Transcriber’s Note. A list of contents is provided below for the convenience of the reader.
BOSTON
ROBERTS BROTHERS
1887
Note.—The lines in this little book, as in all my others,were written, or at least conceived, in the lands wherethe scenes are laid; so that whatever may be said of theimperfections of my work, I at least have the correct atmosphereand color. I have now and then sent forth fromMexico, and from remoter shores of the Gulf, fragments ofthese thoughts as they rounded into form, and some ofthem have been used at a Dartmouth College Commencement,and elsewhere; but as a whole the book is new.
From the heart of the Sierra, where I once more hear theawful heart-throbs of Nature, I now intrust the first receptionof these lessons entirely to my own country. Andmay I not ask in return, now at the last, when the shadowsbegin to grow long, something of that considerationwhich, thus far, has been accorded almost entirely bystrangers?
Joaquin Miller.
Mount Shasta, California,
A.D. 1887.
In that far land, farther than Yucatan,
Hondurian height, or Mahogany steep,
Where the great sea, hollowed by the hand of man
Hears deep come calling across to deep;
Where the great seas follow in the grooves of men
Down under the bastions of Darien:
In that land so far that you wonder whether
If God would know it should you fall down dead;
In that land so far through the wilds and weather
That the lost sun sinks like a warrior sped,—
Where the sea and the sky seem closing together,
Seem closing together as a book that is read: