Complete Poetical Works by Bret Harte Part 1

Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte.

by Bret Harte.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Although Bret Harte's name is identified with Californian life, it was not till he was fifteen that the author of "Plain Language from Truthful James" saw the country of his adoption. Francis Bret Harte, to give the full name which he carried till he became famous, was born at Albany, New York, August 25, 1839. He went with his widowed mother to California in 1854, and was thrown as a young man into the hurly-burly which he more than any other writer has made real to distant and later people. He was by turns a miner, school-teacher, express messenger, printer, and journalist. The types which live again in his pages are thus not only what he observed, but what he himself impersonated in his own experience.

He began trying his pen in The Golden Era of San Francisco, where he was working as a compositor; and when The Californian, edited by Charles Henry Webb, was started in 1864 as a literary newspaper, he was one of a group of brilliant young fellows--Mark Twain, Charles Warren Stoddard, Webb himself, and Prentice Mulford--who gave at once a new interest in California beside what mining and agriculture caused. Here in an early number appeared "The Ballad of the Emeu," and he contributed many poems, grave and gay, as well as prose in a great variety of form. At the same time he was appointed Secretary of the United States Branch Mint at San Francisco, holding the office till 1870.

But Bret Harte's great opportunity came when The Overland Monthly was established in 1868 by Anton Roman. This magazine was the outgrowth of the racy, exuberant literary spirit which had already found free expression in the journals named. An eager ambition to lift all the new life of the Pacific into a recognized place in the world of letters made the young men we have named put their wits together in a monthly magazine which should rival the Atlantic in Boston and Blackwood in Edinburgh. The name was easily had, and for a sign manual on the cover some one drew a grizzly bear, that formidable exemplar of Californian wildness. But the design did not quite satisfy, until Bret Harte, with a felicitous stroke, drew two parallel lines just before the feet of the halting brute. Now it was the grizzly of the wilderness drawing back before the railway of civilization, and the picture was complete as an emblem.

Bret Harte became, by the common urgency of his companions, the first editor of the Overland, and at once his own tales and poems began, and in the second number appeared "The Luck of Roaring Camp," which instantly brought him wide fame. In a few months he found himself besought for poems and articles, sketches and stories, in influential magazines, and in 1871 he turned away from the Pacific coast, and took up his residence, first in New York, afterward in Boston.

"No one," says his old friend, Mr. Stoddard, "who knows Mr. Harte, and knew the California of his day, wonders that he left it as he did.

Eastern editors were crying for his work. Cities vied with one another in the offer of tempting bait. When he turned his back on San Francisco, and started for Boston, he began a tour that the greatest author of any age might have been proud of. It was a veritable ovation that swelled from sea to sea: the cla.s.sic sheep was sacrificed all along the route. I have often thought that if Bret Harte had met with a fatal accident during that transcontinental journey, the world would have declared with one voice that the greatest genius of his time was lost to it."

In Boston he entered into an arrangement with the predecessors of the publishers of this volume, and his contributions appeared in their periodicals and were gathered into volumes. The arrangement in one form or another continued to the time of his death, and has for witness a stately array of comely volumes; but the prose has far outstripped the poetry. There are few writers of Mr. Harte's prodigality of nature who have used with so much fine reserve their faculty for melodious verse, and the present volume contains the entire body of his poetical work, growing by minute accretions during thirty odd years.

In 1878 he was appointed United States Consul at Crefeld, Germany, and after that date he resided, with little interruption, on the Continent or in England. He was transferred to Glasgow in March, 1880, and remained there until July, 1885. During the rest of his life he made his home in London. His foreign residence is disclosed in a number of prose sketches and tales and in one or two poems; but life abroad never dimmed the vividness of the impressions made on him by the experience of his early manhood when he partook of the elixir vitae of California, and the stories which from year to year flowed from an apparently inexhaustible fountain glittered with the gold washed down from the mountain slopes of that country which through his imagination he had made so peculiarly his own.

Mr. Harte died suddenly at Camberley, England, May 6, 1902.

POEMS

I. NATIONAL

JOHN BURNS OF GETTYSBURG

Have you heard the story that gossips tell Of Burns of Gettysburg?--No? Ah, well: Brief is the glory that hero earns, Briefer the story of poor John Burns.

He was the fellow who won renown,-- The only man who didn't back down When the rebels rode through his native town; But held his own in the fight next day, When all his townsfolk ran away.

That was in July sixty-three, The very day that General Lee, Flower of Southern chivalry, Baffled and beaten, backward reeled From a stubborn Meade and a barren field.

I might tell how but the day before John Burns stood at his cottage door, Looking down the village street, Where, in the shade of his peaceful vine, He heard the low of his gathered kine, And felt their breath with incense sweet; Or I might say, when the sunset burned The old farm gable, he thought it turned The milk that fell like a babbling flood Into the milk-pail red as blood!

Or how he fancied the hum of bees Were bullets buzzing among the trees.

But all such fanciful thoughts as these Were strange to a practical man like Burns, Who minded only his own concerns, Troubled no more by fancies fine Than one of his calm-eyed, long-tailed kine,-- Quite old-fas.h.i.+oned and matter-of-fact, Slow to argue, but quick to act.

That was the reason, as some folk say, He fought so well on that terrible day.

