[Illustration: Portrait of Author]
Mountain Idylls
and Other Poems
BY
ALFRED CASTNER KING
CHICAGO: NEW YORK: TORONTO
Fleming H. Revell Company
LONDON _and_ EDINBURGH
1901
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
MAY
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street
TO THE MANY FRIENDS WHO HAVE SO
KINDLY ASSISTED IN THE ARRANGEMENT
OF THE MANUSCRIPTS FOR
PUBLICATION, AFTER THE SHADOWS
OF HOPELESS BLINDNESS DESCENDED
UPON ME FOREVER, THIS VOLUME
IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
Table of Contents.
Preface
Grandeur
Nature's Child
To the Pines
Reflections
Life's Mystery
The Fallen Tree
There is an Air of Majesty
Think Not That the Heart Is Devoid of Emotion
Humanity's Stream
Nature's Lullaby
The Spirit of Freedom Is Born of the Mountains
The Valley of the San Miguel
To Mother Huberta
Suggested by a Mountain Eagle
The Silvery San Juan
As the Shifting Sands of the Desert
Missed
If I Have Lived Before
The Darker Side
The Miner
Life's Undercurrent
They Cannot See the Wreaths We Place
Mother--Alpha and Omega
Empty Are the Mother's Arms
In Deo Fides
Shall Love, as the Bridal Wreath, Wither and Die
Shall Our Memories Live When the Sod Rolls Above Us
A Reverie
Love's Plea
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust
Despair
Hidden Sorrows
Oh, a Beautiful Thing Is the Flower That Fadeth
Smiles
A Request
Battle Hymn
The Nation's Peril
Echoes From Galilee
Go, and Sin No More
Gently Lead Me, Star Divine
Dying Hymn
In Mortem Meditare
Deprive This Strange and Complex World
The Legend of St. Regimund
As the Indian
The Fragrant Perfume of the Flowers
An Answer
Fame
The First Storm
Thoughts
From a Saxon Legend
Christmas Chimes
The Unknowable
The Suicide
I Think When I Stand in the Presence of Death
Hope
Metabole
List of Illustrations.
Portrait of Author
"Grandeur"
Mount Wilson
Mountain View in San Juan
Scene in Ouray
Uncompahgre Cañon
Mountain Scene in San Juan
Emerald Lake
Scene near Telluride
Bridal Veil Falls
Lizard Head
Trout Lake
Box Cañon Looking Inward
Ouray, Colorado
Box Cañon Looking Outward
Ironton Park
Bear Creek Falls
[Illustration: "A Wilderness of weird fantastic shapes."]
PREFACE
_"Of making many books there is no end."--Eccles. 12:12._
When the above words were written by Solomon, King of Israel, about
three thousand years ago, they were possibly inspired by the existence
even at that early period of an extensive and probably overweighted
literature.
The same literary conditions are as true to-day as when the above truism
emanated from that most wonderful of all human intellects. Every age and
generation, as well as every changing religious or political condition,
has brought with it its own peculiar and essentially differing current
literature, which, as a rule, continued a brief season, and then
vanished, perishing with the age and conditions which called it into
being; leaving, however, an occasional volume, masterpiece, or even
quotation, to become classic, and in the form of standard literature
survive for generations, and in many instances for ages.
Poetry has always occupied a unique position in literature; and though
from a pecuniary stand-point usually unprofitable, it enjoys the decided
advantage of longevity.
The mysterious ages of antiquity have bequeathed to all succeeding time
several of earth's noblest epics, while the contemporaneous prose, if
any existed, has long lain buried in the inscrutable archives of the
remote past.
The two most notable of these, the Iliad and the Odyssey, are believed
to have been transmitted from generation to generation, orally, by the
minstrels and minnisingers, until the introduction or inception of the
Greek alphabet, when they were reduced to parchment, and, surviving all
the vicissitudes of time and sequent political and religious change,
still occupy a prominent place in literature.
The Book of Job, generally accepted as the most ancient of writings, now
extant, whether sacred or secular, was doubtless originally a primitive
though sublime poetical effusion.
The prose works contemporaneous with Chaucer, Spencer, and even with
that most wonderful of literary epochs, the Elizabethan age, are now
practically obsolete, while the poetical efforts remain in some
instances with increased prominence.
Someone, (although just who is difficult to determine,--though it savors
of the Greek School of Philosophy,--)has delivered the following
injunction: "Do right because it is right, not from fear of punishment
or hope of reward." Waiving the question as to whether it is right or
not to compose poetry, he who aspires in that direction can reasonably
expect no material recompense, though the experience of Dante,
Cervantes, Leigh Hunt, and others, proves conclusively that poets do not
always escape punishment. In fact, about the only emolument to be
expected is the gratification of an inherent and indefinable impulse,
which impels one to the task with equal force, whether the ultimate
result be affluence or a dungeon.
The author of this unpretentious volume has long questioned the
advisability of adding a book to our already inflated and overloaded
literature, unless it should contain something in the nature of a
deviation from beaten literary paths.
Whether the reading public will regard this as such or not is a question
for the future to determine, as every book is a creature of
circumstance, and at the date of its publication an algebraic unknown
quantity.
It was not the original intention of the author to publish any of his
effusions in collective form until more mature years and riper judgment
should better qualify him for the task of composition, and should enable
him to still further pursue the important studies of etymology,
rhetoric, Latin and Greek, and complete the education which youthful
environment denied.
On the 17th of March, A.D. 1900, occurred an accident in the form of a
premature mining explosion which banished the light of the Colorado sun
from his eyes forever, adding the almost insurmountable barrier of
total and hopeless blindness to those of limited means and insufficient
education. At first further effort seemed useless, but as time
meliorates in some degree even the most deplorable and distressing
physical conditions, ambition slowly rallied, and while lying for
several months a patient in various hospitals in an ineffectual attempt
to regain even partial sight, the following ideas and efforts of past
years were gradually recalled from the recesses of memory, and reduced
to their present form, in which, with no small hesitation and misgiving,
they are presented to the consideration of the reading public, which in
the humble opinion of the author has frequently failed to receive and
appreciate productions of vastly superior merit.
_Ouray, Colorado, March 15, 1901._
[Illustration:
"I stood at sunrise on the topmost part,
Of lofty mountain, massively sublime."