Jonathan E. Hoag

“ They sought the sportive speckled trout at play.
There now a whitened path of adamant
Winds in and out among the birchen trees,
And far below, in verdant grassy mead,
The happy children bask in Autumn's breeze.
The distant vista opens wide the scene;
For miles on miles we skirt the mountain side;
With glass we sweep the rival peaks afar,
While silvery clouds o'er all in splendor glide.
On jutting peak and gently rolling slope
Autumnal tints ten thousand beauties bring;
No artist brush can rival such as these,
Save Nature when she gilds the fields in Spring. ”

“ OLD CLOUD'S REST
Inspired by a vast panorama of snow-clad and sun-kissed granite peaks in the Yosemite Valley, of which Cloud's Rest (5912 feet) is the highest.
How proud you rear your haughty crest,
And snow-clad, frown on heights below;
Tho' humbler, they like you are drest
In mantles of eternal snow.
Old Cloud's Rest!
Five thousand feet you climb the skies,
And view your sisters with disdain—
Yet seismic powers that bade you rise
May level you to dust again!
Old Cloud's Rest! ”

“ Hoag, however, was endowed with the true vision and divine sensitiveness of the bard; and vibrated sympathetically to the pastoral scenes around him. Alive to beauty in every form, he found it wherever he looked; and watched the calm agrestic years roll by, with the life of the old farm home, and the little school, and the academy, and the general training on the green. ”

“ Carve the high rocks and grottoes, guard the streams,
Fashion the hills and valleys, and o'er all
The sentient scene bespread the green of spring,
The hues of summer, the autumnal wealth
Of red and gold, and winter's mantle hoar.
There speaks a voice amongst the crowd unheard;
A low and soothing voice that strikes the soul,
Yet sounds not on the ear; an awesome voice
That swells from Nature's heart and teaches truth. ”

“ Whose deathless might Sardathrion's towers o'erthrew,
And Babylonia's matchless splendour slew,
Tell by what art our poet tunes his lays
With nobler beauty thro' increasing days?
Can we not fancy that the stainless heart
Throbs with the rhythm of Nature's ev'ry part ”

“ It is that writer's hope, both from personal regard and from a disinterested love of beauty in literature, that he may have the privilege of adding some day to these tributes a centennial ode which its venerable subject may read in the full vigour of a lengthened span. ”

“ And children were seen!
I stand at the side of a now sunken grave,
And list for a whisper midst hot falling tears;
The silence of death broods where sweet flowers should wave,
As backward I glance o'er the many sad years. ”

“ Touch the green slope with soul-awak'ning blaze,
A thoughtful bard reveals, whose polish'd flights
Spring from the scene on Dillon's pleasant heights.
An ancient boulder is the poet's seat,
A verdant vista fronts the blest retreat ”

“ To peering eyes elate;
Thy little home with babies four,
But now how wrecked by Fate!
Here beneath the berry-bush,
A new-made grave we see,
Enshrined by loyal, loving hands—
Yet no bird sings for me. ”

“ Hoag, which he has celebrated in so many delightful poems and essays, was an idyllic kind of rural life which has today largely vanished through the incursions of the railway, telephone, and postal system; and which was marked by that lofty and picturesque simplicity formed when a race of fine stock and traditions reverts to the stalwart condition of the pioneer. ”

“ The cup was dashed untasted at our feet!
Though earthly pleasures serve not to restrain,
For those we love we longer would remain;
But unseen hands one day our anchor lift;
We sail away—into the silence drift! ”

“ In glades where Death hath felled some giant trunk,
Green tiny shoots of infant trees, sprung up
Beneath the unaccustomed solar rays;
In dampness bred, nourished by chemic pow'r
Of dead putrescence, drawing a new life
From lives that are no more; fulfilling thus
The cosmic cycle of eternal change
That ceaseless brings alternate birth and death. ”

“ As though the veil between were leaking?
What means it now, as evening lowers?
The breath of Heaven? The scent of flowers?
Or—what one's faith has long been seeking?
All things in life must have an ending ”

“ Whose moving strains our list'ning grandsires knew,
Yet who can charm ourselves with art as true?
What may we write of his Parnassian Jays
Beyond our censure, and above our praise?
Life is a mountain, reaching to the sky,
With peak for ever hid, supremely high;
Its slipp'ry slopes each mortal seeks to scale—
Seeks but to pause, to falter, and to fail. ”

“ But now, alas, those feet in silence rest.
That mother-love—O miracle divine
In dreams I feel her gentle hand in mine.
My footsteps echo through the empty hall,
While deathlike silence hovers over all. ”

