Poems

I bring thee a garland, O, violet-eyed maid
Its exquisite bloom in thy dark locks, I braid.
Love nourished each flower with a sigh and a tear,
And the sigh and the tear
Shall make them more dear,
And bring them new charms with each vanishing year.

I fill thee a goblet—’tis the heart’s purest wine,
Fresh foamed from the wine-press of St. Valentine,
The Rathskeller holds it which sits in the skies,
Whose roseate gleaming
Is bright in its beaming,
As the love-stars which shine in the heav’n of thine eyes.

I bring thee a song, and though humble the strain,
Love glows in each word of the burning refrain.
And oh, that its notes were as wild and as sweet
As the plashing of fountains
Or horns on the mountains,
Or songs which thy dear lips in warblings repeat.

THE STRAWBERRY BOWL

[A private and confidential Epistle to Sam Gaines, Editor of the Hopkinsville New Era. Written for the Kentucky Press Association.]

God might have made a better berry than the strawberry, but certainly he never did.—Izaak Walton.

Ye Salutation.

Bring forth the bowl within whose round
No heart-consuming draught is found,
But berries glittering with the dew
Which south winds o’er the gardens strew,
Sweet souvenirs of Paradise,
With cheeks of flame and breath of spice,
Shedding for one bright hour their glow
O’er life’s long Alpine waste of snow.
Breathes there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
“O that I owned a strawberry bed?”
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As he beheld, in cream inurned,
Great sugared berries, coral red?
If such there be, go, mark him well;
Of berries never let him smell,
Where gathers the church festival
Or rings the merry marriage-bell;
Mark him—as thou wouldst mark a steer
Or swine—by cropping off his ear.

A Walk in the Garden.

Wake, winds of May, yon emerald waves,
Crested with flowers, like sea-foam white,
Where sparkle in their trefoil caves
Long coral reefs of berries bright;
Shaped like a gentle maiden’s heart,
And bleeding as from Cupid’s dart,
The garden’s earliest offering,
Crown-jewels on the brow of Spring;
The berry Izaak Walton loved,
And Downer’s perfect taste approved;
Dispensing odors beatific,
Kentucky, Cumberland, Prolific,
Sharpless, and Monarch of the West,
And rare Charles Downing, last and best
Thy leaves, sweet trefoil! symbols three
Of Faith and Hope and Love shall be;
Fair type of Christian hope to all,
The vine sleeps low ’neath snowy pall;
The resurrection blooms in May,
With flowers and fruits in bright array,
And soaring larks in countless throng
Singing their joyful Easter Song,
And choir of mocking-birds on high
Gray-plumed sopranos of the sky

Ye Revel on Olympus.

Heap high the bowl! Ages ago
Before the birth of Faust or Hoe,
Before New Eras, Posts, and Suns
Gave specials, paragraphs and puns,
When only Mercury bore the news
Around the skies, in winged shoes,
Such genial revels held the gods,
Juno and Jove, and other frauds;
In heaven’s blue crystal urn each night
The stars, like berries, twinkled bright
And the Great Dipper skimmed the cream
Where poured the Milky Way its stream;
Deserted is the Olympic hill;
Heaven, stars, girls, strawberries, bless us still

Ye Invocation.

Lord, we adore thy matchless bounty
And grace which, after giving birth
To sun and moon and stars and earth.
Gave us a land of rarest worth
And cast our lot in Christian County!
’Mid meek-eyed Jerseys, guileless mules,
Hopkinsville peaches, Public Schools,
Tobacco farms and gilt-edged bonds,
Wheat-fields and sheep and fishing-ponds,
Coveys of quail and double barrels,
Opossums, pheasants, doves and squirrels,
Damsels whose pamphanescent eyes,
If stars were quenched would light the skies;
And for to-night, to make us merry,
Provided Izaak Walton’s berry,
Ten inches round in lawful measure,
The garden’s glory, pride and treasure—
Nor Brenner’s brush nor Prentice’s pen
Could tell their worth—and so, Amen!

Ye Picnic.

