The golden whales of California, and other rhymes in the American language

Chapter 38: TO EVE, MAN’S DREAM OF WIFEHOOD AS DESCRIBED BY MILTON

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About This Book

The collection gathers lyrical and narrative poems that range from long, scene-setting pieces celebrating California's landscapes and the new art of the moving picture to playful rhymed scenarios and verse games. It interleaves meditations on history, myth, science, and religion with comic sketches and dialectal songs, moves into wartime reflections and elegies for fallen poets, and closes with local, Midwestern vignettes and personal tributes. The poet shifts between high-lyric description, satirical invective, and vernacular rhythms, experimenting with form and voice to present an uneven but energetic portrait of American life, technology, and regional identity in early twentieth-century verse.

TO EVE, MAN’S DREAM OF WIFEHOOD AS DESCRIBED BY MILTON

Darling of Milton—when that marble man

Saw you in shadow, coming from God’s hand

Serene and young, did he not chant for you

Praises more quaint than he could understand?

“To justify the ways of God to man”—

So, self-deceived, his printed purpose runs.

His love for you is the true key to him,

And Uriel and Michael were your sons.

Your bosom nurtured his Urania.

Your meek voice, piercing through his midnight sleep

Shook him far more than silver chariot wheels

Or rattling shields, or trumpets of the deep.

Titan and lover, could he be content

With Eden’s narrow setting for your spell?

You wound soft arms around his brows. He smiled

And grimly for your home built Heaven and Hell.

That was his posy. A strange gift, indeed.

We bring you what we can, not what is fit.

Eve, dream of wifehood! Each man in his way

Serves you with chants according to his wit.