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Fragments of an Oregon Aeneid.

By SAM L. SIMPSON.

HE poetry appended to this introduction is a part of perhaps the longest poem ever written by Oregon's favorite bard. As its title will. readily suggest, it deals with life on the plains and in the early settlement of the Pacific Northwest. To say that this splendid effusion has remained unpublished for over twenty years is, perhaps, but to pass a fair and just commentary on the literary enthusiasm (or the lack of enthusiasm) heretofore prevalent in the state. But with the advent of largelyincreased population from more cultured quarters, and through the continuous spread of educational influences by our schools and colleges, the kind of enthusiasm referred to should, and evidently is. becoming more manifest and pronounced. There is ample justification, therefore, I think, for this effort to rescue from the apathy of chronic indifference this excellent tribute to the founders of the state, 'ere the heroes of the verse have become totally extinct.

The poem, as now presented to the public, lacks the final polish and finish of the author, as it was from the first rough draft that these fragments, after considerable pains and difficulty, were transcribed. The poet's habit usually was to block out a poem in the rough, and then immediately prepare a perfected copy for publication. The improved version of this poem went with the volume he had hoped to have published. But that volume, in keeping with the run of bad luck that seemed to keep the author in continuous companionship, fail

TRIKING at ease his golden lyre,

The laureled Mantuan has sung Beleagured Troy's immortal pyre, The daring raid Aeneas flung To wayward gates, the voyage long That tracks the silver wave of song, Until the worn and weary oar Had kissed the fair Lavincian shore; The Argos' classic pennon streams

ed to get into print. Just why it failed is a question as difficult to answer as it is to keep from asking the question. Moneyed men in Portland were appealed to to lend a helping hand, but money is proverbially "coy and hard to please," and does not always, therefore, represent the better promptings of the human. head and heart. The state will some day, if it does not now, take a becoming pride in its earliest literature. Among those who have contributed to her renown in this respect, no name will shine with brighter effulgence than that of Sam. L. Simpson.

In

As has already been intimated, the copy from which these fragments are taken was incomplete it was written with pencil on both sides of the paper and no care taken to number the pages. many places the lines are obscure and difficult to decipher. Where such was the case I have been forced to take some liberties with the verse, but always to the detriment of the poem. It would be bold asumption to pretend to improve. on the finished versification of such a painstaking writer. Hence I have tried to follow copy in all instances where it was legible. The attempt to arrange the pages in their intended order of natural sequence has not been devoid of embarrassing difficulties, and complete success is far from being claimed. But the reader, I am sure, will pardon a few mistakes in this respect, in view of the wholesome feast of song herewith submitted.

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The minions of a perfumed age
Already crowd you from the stage.
The massive manhood of the past
In yet another mould is cast;
And yet, with calm and kindly eyes,
You view the feast for others spread,
And hail the blue benignant skies,
Resigned and grandly comforted.
It was for this you broke the way
Before the sunset gates of day
And, with a God-like faith endued,
Had scaled the rugged crags of Fate,
And with unsounding labors hewed
The pillars of the future state.
Before you scarred battalions wheel
Into the mystic realm of shade,
And on your grizzled brows the seal
Of mysteries is softly laid.
Once more around the old campfires
That smoulder like fulfilled desires,
Rehearse the story of your toils,

And cross your swords beside your spoils.

The lights and shadows down the lane,
The oak beside the foot-worn stile.
Whose wneeling shade a weary while
Had told the hours of joy and pain;
The pathway winding through the grain,
The vine that clambered on the porch
With many a fragrant purple torch;
The veiled lights of household love,
The sloping roof that wore the stain
Of summer sun and winter rain,
And browner chimney tops above
The cluster of the orchard trees
Bedecked with blossom, glad with bees;
The brook that many a summer day
Had many things to sing and say,-
All these upon your vision cast
Reflections that forever last.
And now the last goodby is said.
Good-by! the living and the dead
In those sad words together speak,
And all your chosen ways are bleak.