Fill high the bowl! In blissful vision
We wander over fields Elysian,
Through ever-lengthening colonnades,
Of whispering elms and beechen shades;
Grave manhood’s cares are cast away,
And all are boys again, to-day
By one sure sign we know each other—
“The strawberry mark!—Our long lost brother!”
While all discourse on sylvan pipe
Of golden cream and berries ripe,
Or sound on Memory’s silver horn,
“I too was in Arcadia born!”
Sooth, ’tis a goodly sight to see
The revellers’ mutual ministry:
Stanton shall drive the Jersey cow,
Sam Gaines shall cause her milk to flow,
Logan shall hold her by the tail,
And Kelly bear the foaming pail;
Woodson shall crush the crystal ice,
Johnston hand spoons, all polished nice,
The Courier-Journal pass the berries,
With brisk champagne and golden sherries
And he shall serve his country best
Who stores most berries ’neath his vest.
By shady glen and waterfall
Our early loves will we recall,
Maids whom no time can ere eclipse,
With strawberry cheeks and sugared lips,
Phantoms which haunt boyhood’s dream,
Life’s fragrant, pure crême de la crême—
Delicious cream, which soured too soon,
And left us with an empty spoon!

Ye Pioneer’s Wild Strawberries.

Master of the Feast:

“Father, thy locks are thin and gray,
Hast thou no legend for us pray?
Sing of the wild strawberry’s flame
When first Kentucky hunters came.”

Old Pioneer:

“’Tis nigh on ninety years, I guess,
By the road called the ‘Wilderness’—
Its story’s told by Captain Speed,
A little book you all should read—
We pioneered to Old Kaintuck,
Woods swarmed with turkey, bear and buck,
And by the ‘Rock Spring’ pitched our tents,
Them times wild strawberries was immense;
We didn’t pick, we scooped ’em up
By bushels, with a bowl or cup;
And when our teams came home at night,
The critters’ legs—they wuz a sight;
Seemed like they’d swum in bloody seas,
The red juice splashed above their knees.
We rode one May-day ’cross the prairie,
Me and my wife and little Mary;
Come to a holler in the ground,
Where lots of strawberries grew around,
And herds of trampling buffalo
Made the red juice in rivers flow
And fill a pool some five foot deep—
Excuse me, pardners; I must weep—
Thanks! My throat is a leetle dry—
God knows I can not tell a lie (Applause)
Our horses slipped and tumbled in,
We swum in juice up to the chin;
A half an hour we rose and sank
At last we scrambled to the bank;
Me and my wife soon came around—“

(Omnes.) “But little Mary?”

“She was drowned!” (Groans)
“Yes drowned! My stricken heart, be calm!
Hers is the crown, the harp, the palm—
Thanks, yes if you insist, a dram.
Blood flowed them days like strawberry juice
When Girty let his hell-hounds loose.
One day some Injin squaws allfired—“

Master:

“There, old man, rest. You must be tired.
Share in our feast, Homeric sire;
Thanks to the Muse for such a lyre!”

Ye Silent Toast.

Fill high to-night the strawberry bowl
For friendship’s feast and flow of soul,
Quickly, ere Psyche’s brilliant flight
Shall vanish in the coming night.
Soon shall the parting word be spoken,
Soon friendship’s golden bowl be broken;
Clasp hands and salutation send
To each true-hearted, absent friend;
Nor in our circle be forgot
The masters who before us wrought,
Titans of memorable days:
Penn, with his sheathless falchion’s blaze,
Harney, the dauntless, true, and strong,
And Prentice of the golden song,
Triad whose still ascending track
Flings its long rays of splendor back.

Ye Small Boy’s Downfall.—A Sam.

What spectres from the strawberry bowl
Flit through the galleries of the soul,
With shrill voice crying, “Grieve his heart;
Come like shadows; so depart!”
Strawberry cake, preserves, and jam!
I see thy mild eyes moisten, Sam
Perchance at memory of the closet
Where once was stored the rare deposit,
High ranged upon the topmost shelf,
A skillful mother’s richest pelf.
I see thee steal, at dead of night,
With cat-like footsteps, soft and light;
I see thee open slow the door,
Peep in, and cautiously explore;
I see short Sam the boxes pile,
Humming Longfellow’s psalm the while:
“The heights to which the great have stept,
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept
Were toiling upward in the night.”
I hear a sudden scream—a crash—
I see a candle’s fitful flash—
Tableau—A boy with downfallen breeches,
Loud sobs and screams and stinging switches.

