Dead In The Sierras

His footprints have failed us,
Where berries are red,
And madroños are rankest,
The hunter is dead!

The grizzly may pass
By his half-open door;
May pass and repass
On his path, as of yore;

The panther may crouch
In the leaves on his limb;
May scream and may scream,
It is nothing to him.

Prone, bearded, and breasted
Like columns of stone;
And tall as a pine
As a pine overthrown!

His camp fires gone,
What else can be done
Than let him sleep on
Till the light of the sun?

Ay, tombless! what of it?
Marble is dust,
Cold and repellent;
And iron is rust.

Joaquin Miller

Joaquin Miller, born Cincinnatus Heine Miller, was an American poet and frontiersman known for his romanticized views of the American West. Dubbed the 'Poet of the Sierras,' Miller's works often reflected the landscapes and legends of the American frontier. He was celebrated in the late 19th century but has since become a more obscure literary figure. Despite this, his contributions offer a fascinating glimpse into a period of American history steeped in exploration and adventure.

Joaquin Miller

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Joaquin Miller, Simple Poetry

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Joaquin Miller, Simple Poetry

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Joaquin Miller, Simple Poetry

English

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The Woodcutter's Hut

Far up in the wild and wintery hills in the heart of the cliff-broken woods,
Where the mounded drifts lie soft and deep in the noiseless solitudes,
The hut of the lonely woodcutter stands, a few rough beams that show
A blunted peak and a low black line, from the glittering waste of snow.
In the frost-still dawn from his roof goes up in the windless, motionless air,
The thin, pink curl of leisurely smoke; through the forest white and bare
The woodcutter follows his narrow trail, and the morning rings and cracks
With the rhythmic jet of his sharp-blown breath and the echoing shout of his axe.
Only the waft of the wind besides, or the stir of some hardy bird -
The call of the friendly chickadee, or the pat of the nuthatch - is heard;
Or a rustle comes from a dusky clump, where the busy siskin...

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The Charcoal-Burner's Hut

Deep in a valley, green with ancient beech,
And wandered through of one small, silent stream,
Whose bear-grassed banks bristled with brush and burr,
Tick-trefoil and the thorny marigold,
Bush-clover and the wahoo, hung with pods,
And mass on mass of bugled jewelweed,
Horsemint and doddered ragweed, dense, unkempt,
I came upon a charcoal-burner's hut,
Abandoned and forgotten long ago;
His hut and weedy pit, where once the wood
Smouldered both day and night like some wild forge,
A wildwood forge, glaring as wild-cat eyes.

A mossy roof, black, fallen in decay,
And rotting logs, exuding sickly mold
And livid fungi, and the tottering wreck,
Rude remnants, of a chimney, clay and sticks,
Were all that now remained to say that once,
In time not so remote, o...

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Joaquin Miller's Home On The Hights

Rugged! Rugged as Parnassus!
Rude, as all roads I have trod
Yet are steeps and stone-strewn passes
Smooth o'erhead, and nearest God.
Here black thunders of my canyon
Shake its walls in Titan wars!
Here white sea-born clouds companion
With such peaks as know the stars.

Steep below me lies the valley,
Deep below me lies the town,
Where great sea-ships ride and rally,
And the world walks up and down.
O, the sea of lights far streaming
When the thousand flags are furled
When the gleaming bay lies dreaming
As it duplicates the world.

Joaquin Miller

Under Arcturus

I.

"I belt the morn with ribboned mist;
With baldricked blue I gird the noon,
And dusk with purple, crimson-kissed,
White-buckled with the hunter's moon.

"These follow me," the season says:
"Mine is the frost-pale hand that packs
Their scrips, and speeds them on their ways,
With gipsy gold that weighs their backs."


II.

A daybreak horn the Autumn blows,
As with a sun-tanned band he parts
Wet boughs whereon the berry glows;
And at his feet the red-fox starts.

The leafy leash that holds his hounds
Is loosed; and all the noonday hush
Is startled; and the hillside sounds
Behind the fox's bounding brush.

When red dusk makes the western sky
A fire-lit window through the firs,
He stoops to see the red-fox d...

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Winter Nightfall

    The old yellow stucco
    Of the time of the Regent
    Is flaking and peeling:
    The rows of square windows
    In the straight yellow building
    Are empty and still;
    And the dusty dark evergreens
    Guarding the wicket
    Are draped with wet cobwebs,
    And above this poor wilderness
    Toneless and sombre
    Is the flat of the hill.

    They said that a colonel
    Who long ago died here
    Was the last one to live here:
    An old retired colonel,
    Some Fraser or Murray,
    I don't know his name;
    Death came here and summoned him,
    And the shells of him vanished
    Beyond all speculation;
    And silence resumed here,
    Silence and emptiness,
    And nobody came.

    Was it ...

John Collings Squire, Sir

The Feud

Rocks, trees and rocks; and down a mossy stone
The murmuring ooze and trickle of a stream
Through bushes, where the mountain spring lies lone,
A gleaming cairngorm where the shadows dream,
And one wild road winds like a saffron seam.

Here sang the thrush, whose pure, mellifluous note
Dropped golden sweetness on the fragrant June;
Here cat and blue-bird and wood-sparrow wrote
Their presence on the silence with a tune;
And here the fox drank 'neath the mountain moon.

Frail ferns and dewy mosses and dark brush
Impenetrable briers, deep and dense,
And wiry bushes, brush, that seemed to crush
The struggling saplings with its tangle, whence
Sprawled out the ramble of an old rail-fence.

A wasp buzzed by; and then a butterfly
In orange and amber, lik...

Madison Julius Cawein