And now the cracking lashes send
A thrill of action down the train.
Their brawny necks the oxen bend
And slowly move each covered wain;
And horsemen gallop down the line
And wheel around the loosened kine
That straggle, lowing, on the plain,
And lift glad hands to babes that laugh
And dash the buttercups like chaff.
Hurrah! the skies are jewel blue.
In plumes of green and braid of gold;
The Earth is wondrous to behold,
And hopes are light and hearts are true.
Hurrah! hurrah! the fair, the free,
The sudden sweep of ecstasy
That lifts the soul on wings of fire
When fears consume and doubts expire-
When the unfettered human thought
The oriflamme of hope has caught
And over sunset shore and seas,
Is trailing robes of mysteries.

And now the sun is wheeling down,
And lights and shadows, gold and brown,

Are weaving sunset's purple spell.
The teams are freed, the fires are made
That put surroundings all in shade,
And pleasant groups before, between,
Are thronging in the fitful sheen;
And night has come and all is well.

So pass the days, so fall the nights,
A banquet of renewed delights.
The old horizons lift and pass
Like shifting changes of a dream,
And in the heaven's azure glass
Tomorrow's magic vistas gleam,
With many a vale and mountain mass
And many a swelling, shiny stream.
The past is dead and dares not wrest
Its shadow parts from head or breast.
The air is incense and the breeze
Is sweet with sacred melodies,
And all the castled hills before
In purple vistas sweep and soar.

And ever, as the sun goes down,
The West is shut with rosy bars,.
The night puts on her golden crown
And fills the vases of the stars.
It is a happy, happy time,
As wayward as a poet's rhyme
In dalliance with birds and flowers.

A hundred nights, a hundred days!
Nor folded cloud, nor silken haze,
Mellow the sun's midsummer blaze.
Along the scorched and scorching plain,
All slowly drags the wasted train.
The dust starts up where e're you tread
Like angry ashes of the dead,
And veils you in its choking cloud,
And wraps you in its awful shroud.

There is no longer any care,

To round the speech and speak men fair,
Or any staying sense of shame.
The hearts of men are sifted through,
The chaff is winnowed from the grain,
And every where the false and true
Are stamped with signets deep and plain.
For some are silent, some are loud,
And urge like traits among the crowd.
And some are mild, and some are sharp
In word and deed, and snarl and carp
And fret the camp with family broils.
And some with tempers sweet and bland

Do seem to bear a magic wand,
That lightens all the daily toils,
As sandal wood in burning breaths,
Sweet odor in its curling wreathes.
And some go howling to their God,
And feign to kiss the heavy rod;
And some, maybe, with silent prayers,
Bend not in any griefs or cares,
But clench their teeth to do or die,
Without a whine, or curse, or cry.

And so the dust and grit and stain
Of travel wears into the grain;
And so the hearts and souls of men
Were darkly tried and tested then;

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The desert mocks you all the while
With that dry shimmer of a smile,
That dazzles on a bleeding skull.

The bloom is withered on your cheek,
You slowly move and slowly speak,
And every eye is dim and dull.
Alas, it is a lonesome land
Of bitter sage and barren sand,
Under a bleak and friendless sky,
That never heard the robin sing,
Or kissed the larks exultant wing,
Nor breathed a rose's fragant sigh.
A weary land, alas! alas!

The shadows of the vultures pass
A spectral sign along your path;
The hungry wolf, with head askance,
Throws back at you a scowling glance
Of malice, hate and coward wrath;
A desert stretch, a reach of sand,
That crumbles at your lifted hand;
A dead, drear land, accursed, unknown,
In withered shroud asleep-alcne—
Only the glimmering ghosts of seas
In broidery of flowers and trees
And rivers blue and cool, that seem
To ripple as in fevered dream.
Only to taunt your thirst and fly
The plains that glisten bleak and dry.
A hundred days, a hundred nights-
The goal is further than before,
And all the changing shades and lights
Enwreath your souls with dreams no more.

A weary sun is overhead,

And fadded pampas round you spread,
A sere and sad eternity.

And if some grisly mountains rise
Like riven temples in the skies,
You turn in fear and pass them by.