And it was terrible. On the right Raged for hours the heady fight, Thundered the battery's double ba.s.s,-- Difficult music for men to face While on the left--where now the graves Undulate like the living waves That all that day unceasing swept Up to the pits the rebels kept-- Round shot ploughed the upland glades, Sown with bullets, reaped with blades; Shattered fences here and there Tossed their splinters in the air; The very trees were stripped and bare; The barns that once held yellow grain Were heaped with harvests of the slain; The cattle bellowed on the plain, The turkeys screamed with might and main, And brooding barn-fowl left their rest With strange sh.e.l.ls bursting in each nest.

Just where the tide of battle turns, Erect and lonely stood old John Burns.

How do you think the man was dressed?

He wore an ancient long buff vest, Yellow as saffron,--but his best; And b.u.t.toned over his manly breast Was a bright blue coat, with a rolling collar, And large gilt b.u.t.tons,--size of a dollar,-- With tails that the country-folk called "swaller."

He wore a broad-brimmed, bell-crowned hat, White as the locks on which it sat.

Never had such a sight been seen For forty years on the village green, Since old John Burns was a country beau, And went to the "quiltings" long ago.

Close at his elbows all that day, Veterans of the Peninsula, Sunburnt and bearded, charged away; And striplings, downy of lip and chin,-- Clerks that the Home Guard mustered in,-- Glanced, as they pa.s.sed, at the hat he wore, Then at the rifle his right hand bore, And hailed him, from out their youthful lore, With sc.r.a.ps of a slangy repertoire: "How are you, White Hat?" "Put her through!"

"Your head's level!" and "Bully for you!"

Called him "Daddy,"--begged he'd disclose The name of the tailor who made his clothes, And what was the value he set on those; While Burns, unmindful of jeer and scoff, Stood there picking the rebels off,-- With his long brown rifle and bell-crown hat, And the swallow-tails they were laughing at.

'Twas but a moment, for that respect Which clothes all courage their voices checked; And something the wildest could understand Spake in the old man's strong right hand, And his corded throat, and the lurking frown Of his eyebrows under his old bell-crown; Until, as they gazed, there crept an awe Through the ranks in whispers, and some men saw, In the antique vestments and long white hair, The Past of the Nation in battle there; And some of the soldiers since declare That the gleam of his old white hat afar, Like the crested plume of the brave Navarre, That day was their oriflamme of war.

So raged the battle. You know the rest: How the rebels, beaten and backward pressed, Broke at the final charge and ran.

At which John Burns--a practical man-- Shouldered his rifle, unbent his brows, And then went back to his bees and cows.

That is the story of old John Burns; This is the moral the reader learns: In fighting the battle, the question's whether You'll show a hat that's white, or a feather!

"HOW ARE YOU, SANITARY?"

Down the picket-guarded lane Rolled the comfort-laden wain, Cheered by shouts that shook the plain, Soldier-like and merry: Phrases such as camps may teach, Sabre-cuts of Saxon speech, Such as "Bully!" "Them's the peach!"

"Wade in, Sanitary!"

Right and left the caissons drew As the car went lumbering through, Quick succeeding in review Squadrons military; Sunburnt men with beards like frieze, Smooth-faced boys, and cries like these,-- "U. S. San. Com." "That's the cheese!"

"Pa.s.s in, Sanitary!"

In such cheer it struggled on Till the battle front was won: Then the car, its journey done, Lo! was stationary; And where bullets whistling fly Came the sadder, fainter cry, "Help us, brothers, ere we die,-- Save us, Sanitary!"

Such the work. The phantom flies, Wrapped in battle clouds that rise: But the brave--whose dying eyes, Veiled and visionary, See the jasper gates swung wide, See the parted throng outside-- Hears the voice to those who ride: "Pa.s.s in, Sanitary!"

BATTLE BUNNY

(MALVERN HILL, 1864)

"After the men were ordered to lie down, a white rabbit, which had been hopping hither and thither over the field swept by grape and musketry, took refuge among the skirmishers, in the breast of a corporal."--Report of the Battle of Malvern Hill.

Bunny, lying in the gra.s.s, Saw the s.h.i.+ning column pa.s.s; Saw the starry banner fly, Saw the chargers fret and fume, Saw the flapping hat and plume,-- Saw them with his moist and shy Most unspeculative eye, Thinking only, in the dew, That it was a fine review.

Till a flash, not all of steel, Where the rolling caissons wheel, Brought a rumble and a roar Rolling down that velvet floor, And like blows of autumn flail Sharply threshed the iron hail.

Bunny, thrilled by unknown fears, Raised his soft and pointed ears, Mumbled his prehensile lip, Quivered his pulsating hip, As the sharp vindictive yell Rose above the screaming sh.e.l.l; Thought the world and all its men,-- All the charging squadrons meant,-- All were rabbit-hunters then, All to capture him intent.

Bunny was not much to blame: Wiser folk have thought the same,-- Wiser folk who think they spy Every ill begins with "I."

Wildly panting here and there, Bunny sought the freer air, Till he hopped below the hill, And saw, lying close and still, Men with muskets in their hands.

(Never Bunny understands That hypocrisy of sleep, In the vigils grim they keep, As rec.u.mbent on that spot They elude the level shot.)

One--a grave and quiet man, Thinking of his wife and child Far beyond the Rapidan, Where the Androscoggin smiled-- Felt the little rabbit creep, Nestling by his arm and side, Wakened from strategic sleep, To that soft appeal replied, Drew him to his blackened breast, And-- But you have guessed the rest.

Softly o'er that chosen pair Omnipresent Love and Care Drew a mightier Hand and Arm, s.h.i.+elding them from every harm; Right and left the bullets waved, Saved the saviour for the saved.