Good-night.

Heap high the bowl and pour the cream!
How bright the rosy berries gleam—
Red fruit and Jersey cream upon it,
The colors of my lady’s bonnet.
In hues like these the western sun
Descends to rest when day is done;
And round his flaming couch are rolled
Bright curtained clouds of red and gold.
Not greedily the fruit devour;
Prolong the raptures of the hour;
Stain not with juice your linen fair,
And of the “strawberry nose” beware.
Think of the lovely—the sublime—
Niagara—California’s clime;
The Mammoth Cave—Alaska’s shore,
Where glaciers plunge and billows roar;
Balance each berry in your spoon,
Sink back in a delicious swoon,
And murmur in a Romeo’s sigh:
“I have seen Naples—let me die!”
O, vital sparks of heavenly flame!
Whate’er your lineage, land or name,
Pink buds which Mother Nature clips
From infant cherubs’ finger tips,
Or earth-born babies’ little toes,
Tinted like sea-shell or the rose,
Or notes from songs of home and love,
Which floating to the skies above
Are crystallized in heaven’s pure air
And turn to crimson berries there—
Ambrosial fruit of heavenly birth,
By Ariel’s fingers dropped on earth—
Come o’er me and possess my soul,
Sweet spirit of the Strawberry Bowl!
For all the world’s a strawberry bowl,
Life the red fruit which fills the brim,
The daily papers spoon the whole,
And women are the sugar and cream.
Melrose Garden, May, 1880.

HYMN.

[Sung at the Dedication of the Jefferson Davis Memorial Church, Fairview, Kentucky, November 21, 1886.]

Inscription on a marble tablet in the wall of the church:

Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, was born June 3, 1808, on the site of this church. He made a gift of the lot March 10, 1886, to the Bethel Baptist Church, as a thank-offering to the Lord.

Jesus, to thy great name we raise
A house of penitence and praise,
A beacon for the wanderers’ bark,
To guide it home through storm and dark.

Here shall ambition’s fever cease,
Sin’s wretched slaves find sweet release,
And washed in Jordan’s cleansing wave
Rise from the Christian’s mystic grave.

Hence bid our earth-born cares depart,
Heal every aching, bleeding heart,
Dispel the clouds of doubt and dread
And feed us with thy living Bread.

Father, Redeemer, Guide and Friend,
Go with us to our Journey’s end,
Until we hail in Paradise
The nobler Bethel of the skies.

GENERAL JOHN H. MORGAN, C. S. A.

JOHN MORGAN AND HIS MEN.

Dedicated to Mrs. Basil Duke.

Wild disorder, uproar, panic,
Civil war with deeds Satanic
Break Kentucky’s dream—Neutrality—
Everywhere war’s stern reality
Drum and fife and bugle-playing—
Terrors breeding; fears allaying—
For various hopes and fears are rife
In the wild rage of civil strife;
When son and sire in contest stand,
Each loyal to his native land,
Obeying many-voiced command;
One loyal to the stripes and stars—
One faithful to the stars and bars!

There curls the smoke of burning train!
There leaguered stockades fight in vain—
War glows on hill and glen.
Fat cattle to the camp are led,
The farmer mourns his thoroughbred.
They quickly came, as quickly fled;
Swift as an Indian arrow sped—
The Southron’s joy, the Federal’s dread—
John Morgan and his men?
Loved and obeyed by his command,
With woman’s heart and lion’s hand—
The Sydney of the Southern land

John Harper’s thoroughbreds forsake
The turf of Woodford’s old cane-brake;
And walnut, oak and hackberry grove,
To track the bridle paths that rove
High o’er the caves of Edmonson—
The treeless fields without a sun!
And bear the bold Rough Riders on
Where trains are seized and treasures won.

Dark Echo River’s weeping wave
Shall mourn beneath the warrior’s grave,
The dauntless partisan who rode
Right on through storm and snow and flood.
The foe exclaims, “He’s here!” “He’s there!”
Vanished like spectres in the air,
Trackless, save for the empty stall,
Or smoke wreath rising like a pall
Over the commissary’s store,
Where hungry comrades loud deplore
The thunderbolt of Morgan’s raid—
Chief of th’ Invisible Brigade,
Vanished, like morning rainbow, spun
By golden distaff of the sun.

There is bustle and commotion to-night with “Ellen N,”
Fair Ellen, maid of iron stays, beloved of many men,
From a thousand fertile valleys, from many a teeming glen,
She bears great stores on laboring trains to Thomas and his men
The blue-coats down at Nashville have come to do or die,
To battle for the old flag beneath the Southern sky,
And to Ellen’s welcome ministry—they look most wistfully,
She bears souvenirs and messages in her capacious trains,
The maidens of the great Northwest send greetings to their swains,
She has hard-tack, and tobacco, and bacon in her store,
She has cod-fish and dried beef and gingerbread galore,
From Keystone, Empire State, from Indiana’s plains
Ellen speeds them all along in her wide flowing trains,
Bibles and tracts and song-books, and sweet messages from home,
And prayer-books from every church from Geneva to Rome,
From many a Western Valley, from many a quiet glen,
Comes goodly cheer from the kindly hands of buxom Ellen N.
There is trouble on your road to-night, O dauntless Ellen N!
There is panic, there is hurry—’tis John Morgan and his men,
There are bridges burned—the track’s ripped up—some one has cut the wire
And commissary stores go up by thousands in the fire,
A sudden charge at midnight, the long train is in ashes,
The magazine explodes with deafening roar and crashes,
Millions go up like tinder in all-consuming flame,
And Morgan and his men ride off, as quickly as they came.

Nashville and Chattanooga rue,
Divided rations cut in two.
The horseman scathless burned and fled
Their foes went supperless to bed.
They might as well have fought the air
They charged—but Morgan was not there.
His baffled foe, always too slow
To harass or inflict a blow,
Muttered, “For sure the man’s a wizard,
One might as well strike at a blizzard,”
He’s here—he’s gone again—he’s there!
Like exhalation of the air
Waving its strange, uncanny light
O’er grave or dismal swamp at night.
One trait his hottest foe confessed,
“A hero’s heart beats in his breast,
He never strikes a foe when down,
Nor woman ever saw him frown.”

The mean poltroon of later days
Who dons a mask in devious ways,
Black mask and heart, in liver white,
Fleet as a hare in coward flight
And worthy of the hangman’s loop
Ne’er found his like in Morgan’s troop.
They lashed no helpless foeman’s back,
No woman felt his brute attack.
He burned no roof o’er matron’s head,
While sleeping with her babes in bed,
Nor scourged with thorns till shoulders bled.
No town was burned in bandit flame
Till the poltroon Night-riders came,
With bloody threats in unsigned letters
And switches to alarm their betters;
An anarchist of basest soul,
The gallows-tree his fitting goal
Without a hope of reformation
He forces this dilemma on the nation,
Expatriation or Extermination.

Bred in a home of luxury,
The very flower of courtesy,
The pet of good life’s merry whirl,
Kindly and handsome as a girl,
The dread of many a Federal band,
The darling of the Southern land,
Rode Morgan like a Centaur’s self,
But not for vulgar greed or pelf,
Chivalrous men of force and pride,
Sought brave adventures at his side,
How shrewd he struck, how hard his blow
The bravest Federal well might know,
Even while their needed stores were brough
Destruction came as quick as thought.

Victim of Woman’s treachery,
He perished not as the brave should die,
Decoyed to death, unarmed he died.
No friend nor weapon by his side,
Without resistance or a blow,
His death-doom came from heartless foe,
And strong men of heroic heart
Who stooped not to the assassin’s art
Dropped at the news an honest tear
When Morgan after bright career
Unscathed by ball or battle-spear,
Rested at last upon his bier,
And unattended and unshriven
The warrior’s soul went up to Heaven.