And all are overworn and all
Unmask their hidden frailties then;
And some upon their Maker call

In fear that they have missed His ken.
And all are overworn; the flesh
Becomes a frail translucent mesh,
That will not mask the spirit now.

A horseman with wild wavy hair,
Black as the blackness of despair,
Wheels into sight and gives you heed,
And on his haunches reins his steed
All quivering like a river reed,
And sits him like a statue there
Transfigured in the sunset sea-
A Sphinx of speechless mystery.
A moment thus in wonder lost,
His eagle plumes all wildly tossed,
And wheels again and swift as wind,
The wild hair floating far behind,
And sunset's cringled surges pour
Along an empty waste once more.
Gone! but that fantastic shade
Across your desert path has played
An omen sinister and dark-
A fearful and presaging mark—
Til stars are crimson and the sky
Is wan with deadly treachery.

For many days a form of white
Has wavered wearily on your sight,
In fluttering glimpses as of wings,
Or God's bright palm in bickerings.
It is the sacred sign of each;

You dare not give the thought in speech,
So wildly solemn is the sign,
As if upon the Western stairs
The Angel of a thousand prayers
Were bringing sacred bread and wine.

The ox lies gasping in the yoke
Beside the wagon that he drew,
Where the forsaken campfires smoke

To hopeless skies of tawny blue;

And while you're straught you still must

mark

The flight of life's delusive spark-
The sombre pranks of grief that lie

So thick in human history,
And oh, so dark on this bleak page
Of drifting sand and dreary sage!
The sulky levels of the day;
The night with weird enchantment fills,
And mythic forests stretch away
Along the slopes of shadow hills,
And in the solemn stillness breaks
The wild wolf's music of the plains,
As if a guardian spirit wakes
The dreary dead in that refrain
That swells and gathers like a wail,
Of woe from Plutus' ebon pale,
Then sinks in pulseless calm again.

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And all their templed might of stone
Is one eternal sculptured psalm.
And now your Western course is led
Where grassy billowed pampas spread
Like sudden lashings of the foam
Where tropic tempests smite the sea,

And snips are stripped to meet the blow-
The pastures of the buffalo.

A ragged whirl of dust descried
Upon the prairie's sloping side,

Portends a storm both fierce and free,
As to the herds they come, they come,
A swamping thunder cloud of life,
Loud as Niagara and grand

As they who rode with plume and brand
In Waterloo's world-making strife;
Wide as the rush of udal seas
That whelm their ancient boundaries,
The trampling bison, miles along
A black and billowed fiery mass,
That withers like a flame the grass.
Along the smoking plains they pass,
Ten hundred, yea ten thousand strong.
Meanwhile the creeping train is stopped;
The wagon tongues are deftly dropped,
And trainmen by their oxen stand

And soothe them with soft speech and hand.
And yet, with lifted heads and eyes
Aflame with wild and savage fire,
They scorn their driver's startled cries,
And snort and surge with savage ire,
As if a sudden spirit woke

That could not brook the chain and yoke,
And then the stormy pageant past
They bend their quivering necks at last
And with a heavy stride and slow
Their dreams of liberty forego.
And lo, it is a land of shades

And mystic visions and alarms;

The fretted spirit flames and fades
In constant call to prayers or arms.
But still advancing, the low sun
Hangs like a gamut of red fire
In the rich West of your desire,
And on the brown plateau is wold
And mellow swage of crinkled gold,
Bordered with shadows gray and dun.

Again the still enchanted hour
Of sunset beams in crimson flower,
And purple-headed shadows sleep
Like clustered pansies, warm and deep.
Eastward of wreathen crag and wall,
The road that wound and wound all day
In many a dark and devious way,
At last. with one swift curve. ascends
The wide Plateau that smoothly bends
Westward till rosy curtains fall
On mountains massed and magical:
And lo, you almost bend the knee
In presence of God's majesty;

As there, in sunset's gold and rose,
A pyramid of splendor glows,

So vast and calm and bright your dream
Is dust and ashes in his gleam.
A maiden speaks: "He led us far;
It is the golden Western Star."

