LONE MOUNTAIN.

(CEMETERY, SAN FRANCISCO.)

THIS is that hill of awe That Persian Sindbad saw,The mount magnetic; And on its seaward face, Scattered along its base, The wrecks prophetic.

Here come the argosies Blown by each idle breeze,

To and fro shifting;

Yet to the hill of Fate

All drawing, soon or late,—

Day by day drifting ;

CALIFORNIA'S GREETING TO SEWARD.

(1869.)

We know him well: no need of praise
Or bonfire from the windy hill
To light to softer paths and ways

The world-worn man we honor still;

No need to quote those truths he spoke

That burned through years of war and shame While History carves with surer stroke Across our map his noon-day fame;

No need to bid him show the scars
Of blows dealt by the Scæan gate,
Who lived to pass its shattered bars,

And see the foe capitulate;

CALIFORNIA'S GREETING TO SEWARD.

Who lived to turn his slower feet
Toward the western setting sun,
To see his harvest all complete,

His dream fulfilled, his duty done,—

The one flag streaming from the pole,
The one faith borne from sea to sea,-
For such a triumph, and such goal,
Poor must our human greeting be.

Ah! rather that the conscious land
In simpler ways salute the Man,—
The tall pines bowing where they stand,
The bared head of El Capitan,

The tumult of the waterfalls,

Pohono's kerchief in the breeze, The waving from the rocky walls, The stir and rustle of the trees;

Till lapped in sunset skies of hope,
In sunset lands by sunset seas,

The Young World's Premier treads the slope
Of sunset years in calm and

peace.

59

THE TWO SHIPS.

As I stand by the cross on the lone mountain's crest,
Looking over the ultimate sea,

In the gloom of the mountain a ship lies at rest,
And one sails away from the lea:

One spreads its white wings on a far-reaching track,
With pennant and sheet flowing free;

One hides in the shadow with sails laid aback,-
The ship that is waiting for me!

But lo, in the distance the clouds break away!
The Gate's glowing portals I see;

And I hear from the outgoing ship in the bay
The song of the sailors in glee:

So I think of the luminous footprints that bore
The comfort o'er dark Galilee,

And wait for the signal to go to the shore,
To the ship that is waiting for me.