Poetry

To Rest At Last.

Joaquin Miller


  • What wonder that I swore a prophet's oath
  • Of after days .... I push'd the boughs apart,
  • I stood, look'd forth, and then look'd back, all loath
  • To leave my shadow'd wood. I gather'd heart
  • From very fearfulness; with sudden start
  • I plunged in the arena; stood a wild
  • Uncertain thing, all artless, all in art
  • The brave approved, the fair lean'd fair and smiled,—
  • The lions touch with velvet-touch a timid child.

  • But now enough of men. Enough, brief day
  • Of tamer life. The court, the castle gate
  • That open'd wide along the pleasant way,
  • The gracious converse of the kingly great
  • Had made another glad and well elate
  • With hope. A world of thanks; but l am grown
  • Aweary....I am not of this estate;
  • The poor, the plain brave border-men alone
  • Were my first love, and these I will not now disown.

  • I know a grassy slope above the sea,
  • The utmost limit of the westmost land.
  • In savage, gnarljd, and antique majesty
  • The great trees belt about the place, and stand
  • In guard, with mailed limb and lifted hand,
  • Against the cold approaching civic pride.
  • The foamy brooklets seaward leap; the bland
  • Still air is fresh with touch of wood and tide,
  • And peace, eternal peace, possesses wild and wide.

  • Here I return, here I abide and rest;
  • Some flocks and herds shall feed along the stream;
  • Some corn and climbing vines shall make us blest
  • With bread and luscious fruit....The sunny dream
  • Of wampum men in moccasins that seem
  • To come and go in silence, girt in shell,
  • Before a sun-clad cabin-door, I deem
  • The harbinger of peace. Hope weaves her spell
  • Again about the wearied heart, and all is well.

  • Here I shall sit in sunlit life's decline
  • Beneath my vine and somber verdant tree.
  • Some tawny maids in other tongues than mine
  • Shall minister. Some memories shall be
  • Before me. I shall sit and I shall see,
  • That last vast day that dawn shall reinspire,
  • The sun fall down upon the farther sea,
  • Fall wearied down to rest, and so retire,
  • A splendid sinking isle of far-off fading fire.