“ Hoag is distinguished by a Doric purity and simplicity which, together with the reflective tranquility and occasional domestic touches, affiliate it conclusively with the earlier American school. It is fresh, Colonial, and free from self-conscious ornamentation. It has escaped not only the abyss of modernism, but the hothouse of Victorian preciosity and affectation as well ”

“ The juvenile pieces are ineffably appealing, while the legends and brighter Nature poems are full of a quaint and characteristic fascination. But in the end it seems certain that a conscientious analyst would award the palm to those reminiscent idyls in which the writer's own rural childhood is mirrored with such inspired fidelity and selective individuality. It is here that the descriptive and lyrical moods are most perfectly united, and here that the poet's gift of original observation is given freest play. ”

“ But we may at least agree that according to accepted standards, our poet has accomplished a marvellous work in capturing the spirit of the buoyant, hopeful past for the benefit of the doubting, pessimistic present. ”

“ When first this rock arose;
When new-born skies turned sightless eyes
On pathless, lone repose!
Hail Catalina's lovely clime!
Where Nature's every grace
Our eager view beneath the blue
In ecstacy can trace! ”

“ Shed their fragrance 'neath the snow-drifts."
"Do I love thee?" quoth the maiden,
Does the oak support the vine-stock,
Clinging closely with its tendrils,
Safe, secure, in love celestial?
Does the birdling nestle closely
'Neath the wing's maternal shelter
Till the stormy blast is over
And the dangers are all passed? ”

“ With Aesculapian power to cure
Each lethal ill our planet knows.
Here, ere the sun appeared at day,
Once Hocked each tenant of the mead;
Each bird and beast, with direful need,
To drink, and wash its ills away. ”

“ Bears the stern scars where glacial legions pressed;
Whose lofty brow defied the hosts that came
Down from the realms of cold auroral flame.
Weird was the night, when earth's ebullient deep
Cast up thy form, an outer watch to keep;
When newborn skies uncanny radiance shed,
Whilst frozen floods diffused a crystal dread.
Hast still in memory aught of that far day,
Ere the fair Hudson flowed its peaceful way;
Ere brother mountains touched the vaulted sky,
Or flowers or forests blessed the searching eye?
Vast boulders lying round thy rugged base
Bespeak an age when mortals had no place ”

“ Then his arrows tipped with jasper,
Quiver filled with pointed arrows,
Hung beside the wigwam entrance.
Minne-wawa and her pheasants
Marched around the little wigwam,
Running, flying as in laughter,
While she sang a little bird-song. ”

“ Read at the Closing Meeting of the Alpha Class of Marshall Seminary
Listen, O my friends and neighbors,
To the story I shall tell you,
To the story, to the legend,
Of this school and of its teachers.
Years ago when we were younger,
Men and women came together,
Came together to consult there
How to lead us, how to teach us,
Teach us in the ways of Wisdom,
For 'tis better than gold treasures. ”

“ Hoag received his final impulse toward continuous and systematic literary production through his advent to the miniature world of "amateur journalism"; a group of societies formed for the encouragement of the non-professional litterateur, and possessing an amateur press whose columns welcome all qualified comers. Availing himself of the various departments of criticism and encouragement, our bard began to turn out a finished product whose form fully sustained its matter, and which followed correctly those poetical traditions to which he was naturally inclined. ”

“ Flexibility, however, is a dominant feature; and leads the poet to adapt his measure to his mood, so that we are occasionally surprised by such variations from the general style as we see in verses like "The Celtic's Dream of his Erin Home." Subtler variations are those which we note between essentially stately pieces, such as the Nature odes and the pensive reminiscences; and the playful pieces, such as the juveniles and the jovial reminiscences. When in the lighter vein, Mr. Hoag manages with unusual success to avoid the insipid, the puerile, and the banal ”

“ Ah, San Francisco, fair and gay,
Proud city by the pulsing sea!
Now ashes strew thy market-place,
Where Death's fierce hand hath smitten thee!
* Nob's Hill, a famous residential district, destroyed in the great fire. ”

“ While he dreamed of a mother long since dead;
A mother who toiled in the cotton field,
As she thought of her boy of the curly head.
A coarse sack covered his sturdy loins;
There were no child-toys for that barefoot boy ”

“ While fireflies whirl, and nightbirds feed,
Thy notes waft o'er the darkened mead.
The owl is heard from hill afar,
While sinks to rest the evening star.
The full moon lights the eastern sky;
Thy song becomes a lullaby. ”

