WH

JOAQUIN MILLER'S SONGS OF THE SIERRAS.1

HEN the roving Arazona Indians wish to descend from the mountains and to mingle with the something less savage settlers, they first send down a small, aged man if he is slain, they say that the loss is not great, and remain in their fastnesses; but if well received, others follow. If this little book should be well received, it is big enough for my purpose; if not, it is big enough for all purposes.'

"These lines were written on the rough edges of the frontier amid the scenes described, where I have spent all but the last few months of my life. . . . Poetry with me is a passion that defies reason. I bring this rough quartz specimen, torn from the outcropping of the ledge, to those who know gold from grosser metal.'

'I am very much in earnest, and invite a correct assay. It would be wrong to let me spoil a good mountaineer to make a bad poet, however much it might please me.'

These are extracts from the preface to a volume of poems by a young Californian writer, who has had the courage to come half across the world to a face-to-face encounter with the critics of Great Britain. And apart from the announcement here contained, of verses likely to prove interesting from their very subject-matter, we cannot but be struck by the honesty, humour, and pathos of this preface: indeed, after reading it we are very ready to overlook, as far as reason will permit us, the countless poetic shortcomings for which it prepares us, and at the very least to say of our author, It would be wrong to let so good a prose-writer forsake literature for his native mountains, however much it might please him.'

With interest then, at the least, we turn from this preface to the poems that it preludes; and here is the poet's dedication to his little daughter:

Because the skies were blue, because
The sun in fringes of the sea
Was tangled, and delightfully
Kept dancing on as in a waltz,
And tropic trees bowed to the seas,
And bloomed and bore, years through and
through,

And birds in blended gold and blue
Were thick and sweet as swarming bees,
And sang as if in Paradise,
Did I too sing with lifted eyes,
And all that Paradise was spring,
Because I could not choose but sing.
With garments full of sea-winds blown
From isles beyond of spice and balm,
Beside the sea, beneath her palm,
She waits as true as chisell'd stone.
My childhood's child! my June in May!
So wiser than thy father is,

These lines, these leaves, and all of this
Are thine-a loose, uncouth bouquet.
So wait and watch for sail and sign;
A ship shall mount the hollow seas,
Blown to thy place of blossom'd trees,
And birds, and song, and summer-shine.
Shall I return with lifted face,
Or head held down as in disgrace,
To hold thy two brown hands in mine?

This poem is exquisite of its kind;
yet the very first few lines of it
indicate a poetic lawlessness which
Mr. Miller, elsewhere, gives only
too much evidence of.

The Songs of the Sierras, as their name would hardly imply, are in the main narrative poems, although introduced by and interspersed with lyrics. They consist of five tales:

Arazonian, 'With Walker in Nicaragua, Californian,' The Last Taschastas,' and the Tale of the Tall Alcalde;' a semi-dramatic, semi-narrative study entitled 'Ina;' and a lyric headed 'Burns and Byron.' Let us examine them in their order, and after having done

1 Songs of the Sierras. By Joaquin Miller. London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and 1871.

Dyer.

so endeavour to form an estimate of Mr. Miller's poetic powers, present and potential.

The tale of 'Arazonian' is told by his Californian guest to an English squire, as they range across our countryman's fine estate.

The squire is a patient listener :

For his guest had gold, and he yet was clever,

And mild of manner; and, what was more, he,

In the morning's ramble, had praised the
kine,

The clover's reach, and the meadows fine,
And so made the squire his friend for ever.

The story tells how a young Caliifornian, after having won the love of a fair American beauty, starts to seek a fortune for her in the Far West.

He goes to the gold-fields and is followed in his wanderings by a beautiful Indian girl, who loves him with all the passion of her passionate race; but the man is constant to his first love.

Now the gold weighed well, but was lighter
of weight

Than we two had taken for days of late,
So I was fretted, and, brow a-frown,

I said, 'She is fairer, and I loved her first,
And shall love her last, come the worst
to worst.'

A tempest breaks upon them as

Higher and higher the hot words ran
Between them.

The Indian girl remains sullenly at the river-side; the gold-digger seeks his cabin. Then follows this fine storm scene :

I lay in my hammock: the air was heavy And hot and threat'ning; the very heaven Was holding its breath; and bees in a bevy Hid under my thatch; and birds were

driven

In clouds to the rocks in a hurried whirr
As I peer'd down by the path for her;
She stood like a bronze bent over the river,
The proud eyes fix'd, the passion unspoken,
When the heavens broke like a great dyke

broken:

Then ere I fairly had time to give her
A shout of warning, a rushing of wind
And the rolling of clouds with a deafening
din,

VOL. IV. NO. XXI.

NEW SERIES.

And a darkness that had been black to the blind,

Came down as I shouted, Come in! come in!

Come under the roof, come up from the river,
As up from a grave-come now or come
never!'

The tassel'd tops of the pines were as weeds,
The red woods rock'd like lake-side reeds,
And the world seem'd darken'd and drown'd
for ever.

