Poems by Francis Bret Harte

I have found out a gift for my fair;

They ran through the streets of the seaport town,

Above the bones

If Mr. Jones, Lycurgus B.,

They say that she died of a broken heart

It was Andrew Jackson Sutter who, despising Mr. Cutter for remarks he heard him utter in debate upon the floor,

Last night, above the whistling wind,

I read last night of the grand review

Brief words, when actions wait, are well:

What I want is my husband, sir,

Here’s yer toy balloons! All sizes!

Where the short-legged Esquimaux

Dramatis Personæ

Dramatis Personæ

Certain facts which serve to explain

Know I not whom thou mayst be

What was it filled my youthful dreams,

(Malvern Hill, 1864)

Behind the footlights hangs the rusty baize,

Canto I

Here’s the spot. Look around you. Above on the height

Oh, come, my beloved, from thy winter abode,

We know him well: no need of praise

Beautiful! Sir, you may say so. Thar isn’t her match in the county;

Cicely says you’re a poet; maybe, I ain’t much on rhyme:

I

Blown out of the prairie in twilight and dew,

No life in earth, or air, or sky;

Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting,

Dear Dolly! who does not recall

Good! said the Padre, believe me still,

Dow’s flat. That’s its name;

“The sky is clouded, the rocks are bare,

As you look from the plaza at Leon west

It was the morning season of the year;

Do I sleep? do I dream?

I mind it was but yesterday:

Coward, of heroic size,

Two low whistles, quaint and clear:

“So she’s here, your unknown Dulcinea, the lady you met on the train,

June 4th! Do you know what that date means?

I’m sitting alone by the fire,

Being asked by an intimate party,

Down the picket-guarded lane

Father Felipe

Didn’t know Flynn,

Shrewdly you question, Senor, and I fancy

Say there! P’r’aps

Have you heard the story that gossips tell

When I bought you for a song,

This is that hill of awe

Wot’s that you’re readin’? a novel? A novel! well, darn my skin!

Captain of the Western wood,

It was spring the first time that I saw her, for her papa and mamma moved in

And you are the poet, and so you want

Oh, you’re the girl lives on the corner? Come in if you want to come quick!

“Crying!” Of course I am crying, and I guess you would be crying, too,

My papa knows you, and he says you’re a man who makes reading for books;

Maud Muller all that summer day

Lo! where the castle of bold Pfeiffer throws

I

Brown foundling of the Western wood,

This is the reed the dead musician dropped,

BOBBY, aetat. 3½. JOHNNY, aetat. 4½.

O poor Romancer thou whose printed page,

Not ours, where battle smoke upcurls,

So you’ve kem ’yer agen,

Which I wish to remark,

We meet in peace, though from our native East

Drunk and senseless in his place,

Thomas Starr King. Obiit March 4, 1864

Serene, indifferent of Fate,

It was very hot. Not a breath of air was stirring throughout the western wing of the Greyport Hotel, and the usual feverish life of its four hundred inmates had succumbed to the weather. The great veranda was deserted; the corridors were desolated; n

Know me next time when you see me, won’t you, old smarty?

I. THE PERSONIFIED SENTIMENTAL

Very fair and full of promise

Don’t mind me, I beg you, old fellow, I’ll do very well here alone;

“I was with Grant” the stranger said;

Bells of the Past, whose long-forgotten music

“Something characteristic,” eh?

Where the sturdy ocean breeze

Oh, say, have you seen at the Willows so green

Did I ever tell you, my dears, the way

There is peace in the swamp where the Copperhead sleeps,

Why, as to that, said the engineer,

“Who comes?” The sentry’s warning cry

We checked our pace, the red road sharply rounding;

Which I wish to remark,

No, I won’t, thar, now, so! And it ain’t nothin’, no!

It was noon by the sun; we had finished our game,

Beetling walls with ivy grown,

In sixteen hundred and forty-one,

High on the Thracian hills, half hid in the billows of clover,

This is the tale that the Chronicle

O bells that rang, O bells that sang

By scattered rocks and turbid waters shifting,

Now shift the blanket pad before your saddle back you fling,

Well, you see, the fact is, Colonel, I don’t know as I can come:

So you’re back from your travels, old fellow,

Hark! I hear the tramp of thousands,

He wore, I think, a chasuble, the day when first we met;

I reside at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;

Waltz in, waltz in, ye little kids, and gather round my knee,

It was the stage-driver’s story, as he stood with his back to the wheelers,

An empty bench, a sky of grayest etching,

Name of my heroine, simply “Rose;”

We hev tumbled ez dust

As I stand by the cross on the lone mountain’s crest,

The skies they were ashen and sober,

Of all the fountains that poets sing,

It is the story of Thompson of Thompson, the hero of Angels.

Sauntering hither on listless wings,

“Speak, O man, less recent! Fragmentary fossil!

Which it is not my style

Beg your pardon, old fellow! I think

Our window’s not much, though it fronts on the street;

O Joy of creation

Over the chimney the night-wind sang

What was it the Engines said,

Wondering maiden, so puzzled and fair,