“ Daughter of the Arrow-Maker,
Strong Kos-su-ka from the mountain.
Love, beneath a mortal bosom,
Be it bronzed or white as marble,
Thrills the heart in rhythmic softness;
Sadness ne'er the heart may suffer. ”

“ The red-cheek'd coasters glide in youthful glee!
With magic notes his songs enchant our ears,
Revive the happy past, and melt the years.
May lesser bards compete with one whose Muse
Each year superior splendor can diffuse?
Who is so bold, that he can hope to gain
An equal skill, or chant an equal strain? ”

“ With buoyant heart we saw them march away!
A father's pride, a mother's teardrop starts;
Their soldier boy must brave a foreign foe!
A pang sweeps through those loving parents' hearts,
That none save such as they can ever know. ”

“ Penned in this age of chaos and change, fever and flourish, by a man born when Andrew Jackson was President, when Poe was an unknown youth with his second thin volume of verses in the press, when Coleridge, Moore, Crabbe, Southey, and Wordsworth were living bards, and when the memory of Byron, Shelley, Blake and Keats was still recent; the present collection of poems is probably unique in its defiance of time and whim. Where else, indeed, would one be likely to find such a body of poetry ”

“ And Philomela wakes the grove afar.
Hark! from a neighb'ring hedge the whippoorwill
Delights the air with glad, melodious thrill;
Soft singing o'er the downy sylvan nest,
He lulls his mate and birdlings fair to rest. ”

“ Beyond whose depths no man may know or think.
Poet and Sage! But lest a point be miss'd,
Let none forget the valiant Moralist!
All praise to thee, whose potent pen and purse
Have served the right, and fought the Bacchic curse ”

“ That realm of sempiternal June,
Peopled by fauns and oreads tender,
Which sleeps unalter'd and unvex'd,
Tho' with vast ills and changes direst
The world of waking be perplexed—
That fancy-heaven of the lyrist! ”

“ And with long years achieves sublimer strains;
Blends with the chant of worlds beyond our sight,
And rides the aether in perpetual light:
The singer, one with harmonies of heav'n,
Not age, but youth, by grateful Time, is given! ”

“ And tender lambkins played on mossy rocks!
Ah, then, the orchard too, where apples sweet
On bending boughs our vision oft would greet;
As, basking 'neath its grateful verdant shade,
We watched the sportive lambkins while they played. ”

“ White thy sands, as bleached by sunshine;
Wild the waves that lash thy shore.
Giant whales are ever spouting;
Steamers churn thy waters o'er.
Far within thy mighty caverns.
Wealth untold lies buried deep ”

“ Downy pillows, sheets o'erspread;
And mother breathes a silent prayer,
O'er that little trundle bed.
Refrain
Sleep, my little babies, sleep;
Mother will her vigil keep.
My darlings, ne'er fear, whilst mother is near ”

“ In these studies of Old America we have the convincing touch of one who has lived in the scenes he describes; and who consequently avoids the objectivity, inaccuracy, and false stresses of the newer bards whose outlook is purely detached and antiquarian. ”

“ Can run an auto with one hand,
Can scorch the pike to beat the band.
Our Campfire Girls, erect, unique,
They part their hair at "right oblique;"
Can flirt a bit just on the sly,
Can sing or dance in ecstasy ”

“ In each other's arms they found them;
Spirits flown, and flown together!
And the feathered signal-arrow
Never fell upon the valley,
Never fell beside the Merced.
But (as wrinkled sachems whisper)
Sped into the purple twilight;
Sped beyond the mystic sunset,
With the souls of young Kos-su-ka
And his lovely bride Tee-na-nay;
Sped with them to happy meadows,
And the Manitou's tall wigwam.
Nov. 1, 1919
1 A cliff 2,600 feet high, beside Yosemite Falls, Calif.
2 A small river in Yosemite Valley.
3 A ravine; Spanish for "Dry Creek."
4 Obsidian cliff; glass mountain, Yellowstone Park. ”

“ With thunderous accents they the records read,,
Kept through uncounted years of varied dead;
"Behold our sides, by time's sharp chisel rent
"When Nature rocked the rising continent,
"Dark were the thick veiled skies, no sound was heard
"Save the black Vulcan's subterranean word.
"The sooty Cyclops, with gigantic might
"Heaved up the rocks from realms of Stygian night,
"Plutonian silence and Cimmerian pall
"In hideous mantle shroud and cover all ”