No More Learning

Slowly and heavily
Comes in the sea,
With memories of storm o'erfreighted,
With heaving heart and breath abated,
Pregnant with some mysterious, endless sorrow,
And seamed with many a gaping, sighing furrow.

Slowly and heavily
Grows the green water-mound;
But drawing ever nigher,
Towering ever higher,
Swollen with an inward rage
Naught but ruin can assuage,
Swift, now, without sound,
Creeps stealthily
Up to the shore--
Creeps, creeps and undulates;
As one dissimulates
Till, swayed by hateful frenzy,
Through passion grown immense, he
Bursts forth hostilely;
And rising, a smooth billow--
Its swelling, sunlit dome
Thinned to a tumid ledge
With keen, curved edge
Like the scornful curl
Of lips that snarl--
O'ertops itself and breaks
Into a raving foam;
So springs upon the shore
With a hungry roar;
Its first fierce anger slakes
On the stony shallow;
And runs up on the land,
Licking the smooth, hard sand,
Relentless, cold, yet wroth;
And dies in savage froth.

Then with its backward swirl
The sands and the stones, how they whirl!
O, fiercely doth it draw
Them to its chasm'd maw,
And against it in vain
They linger and strain;
And as they slip away
Into the seething gray
Fill all the thunderous air
With the horror of their despair,
And their wild terror wreak
In one hoarse, wailing shriek.

But scarce is this done,
When another one
Falls like the bolt from a bellowing gun,
And sucks away the shore
As that did before:
And another shall smother it o'er.

Then there's a lull--a half-hush;
And forward the little waves rush,
Toppling and hurrying,
Each other worrying,
And in their haste
Run to waste.

Yet again is heard the trample
Of the surges high and ample:
Their dreadful meeting--
The wild and sudden breaking--
The dinting, and battering, and beating,
And swift forsaking.

And ever they burst and boom,
A numberless host;
Like heralds of doom
To the trembling coast;
And ever the tangled spray
Is tossed from the fierce affray,
And, as with spectral arms
That taunt and beckon and mock,
And scatter vague alarms,
Clasps and unclasps the rock;
Listlessly over it wanders;
Moodily, madly maunders,
And hissingly falls
From the glistening walls.

So all day along the shore
Shout the breakers, green and hoar,
Weaving out their weird tune;
Till at night the full moon
Weds the dark with that ring
Of gold that you see her fling
On the misty air.
Then homeward slow returning
To slumbers deep I fare,
Filled with an infinite yearning,
With thoughts that rise and fall
To the sound of the sea's hollow call,
Breathed now from white-lit waves that reach
Cold fingers o'er the damp, dark beach,
To scatter a spray on my dreams;
Till the slow and measured rote
Brings a drowsy ease
To my spirit, and seems
To set it soothingly afloat
On broad and buoyant seas
Of endless rest, lulled by the dirge
Of the melancholy surge.






BLACKMOUTH, OF COLORADO

"Who is Blackmouth? " Well, that's hard to say.
Mebbe he might ha' told you, 't other day,
If you'd been here. Now,--he's gone away.
Come to think on, 't wouldn't ha' been no use
If you'd called here earlier.
His excuse
Always was, whenever folks would ask him
Where he hailed from, an' _would_ tease an' task him;--
What d' you s'pose? He just said, "I don' know. "

That was truth. He came here long ago;
But, before that, he'd been born somewhere:
The conundrum started first, right there.
Little shaver--afore he knew his name
Or the place from whereabouts he came--
On a wagon-train the Apaches caught him.
Killed the old folks! But this cus'--they brought him
Safe away from fire an' knife an' arrows.
So'thin' 'bout him must have touched their marrows:
They was merciful;--treated him real good;
Brought him up to man's age well's they could.
Now, d' you b'lieve me, that there likely lad,
For all they used him so, went to the bad:
Leastways left the red men, that he knew,
'N' come to look for folks like me an' you;--
Goldarned white folks that he never saw.
Queerest thing was--though he loved a squaw,
'T was on her account he planned escape;
Shook the Apaches, an' took up red tape
With the U. S. gov'ment arter a while;
Tho' they do say gov'ment may be vile,
Mean an' treacherous an' deceivin'. Well,
_I_ ain't sayin' our gov'ment is a sell.

Bocanegra--Spanish term--I've heard
Stands for "Blackmouth. " Now this curious bird,
Known as Bocanegra, gave his life
Most for others. First, he saved his wife;
Her I spoke of;--nothin' but a squaw.