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By Henry Meade Bland

Because there is a rosy memory

Of stream and flower and a face divine

Woven with high crag and lilied lea,

I, Inno, child of the Dawn and the White Sunshine
Write these soft rhymes and dare to call them mine.
Now in sweet fancy I am again a boy,

And lose myself among the ancient pine,

Climbing the highest cliff in silent joy,

Lone as lorn Paris driven by fate from song-built Troy.

How can I read the glacier chronicle,

Of heaped moraine, or rock-wall scarred and seamed:
Its story seems to fall sardonical

Upon the yearning soul that once has dreamed

On labyrinthine mind or once has deemed,

That he has found perfection in a face:

And all the magic of that face is reamed

Into his brain, woven in immortal lace,
Whose beauty only an eternal love can trace.

Too many memories ensnare the heart,

And seem to hold it from the days to be.

I shall forget the things of which I was a part:

I turn my gaze upon the flowered lea,

The joyous thrush is rhyming now for me,

The waterfall is singing hour by hour:

Make me, oh Crag, of thine eternity!

Give me, oh Vale, the glory of thy dower!

Touch me, I pray, with thy strong majesty and power!

Clear as a star reflected in the deep

Of silent Mirror Lake, that face to me!

No breath of air breaks in upon the sleep

Of jewelled water, shining radiantly:

Thus in that quiet lake of memory

(As in the silver pool) upon the star

I look with eager wondering eye and see

The meteor-flash of beauty from afar;

And fain would turn the key, the sacred past unbar.

I walk in silence by the mossed stream,

The ousel sings, the summer clouds are high;

My mind runs only to a single theme

An eager face that ever flashes nigh.

I gaze the long prospect to the tender sky:

Lo, it is there, and ever seems to rise.

Then comes the gray dove's plaintive loving cry

Only to be broken by a sweet surprise;

Through the dark oak leaves gleam those eager talking eyes.

And yet how often I linger on the trail,
Eager to catch the first night-melody of Pan
Floating afar from shadowy rock and dale!
How often do I hear the joyous clan
Of fairy and nymph, a merry caravan,
Hurry at eve from tree or leafy bower;

Or when the new moon leads the starry van
How often come deep voices, hour by hour,
Spoke by the thundrous fall in majesty and power.

Perhaps the Master-Mind has subtly given
This, the great glory of the primal world,
Scarred with old-time and with the thunder riven,
Where by His foot the stream of streams lies curled;
That, turning thence to where in power is whirled
The wheel by which He shapes the soul of man,
One may adore the flash divine unfurled
Upon the brow of smiling child, or span
The way unfolding life's inexplicable plan.

All the sweet harmonies of Eden-Time
Are here. The Winds in summer melody
The water-ousel song; the rippled rhyme
Of snowy waters, and the minstrelsy
Of immemorial pine. Such harmony
Greek Homer played; on such a steep he sang
When that he fashioned fair and joyously
The throne of Jove: And, as his music rang,
Straightway the temple of the gods in glory sprang.
Once on the trail I stood while sombre clouds
Loomed threat'ningly around the Valley rim,
Swaying in ominous, shadowy, eager, crowds—
Dark offspring of the summery seraphim,
Who sang a deep, titanic, snow-born, hymn;
Then came the thunder, not a single crash,
But like the shout of hosting cherubim:
The day was night, and fiercely lash on lash,
Wild dome and spire signaled many a fiery flash.

There gleams the rainbow over Vernal Fall
There glows the great Nevada, haloed white,
And stubborn Half Dome lifts his granite wall
Where bold Tenaya flashes mystic light.
The clear Mercedes wings in gentle flight
Where the Great Fall is singing evermore!
The Bridal Maiden laughs, a radiant sprite.
There gleams El Capitan, and o'er and o'er
Recounts his thunder-scars. Be silent and adore!

A hundred thousand years of mountain bloom!-
The tall Oenotheras, the mimulus, the blue
Pentstamon, fabric woven in the loom
Of Juno; violets dipped in heathery dew,
Lilies and daisies and all the lightsome crew
Of rose or heartsease for which lovers yearn,
Each, in a wonder, spring by spring renew,-

Nepenthe, asphodel and quiet rue,

And all the fine embroidery of leaf and fern!

In such a vale beloved Endymion
Reclined when Adonais secret-dwelt
Within his bower deep-hidden from the sun;
Where twilight mysteries forever melt

Into the starlight, and through the night is felt
Strange presences unseen. In such a vale
The star-crowned Bard of shining Avon dealt
With Fate, creating ghost or phantom pale

Telling of love and war in many a sweet-sung tale.

The great Earth-Mother carved, long, long ago,
And fretted these high crags, and gently drew

Her finger in the sand. She taught the snow

The way of the stream. She hung the rose with dew. She hollowed out the caves, and tuned anew

The hills to low Aeolian refrain:

She gave the sky its deep eternal blue:

She changed the snow to singing summer rain;
And trailed the hills, an endless golden chain.