No base Night-riders he bequeathed,
When peace her joyful olives wreathed.
Nor placed a mean banditti stamp
Upon the soldiers of his camp.
When truce was called by Grant and Lee
’Neath Appomattox apple tree,
And ’mid the late conflicting bands
Rejoicing Blue and Gray shook hands,
And maidens by no fear oppressed
Clasped warrior lovers to their breast,
When Richmond’s hills echoed no more,
The black-lipped cannon’s horrid roar,
A scene was witnessed there sublime,
A wonder in the halls of Time,
Each soldier to his work returned,
In whom the love of country burned
Some to their former plow and spade,
Some to their shops or honest trade;
Trained by the clinic of the camp
Doctors relit the student’s lamp.
Some to the courts, or in the States’
Grand forum joined the high debates,
Others who learned in the late strife
The vanity of mortal life,
Proclaimed the Gospel’s “Old, old Story”
Their mothers taught long passed to glory,
Leading their audience to Christ
Whose balm for every ill sufficed.
Watering their flocks at Jordan’s springs,
Whose doves bore healing in their wings
Some of the band of Morgan’s fighters,
Swapped swords for pens of ready writers,
And Captains spruce and bearded Colonels
Ruled Times, Gazettes, and Courier-Journals
Some tossed the blazing torch aside,
And ruled the tracks they once destroyed,
Building steel railways far and near;
And Duke who rode with Morgan’s men,
Turns suitor now to “Ellen N.”
Each man who followed Morgan’s fame
Inspired by his heroic name,
His living monument became.

In Gotham’s mighty mart of trade,
Which all of worth and brain invites
The men of Morgan’s cavalcade
Conspicuous walk as shining lights
As walked the men of Washington
When Revolution’s war was done.
In posts of honor now they labor
As when equipped with gun and sabre,
And men exclaim on every hand
“These rode in Morgan’s great Command.
Nor lapse of years shall e’er dispel
The love with which they fondly dwell
On comrades who in battle fell,
Who braved Stone River’s fiery scath,
Or forward pressed on bloody path
Of Shiloh’s field or Nashville’s wrath.

THE WHIPPOORWILL.

Evening mists hang o’er the rill,
Twilight’s lucent dews are falling;
From the copse on yonder hill
The lone whippoorwill is calling;
Soon as glow the Orient fires
Of the new moon’s shining crescent
With a throat that never tires
Cries the bird with song incessant,
“Whippoorwill!”
Piping from its tuneful bill,
“Whippoorwill!”

Does that quick and plaintive cry
Burst from bosom sorrow-laden,
Like the star-told agony
Of a wretched, love-lorn maiden?
Or contemning, like a sage,
Mirthful strains attuned to folly,
Tames it thus the minstrel’s rage
With a song so melancholy?
“Whippoorwill!”
Music soothes our sorrows still,
“Whippoorwill!”

Hearts bereft of hope and light
By the bolt of sorrow riven,
’Neath the friendly vail of night
Tell their griefs to listening heaven;
Like the lonely whippoorwill,
Flying far from daylight’s din,
To some thick and starless shade
Like that which fills the soul within.
“Whippoorwill!”
Night befriends the mourner still
“Whippoorwill!”

Like a hermit in his cell,
Where a holy vow has bound him,
Long the night bird’s vesper bell
Wakes the cloistered shades around him
Sad as love beside the tomb
Of its earliest, deepest sorrow
Wails the bird till twilight’s gloom
Fades away in dawning morrow—
“Whippoorwill!”
And its cry is never still—
“Whippoorwill!”

THE NEW SOUTH.

Dedicated to R. W. Knott, Editor of the Louisville Evening Post

Sweet were my dreams along thy streams,
Old South, in bygone days,
Till war’s red cloud, ’mid thunders loud,
Consumed them in its blaze:
Sewanee’s old plantation scenes,
Where wild bees filled the comb;
The banjo and the moonlight dance
Of old Kentucky Home.

The New South wakes! the New South shakes
The dew-drops from her mane,
For idle grief brings no relief,
The past comes not again;
To manly hearts and patient souls
Heaven sanctifies each loss;
Two angels, Toil and Patience, bear
To Heaven the Southern Cross.

New South! New South! unseal thy mouth,
Thy golden age is come—
Invention’s soaring harmony
And labor’s busy hum.
The Old South dies; with beaming eyes
The New South hastens in;
So boyhood’s toys are cast aside
When manhood’s deeds begin.

A FEVER DREAM.

Ægri somnia vanæ
Fingentur species.—Horace.

