DROWNED.
Joaquin Miller
fig for her story of shame and of pride! - She strayed in the night and her feet fell astray;
- The great Mississippi was glad that day,
- And that is the reason the poor girl died;
- The great Mississippi was glad, I say,
- And splendid with strength in his fierce, full pride—
- And that is the reason the poor girl died.
- And that was the reason, from first to last;
- Down under the dark, still cypresses there
- The Father of Waters he held her fast.
- He kissed her face, he fondled her hair,
- No more, no more an unloved outcast,
- He clasped her close to his great, strong breast,
- Brave lover that loved her last and best:
- Around and around in her watery world,
- Down under the boughs where the bank was steep,
- And cypress trees kneeled all gnarly and curled,
- Where woods were dark as the waters were deep,
- Where strong, swift waters were swept and swirled,
- Where the whirlpool sobbed and sucked in its breath,
- As some great monster that is choking to death:
- Where sweeping and swirling around and around
- That whirlpool eddied so dark and so deep
- That even a populous world might have drowned,
- So surging, So vast, and so swift its sweep—
- She rode on the wave. And the trees that weep,
- The solemn gray cypresses leaning o'er;
- The roots that ran blood as they leaned from the shore!
- She surely was drowned! But she should have lain still;
- She should have lain dead as the dead under ground;
- She should have kept still as the dead on the hill!
- But ever and ever she eddied around,
- And so nearer and nearer she drew me there
- Till her eyes met mine in their cold dead stare.
- Then she looked, and she looked as to look me through;
- And she came so close to my feet on the shore;
- And her large eyes, larger than ever before,
- They never grew weary as dead men's do.
- And her hair! as long as the moss that swept
- From the cypress trees as they leaned and wept.
- Then the moon rose up, and she came to see,
- Her long white fingers slow pointing there;
- Why, shoulder to shoulder the moon with me
- On the bank that night, with her shoulders bare,
- Slow pointing and pointing that white face out,
- As it swirled and it swirled, and it swirled about.
- There ever and ever, around and around,
- Those great sad eyes that refused to sleep!
- Reproachful sad eyes that had ceased to weep!
- And the great whirlpool with its gurgling sound!
- The reproachful dead that was not yet dead!
- The long strong hair from that shapely head!
- Her hair was so long! so marvelous long,
- As she rode and she rode on that whirl pool's breast;
- And she rode so swift, and she rode so strong,
- Never to rest as the dead should rest.
- Oh, tell me true, could her hair in the wave
- Have grown, as grow dead men's in the grave?
- For, hist! I have heard that a virgin's hair
- Will grow in the grave of a virgin true,
- Will grow and grow in the coffin there,
- Till head and foot it is filled with hair
- All silken and soft but what say you?
- Yea, tell me truly can this be true?
- For oh, her hair was so strangely long
- That it bound her about like a veil of night,
- With only her pitiful face in sight!
- As she rode so swift, and she rode so strong,
- That it wrapped her about, as a shroud had done,
- A shroud, a coffin, and a veil in one.
- And oh, that ride on the whirling tide!
- That whirling and whirling it is in my head,
- For the eyes of my dead they are not yet dead,
- Though surely the lady had long since died:
- Then the mourning wood by the watery grave;
- The moon's white face to the face in the wave.
- That moon I shall hate! For she left her place
- Unasked up in heaven to show me that face.
- I shall hate forever the sounding tide;
- For oh, that swirling it is in my head
- As it swept and it swirled with my dead not dead,
- As it gasped and it sobbed as a God that died.