Here fair Niam, the Oread of the Wind,
Waits on the shadowy river's flowerd stream,
Moaning and sighing because she cannot find
Her lover. She waits where gleam on gleam
The lightning flashes in a joy supreme,
Till longing sweet o'er-fills her eyes of blue,-
Waits the old tryst upon the hills of Dream,
He saw her spring fairer than poet's pen

And now she spreads her couch in many a sunlit hue.

And here star-eyed Idalean Venus rose,
Bewitching messenger from gods to men.
Greek Hermes, so the Attic story goes,

Said she was born of foam: clear to his ken

He saw her spring fairer than poet's pen
Ever set forth. He erred. The magic One,
Sweet Love, leapt from the glorious rainbow when
The great Fall is wed unto the noonday Sun,
Fairest of all beauty great Poesy has spun.

Here on a flowery day came John o' the Mountain,
And shaped he many a far and deep-hid trail.
He saw with loving eye each stream and fountain
And sought each secret of the rain-bowed vale;
Until the white-winged angel, Israefale,
Touched him and beckoned, and gently upward led
Him over the Range of Light; and now his tale
Is told in flower and stream and sunset red,
And every tree the wilding folk have tenanted.

And I, too, came and saw, and loved; and listened
To the divine song of cataract and air;
Gazed where the starry domes in wonder glistened,
Where the high towering pine and fir were ever fair;

Dreamed by the river, watched with tender care
The robin build, and happy, hour by hour,

Trailed through the meadow where the debonair
Sunshiny blossoms made a witching bower,
Fashioned of buttercups the happy children's dower.

All the long summer afternoons me-seemed

To have been carried away to Aidenn-Land,
Where sweet the smiling leaves of lotus dreamed.
The spiced pine soothed with many a fragrant hand
The happy brook laughed over the silver sand
Only by Pan's wild flutes was the silence broken
While rosy Iris arched her flashing band.

Love drank libations from his chalice oaken

And a new friendship smiled with many a happy token.

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The Mate's Revenge

By Tom Devine

F

|IGHTING HANS BENSON, skipper of the schooner "Carrier Dove," stood on the poop deck with his lean legs far apart. One hand was holding the binoculars to his eyes and the other was savagely sawing circles in the air. He was looking aloft at the jigger top mast Slim Anderson was painting. His actions showed anger; his voice and words disgust.

"Hey aloft, there! Yes, you, you slabsided, beach-coming swab, cover them there holidays. Where? Holy salt mackeral, can't yer see? On your port. Don yer port! Oh, limped-eyed saints above, can you see that corn-planter looking to his starboard? Yes, that's the spot, now paint, paint it! By the brimstone smells of Hell, he's dropped his brush! I never seen such an awkward potato pl-" He got no farther in his tirade. Something rubbed against his leg. It was Davy Jones, his black tom cat. He picked the cat up, smuggled him in the hollow of his arm, and as he stroked its back with his tarry hand, he went below. Davy Jones was his only friend. Fighting Hans lavished all his rough affection on him; confided his joys to him; his sorrows, his misgivings, and if he ever spoke a civil word it was to his cat.

Yet, with all his cussedness, Fighting Hans was mis-named. He did not belong to that old school of skippers who argued with a belaying pin. He was a fault-finding, nagging old woman of the sea. Still, his bodily appearance was that of a fighter. He was built square from his hips up. Even his whiskers had square outlines and his head-Take another look at the name and judge for yourself.

He had sailed and hauled ropes since he was a boy. Consequently his arms were nearly as large, and long as his legs. But his eyes, when they could be

seen amid his shaggy eyebrows and whiskers that grew well over his cheek bones, showed his weak nature. They were of a washed blue color, flecked with muddy specks, and, yet they held a repulsive gleam.

He was named about twenty years ago at Guymas, Mexico, by the wit of the ship's crew, to perpetuate the memory of a fight between Carlos Schuler, a second mate, and Fighting Hans. This Carlos was a cunning scoundrel, half Mexican and half German, who had gone ashore and drank some of the liquor courage the peons extract from cactus. A little of this juice inside the waistband of a Mexican forecasts a tempest of dark words, punctuated by the glint of daggers, and followed by a nice quiet funeral.

When he came aboard he was carrying quite a cargo in his hold, besides a deck load of one quart in his hip pocket. He was looking for trouble and Fighting Hans. He found both. They exchanged sarcastic greetings and some six-cylinder compliments, remarkable in themselves for length and strength. But this was salt in old wounds so they shut their mouths and hands and proceeded to settle their troubles.

Carlos, true to his Mexican blood, whipped out a dagger and made for that part of the skipper located behind the third button of his shirt. Fighting Hans avoided him with a nimble sidestep; reached out and snatched the bottle from his pocket. With a deft, backhand blow he broke the bottle on the mate's shoulder. He crumpled on the deck with a muffled clatter that ended in a slap as his face hit the hot deck.

Carlos staggered to his feet, still clutching the dagger. He made at Fighting Hans again, chattering like a monkey

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