Many a league have I traversed to-night,
Many a league in painful flight,
For demons pressed on my bleeding track
And the air with their sounding wings was black
Often, often, they came so near
I felt their hot breath on my ear,
And mad with terror, I bounded on
Till the cock crew out at the glimmering dawn.

Over the rocks, through trackless woods,
O’er bottomless chasms and raging floods,
Through measureless wastes of dreary swamps,
Lit by the fireflies’ fitful lamps,
Where the moccasin coils in scaly spires
’Mong the water-lilies and tangled briars;
Where the spotted toad and the water newt
Lurk in the weeds of the poisonous fen,
And the blue-heron utters its plaintive cry,
And the owl hoots out to the starless sky,
And the foul miasma’s putrid breath
Is filling the air with the taint of death—
Under the Upas tree’s fatal shade
Where death his carnival has made;
Where ghastly corpses taint the day
And the vulture fears to claim his prey;
In the stifling air of the Grotto del Cane
Where the night dews fall like blustering rain—
I fled, nor looked one moment back,
For the ghosts were yelling on my track.

Ah! not the unimprisoned shadows,
Which dwell in the Elysian meadows,
Released from pain, and want, and care,
And doubt and sorrow and despair;
Nor such as timid wanderers meet,
When the moon is struggling under a cloud,
With bony fingers and skeleton feet,
And grinning skulls and ghastly shroud,
But the nameless troop which lawless thought
To the poet’s wildest dream has brought,
The brood which dark remorse might view
When justice comes to claim her due;
Strange somethings of more frightful mien
Than mortal eye has ever seen.

O! sacred sleep, once more descend,
And seal these throbbing, aching eyes,
Thou art the sufferer’s truest friend,
And bringest balm from Paradise,
Distilled from groves which never cast
Their leaves from worm, or winter’s blast.
Hush!—’Twas as if some murmured strain,
Well known in childhood’s happy hours,
Came wafted o’er a desolate plain,
On winds impregnated with flowers,
And then they vanish—like the lambent light
That flashes through a tempest cloud at night

Lo! Dreamland’s terrible array,
Advances still—Away, away!—
Down through the dark Cimmerian glen
Stained with the blood of murdered men,
Far from the beams of the friendly sun
When “deeds without a name” are done,
And the night-hags hold their dance of death
Around the cauldron of Macbeth;
Where the sire fell by the hand of the son—
A stab, a groan, and the crime was done;
Where the duelist sped the ball of death,
And the mother stifled the infant’s breath,
Under yon gloomy cypress’ shade
By the lonely grave of the beautiful maid,
Murdered by him who had betrayed,
Where her spectre glides at dead of night
With clots of gore on her bosom white;
Where on a gibbet the murderer swings
Waving his fleshless arms like wings—
I fled, nor quaked at the hideous sight,
For life and death were in my flight.

Across the burning desert’s waste
Where the path by skeletons is traced,
And the bones of the caravan welter and bleach
As thick as the shells on the ocean’s beach,
Swift as the winged winds I fly,
And my swollen lips are all cracked and dry,
And I plead in vain to the rainless sky,
While my bloodshot eyes from their sockets burst
In the torrid agony of thirst;
But the demons that follow laugh and yell
As they breathe the native blasts of hell.
The simoon’s blast, Oh joy! is past,
And the ocean beach is reached at last!
A storm is out and the wild winds mock
The ship as she drives on a hidden rock,
And the sea-gull screams its piercing dirge
As the dead drift in on the landward surge.
No pause! but quick as thought I lave
My burning limbs in the boiling wave,
Till I reach a cliff in my watery flight
And breathless scale its dizzy height.
The ocean’s roar comes faint and weak
As I cling to the side of the slippery peak,
Watching the wrath of the fearful night
By the fitful flash of tempest’s light.
Lo! how the eyes of the demons glow
As they cleave the boiling waves below!
Yelling at me, their helpless prey
As bloodhounds yell when the stag’s at bay!
They climb! they mount! the demons all,
And the beetling cliff begins to fall—
And I wake with a groan and a smothered scream
To find it all a fever dream

MAJOR E. B. BASSETT
Third Infantry, K. S. G.

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