And each believes the other true. ”

“ The revelers said, "We'll have naught of woe;
Why should we mourn who have our fill?
Enough if the poor and hungry cry.
We from our plenty cast at will
Some crumbs to make their wet eyelids dry;
But to the rich the world is fair,
Why should we grovel in tears and prayer?" ”

“ Through forests dark, and mountains rent in twain,
⁠Toward the sunset gate,
While curious eyes, keen with the lust of gold,
⁠Caught not the informing gleam,
These mighty breakers age on age have rolled
⁠To meet this mighty stream.
Age after age these noble hills have kept,
⁠The same majestic lines:
Age after age the horizon's edge been swept
⁠By fringe of pointed pines. ”

“ The Year or the pleasure is dead that is gone,"
Boasted the man of pomp and power:
"That which we hold is alone the good,
Give me new pleasures for every hour,
And grieve over past joys ye who would:
Joys that are fled are poor, I wis,
Give me forever the newest bliss." ”

“ In the elms that meet above our dwelling
⁠Orioles swing, singing to their young—
Happy birds, whose pretty throats are swelling
⁠With the joy of their home-coming song.
List! I hear the children's voices singing
⁠Roundelays, as they bring home the kine,
Sweet-breathed heifers round whose necks are clinging
⁠Garlands of some flowering wayside vine ”

“ I walk in paths so shadowed and so cold;
⁠But stay thou, darling hour,
⁠Nor stint thy gracious power
To smile away the clouds that me enfold;
⁠Oh, stay! when thou art gone,
⁠I shall be lost and lone. ”

“ Behind the keys, a radiance
⁠That on the ivory lit a gleam.
Ah, then I knew whence came the skill
⁠That touched with flame the instrument,
And to his dreamy fingering lent
⁠A power beyond the player's will. ”

“ Whitman, with eleven others, fell victims to the fury of the Cayuse Indians of the Umatilla valley in November, 1847. The Protestant missions east of the Cascade mountains were broken up by this tragedy, and never resumed. Various theories of the cause of the massacre are entertained, but my subject deals only with poetical incidents, and is designed as a slight tribute to tthe memory of a heroic woman, whose name must go down in history as the pioneer of women pioneers in the territory north of the Columbia river. ”

“ I gaze on thee, and fancies start
To sudden blossom in my heart.
Years all too quickly troop along,
Named some for sorrow, some for song;
Ever the summer's heat we dread;
Winter brings storms upon our head ”

“ No entertainment ever yet
⁠Had half the exquisite completeness—
The gladness without one regret,
⁠You gather from your darling's sweetness;
An angel sits beside the hearth
⁠Where e'er an innocent child is found on earth. ”

“ Silent, secret, passive, endless as the ages—
'Gainst their forces massive fruitlessly he rages.
Winds and waves misuse him, buffet and destroy him;
Thorns and pebbles bruise him, heat and cold annoy him ”

“ That race is doomed behind whose lattices
⁠Its once free women are constrained to peer
Upon the world of men with vacant eves:
⁠It was not so in Homer's time, I hear.
But Eastern slaves have eaten of your store,
⁠Till in your homes all eating bread are slaves ”

“ An untaught and unteachable race,
⁠To see, seize and enjoy. What though
You failed of purpose? We still trace
⁠The God-word thought, and feel and know
Your life's deep lesson, brought to view
⁠In the red poppies of Wa-ii-lat-pu.
Walla Walla, 1877.
↑ Note.—The first white women to cross the continent and settle in Oregon territory were Mrs. Narcissa Prentiss Whitman and Mrs. Eliza Hart Spalding, who with their husbands, Dr. Marcus Whitman and Rev. H. H. Spalding, founded the missions of Waiilatpu and Lapwai, in 1836. Dr. and Mrs. ”