Guilds Signal

Two low whistles, quaint and clear:
That was the signal the engineer
That was the signal that Guild, tis said
Gave to his wife at Providence,
As through the sleeping town, and thence,
Out in the night,
On to the light,
Down past the farms, lying white, he sped!

As a husbands greeting, scant, no doubt,
Yet to the woman looking out,
Watching and waiting, no serenade,
Love-song, or midnight roundelay
Said what that whistle seemed to say:
To my trust true,
So, love, to you!
Working or waiting, good-night! it said.

Brisk young bagmen, tourists fine,
Old commuters along the line,
Brakemen and porters glanced ahead,
Smiled as the signal, sharp, intense,
Pierced through the shadows of Providence:
Nothing amiss
Nothing! it is
Only Guild calling his wife, they said.

Summer and winter the old refrain
Rang oer the billows of ripening grain,
Pierced through the budding boughs oerhead,
Flew down the track when the red leaves burned
Like living coals from the engine spurned;
Sang as it flew,
To our trust true,
First of all, duty. Good-night! it said.

And then, one night, it was heard no more
From Stonington over Rhode Island shore,
And the folk in Providence smiled and said
As they turned in their beds, The engineer
Has once forgotten his midnight cheer.
One only knew,
To his trust true,
Guild lay under his engine, dead.

Bret Harte

Bret Harte was an American author and poet, renowned for his works about pioneering life in California. Born on August 25, 1836, he gained national fame with his short stories and poetry depicting life in the early mining camps. His most famous works include 'The Luck of Roaring Camp' and 'The Outcasts of Poker Flat.' Harte's writings played a crucial role in shaping the Western genre in American literature. He passed away on May 5, 1902.

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What the Engines Said

What was it the Engines said,
Pilots touching, head to head
Facing on the single track,
Half a world behind each back?
This is what the Engines said,
Unreported and unread.

With a prefatory screech,
In a florid Western speech,
Said the Engine from the West:
I am from Sierras crest;
And if altitudes a test,
Why, I reckon, its confessed
That Ive done my level best.

Said the Engine from the East:
They who work best talk the least.
Spose you whistle down your brakes;
What youve done is no great shakes,
Pretty fair, but let our meeting
Be a different kind of greeting.
Let these folks with champagne stuffing,
Not their Engines, do the puffing.

Listen! Where Atlantic beats
Shores of snow and summer heats;

Bret Harte

The Maids Of Attitash

In sky and wave the white clouds swam,
And the blue hills of Nottingham
Through gaps of leafy green
Across the lake were seen,

When, in the shadow of the ash
That dreams its dream in Attitash,
In the warm summer weather,
Two maidens sat together.

They sat and watched in idle mood
The gleam and shade of lake and wood;
The beach the keen light smote,
The white sail of a boat;

Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying,
In sweetness, not in music, dying;
Hardback, and virgin's-bower,
And white-spiked clethra-flower.

With careless ears they heard the plash
And breezy wash of Attitash,
The wood-bird's plaintive cry,
The locust's sharp reply.

And teased the while, with playful band,
The shaggy dog of Newfoundland,

John Greenleaf Whittier

Night Shift

Hello! thats the whistle, be moving.
Wake up! dont lie muttering there.
What language! your style is improving,
Its pleasant to hear you at prayer.
Turn out, man, and spare us the blessing.
Cribs cut, and the teas on the brew.
Youll have to look slippy in dressing
For that was the half-hour that blew.

Half-past! and the nights simply awful,
The hut fairly shakes in the storm.
Hang night-shifts! They shouldnt be lawful;
Ive only had time to get warm.
I notice the huts rarely bright, and
The bunks always cold as a stone,
Except when I go on at night, and
The half-after whistles have blown.

Bob built up that fire just to spite me,
The conscienceless son of a swab!
By Jove! it would fairly delight me
To let Hogan be hanged...

Edward

The Countess - To E. W.

I know not, Time and Space so intervene,
Whether, still waiting with a trust serene,
Thou bearest up thy fourscore years and ten,
Or, called at last, art now Heavens citizen;
But, here or there, a pleasant thought of thee,
Like an old friend, all day has been with me.
The shy, still boy, for whom thy kindly hand
Smoothed his hard pathway to the wonder-land
Of thought and fancy, in gray manhood yet
Keeps green the memory of his early debt.
To-day, when truth and falsehood speak their words
Through hot-lipped cannon and the teeth of swords,
Listening with quickened heart and ear intent
To each sharp clause of that stern argument,
I still can hear at times a softer note
Of the old pastoral music round me float,
While through the hot gleam of our civil strife

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Station-Master of Lone Prairie

An empty bench, a sky of grayest etching,
A bare, bleak shed in blackest silhouette,
Twelve years of platform, and before them stretching
Twelve miles of prairie glimmering through the wet.

North, south, east, west, the same dull gray persistence,
The tattered vapors of a vanished train,
The narrowing rails that meet to pierce the distance,
Or break the columns of the far-off rain.

Naught but myself; nor form nor figure breaking
The long hushed level and stark shining waste;
Nothing that moves to fill the vision aching,
When the last shadow fled in sullen haste.

Nothing beyond. Ah yes! From out the station
A stiff, gaunt figure thrown against the sky,
Beckoning me with some wooden salutation
Caught from his signals as the train flashed by;

Bret Harte

New Year's Eve

It's cruel cold on the water-front, silent and dark and drear;
Only the black tide weltering, only the hissing snow;
And I, alone, like a storm-tossed wreck, on this night of the glad New Year,
Shuffling along in the icy wind, ghastly and gaunt and slow.

They're playing a tune in McGuffy's saloon, and it's cheery and bright in there
(God! but I'm weak - since the bitter dawn, and never a bite of food);
I'll just go over and slip inside - I mustn't give way to despair -
Perhaps I can bum a little booze if the boys are feeling good.

They'll jeer at me, and they'll sneer at me, and they'll call me a whiskey soak;
("Have a drink? Well, thankee kindly, sir, I don't mind if I do.")
A drivelling, dirty gin-joint fiend, the butt of the bar-room joke;
Sunk and sodden and hopeless -...

Robert William Service

Guilds Signal

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Guilds Signal