He sleeps and dreams :

And then I slept, and sleeping I dream'd Of great green serpents with tongues of fire,

And of death by drowning, and of after
death-

Of the day of judgment, wherein it seem'd
Higher than I, that I clung to her side,
That she, the heathen, was bidden higher,
And clinging struggled, and struggling

cried,

And crying, waken'd, all weak of my breath.
And this is his waking:

Long leaves of the sun lay over the floor,
But above on his crag the eagle scream'd,
And a chip-monk chirp'd in the open door,

Scream'd as he never had scream'd before.
I rush'd to the river: the flood had gone
The weeds and grasses and warm wet sand;
Like a thief, with only his tracks upon
And I ran after with reaching hand,
And call'd as I reach'd and reach'd as I ran;
And ran till I came to the cañon's van,
Where the waters lay in a bent lagoon,
Hook'd and crook'd like the horned moon.

Here in the surge where the waters met, And the warm wave lifted, and the winds did fret

The wave till it foam'd with rage on the land,

She lay with the wave on the warm white

Her rich hair trail'd with the trailing weeds,
sand;
And her small brown hands lay prone or
lifted

As the wave sang strophes in the broken

reeds,

Or paused in pity, and in silence sifted

Sands of gold, as upon her grave.
And as sure as you see yon browsing kine,
And breathe the breath of your meadows
fine,

When I went to my waist in the warm

white wave

And stood all pale in the wave to my breast,

And reach'd for her in her rest and unrest,
Her hands were lifted and reach'd to mine.

He gathers his gold together, and exclaims, as he sets his face

BB

This is the outline of the story of 'Arazonian,' the first in order, though probably not the first written, of the Songs of the Sierras.

Its weaknesses are only those of a young and inexperienced writer. The dramatic interest of the poem is occasionally marred by the insertion of an episode at the time when the excitement of the narrative is at its highest, as, for example, in the case of the fine but inartistically protracted storm scene in the desert of New Mexico; whilst a similar interruption in the continuity of the poem is observable in

a

Speak ill who will of him, he died
In all disgrace; say of the dead
His heart was black, his hands were red;
Say this much, and be satisfied;
I only say that he to me,
Gloat over it all undenied ;
Whatever he to others was,
Was truer far than any one
That have known beneath the sun,
Man, maid, or saint, or Sadducee,
As boy or man for any cause-
I simply say he was my friend
When strong of hand and fair of fame :
Dead and disgraced, I stand the same
To him, and so shall to the end.

At the end of the poem he relates how Walker died:

To die with hand and brow unbound

Thus at the last the warrior found
Some freedom for his steel's reward.
He walk'd out from the prison-wall
Dress'd like a prince for a parade,
But gazed out calmly over all;
And made no note of man or maid,
Then look'd afar, half paused, and then

the second introduction, at great He gave his gems and jewell'd sword;
length, of the vision of the Indian
girl when the half-dozen lines or
so in which the apparition scene is
before described would, with
trifling alteration, have amply
sufficed to produce the dramatic
effect needed by the situation.
But we must hasten on to his
most remarkable poem,
Walker in Nicaragua.

He describes Walker thus:

'With

He was a brick, and brave as a bear,
As brave as Nevada's grizzlies are,
A Texan tigress in her lair,
Or any lion of anywhere;
Yet gentle as a panther is,

Mouthing her young in her first fierce kiss,
And true of soul as the north pole-star;
Tall, courtly, grand as any king,
Yet simple as a child at play,
In camp and court the same alway,
And never moved at any thing;
A dash of sadness in his air,
Born, may be, of his over care,
And, may be, born of a despair
In early love-I never knew;
I questioned not, as many do,
Of things as sacred as this is;
I only knew that he to me
Was all a father, friend, could be;
I sought to know no more than this
Of history of him or his.

Above the mottled sea of men
He kissed his thin hand to the sun;
Then smiled so proudly none had known
But he was stepping to a throne,
Yet took no note of any one.

A nude brown beggar Peon child,
Encouraged as the captive smiled,
Look'd up, half-scared, half-pitying;
He stoop'd, he caught it from the sands,
Put bright coins in its two brown hands,
Then strode on like another king.

Two deep, a musket's length, they stood,
A-front, in sandals, nude, and dun
As death and darkness wove in one,
Their thick lips thirsting for his blood.
He took their black hands one by one,
And, smiling with a patient grace,
Forgave them all, and took his place.
He bared his broad brow to the sun,
Gave one long last look to the sky,
The white-wing'd clouds that hurried by,
The olive-hills in orange hue;

A last list to the cockatoo

That hung by beak from cocoa-bough

Hard by, and hung and sung as though
He never was to sing again,

A bow, a touch of heart, a pall

And again he thus speaks of him of purple smoke, a crash, a thud,

as his friend:

Success had made him more than king,
Defeat made him the vilest thing
In name, contempt or hate can bring;
So much the leaded dice of war
Do make or mar of character.

A warrior's raiment rent, and blood,
A face in dust and-that was all.

He visits his friend's grave.

He lies low in the levell'd sand,
Unshelter'd from the tropic sun,
And now of all he knew not one