Miller at Bay

"I had long aspired, too selfishly, perhaps, to associate my name in song with the father of waters, and finally, under the wing of Captain James Eades, of the jetties, gave the year of the Cotton Centennial to the endeavor. Frankly I was not equal to the stupendous task. I found nothing all the way from Saint Paul down, down to where Eades bitted and bridled the mighty river's mouth in the Mexican seas that I could master or lay hand upon. Yes, majesty, majesty, majesty, thousands of miles of majesty, movement, color; corn, cotton, cane, cane and cotton and corn, green, gray and golden; but it was the monotonous majesty of eternity; an eternity of monotony.

However the work was done and published as "The Rhyme of the Great River." Several revisions and publications followed. This is the fifth. Each time I got further and further away from the mighty theme until at last De Soto's river is no longer the subject, and a new name is fit.

But, believe me, I do not disparage what is written here, as it now stands, shorn of half its verbiage. Indeed, were the lesson of this poem not needed in this age of getting and getting, it would find no place here. As said elsewhere, I never work without some foundation for story, character, and scene. The little church at the edge of the city-a shrine for the devout who wait miraculous cures—is, as well as the environments, described literally.

When the great poet comes who can bend these mighty waters to his will, and make melody of this eternal majesty which awed me to silence, he will find endless material for his story in this brave, cultured, and classic old French city of New Orleans. As for myself, I can better value gold il the rough ore than the glittering coins. And, too, I must have mountains, mountains, the wilderness, not these polished, civilized levels, even though never so stately and vast."