And then a youth: "Our goal is won;

'Tis the Pavilion of the Sun."
A gray sage then in undertone:
"It must be Hood! so grand and lone,
The shining citadel and throne
Of Terminus, that Roman god
Who marched the line the legions trod
And set the boundaries of the world
Where Caesar's battle flags were furled.
O for the dark-eyed prophetess
Who sang in Syrian wilderness
The gilded chariot's overthrow
To lead for us the cymbaled song,
To Him, the beautiful and strong,
Who broke the brimming cup of woe
And was our cloud and flame so long!

At last, with toils of steel and fire
Like those who stormed ancestral Tyre,
The way is hewn and you emerge
Upon the Cascade's battled verge,
And then beneath you and away
To Ocean's shining fringe of foam
The land of promise waiting lies,
Serene as tented twilight skies
When day is swooning into gloam.
But 'tis the morning twilight now
That veils the valley's misted brow-
The bourgeoning and blooming dawn,
The reveille of Oregon.

How brightly on your vision, first,
The pictured vales and woodlands burst!
The lakelets set like inlaid gems
Along the prairies' flowery hems,
The graceful crooks and silent sweeps
Of happy rivers every where,
And many a waterfall that leaps
In rainbow garlands through the air,
The meadows deep in tangled grass
That gilds the horsemen as they pass
With fragrant dust of floral gold;
The crested forests of the fir

So redolent of musk and myrrh,
And mighty musical and old;
Their branches like dark banners stir,
But leave their secrets all untold!
The crendled hills' Etruscan bronze
That frames the painted meads and lawns,
The tangled skeins of wayward brooks
That melt with laughter in wild nooks
Of bramble rose and ferny fronds!
The stunted maples and the groves
Of oak the sweet-born spirit loves,
The basking plains of fertile mold,
In broadened maps of grain unsold,
And still beyond the mountain heights,
That smoulder in empurpled lights.

Where the foothills are wedded to prairies,
In their dimples of beauty and grace,
And the oak swings a shadow that varies
On the daisies that dial the place,
And on crescents of vines and in hollows,
Redlipped in the strawberry time,
And on glades where the forest half follows
The brooks and their troubadour rhyme:-
On those sun-rippled knolls and those

prairies,

Beloved of the wandering kine,

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In the skirts of the woodland where fairies
Embroider with rose and with vine,

There's a tent and a smoke that is curling
Above in the beautiful dome

Like a genial spirit unfurling

Soft wings on the promise of home.
And the ax of the woodman is ringing
All day in the fir-shaded halls,

Where the chipmunk is playfully springing
And the blue-jay discordantly calls.
And the redchips are flagrantly flying
On the asters that sprinkle the moss,
Where flowers of summer are drying
And the sun-lances glimmer across.
There's a bird that is spectrally knocking
Or a gleaming old stub over there,

For the fir-top is trembling and rocking
In the blue of the clear upper air.
There's a cracking of fibre-the thunder
Of centuries crushed at a blow;
Its companions are stricken asunder
Making room for a chieftain below.

A pheasant whirs up from the thicket,

In the hush that comes after the fali,

And the squirrel peeps out from his wicket,
And the blue-jay renounces his call;
While the panther lies crouched

boulder.

In the gloom of the canyon anear,

by the

And the brown bear looks over his shoulder
As the buck blows the signal of fear;
But there's never a pause in your duty,

And the echoing ax is not still,

As you waste the green temples of beauty
For the puncheon and rafter and sill
That are wrought in a cabin so lowly.
The trees clasp hands overhead;

But the heart calls it home and the holy
Love-lights on it's hearthstone are shed.
It is staunch as its humble; the ceiling
Of fragrant red cedar is made,
With an edging of silver revealing
A succession of sunshine and shade.
And the Word has a place not a trifle
Obscured in a pageant of books;

And above the broad mantle your rifle
Is hung on artistical hooks.

0 the freshness of hope and the fancy
That illuminate home and the heart,

And the grace of the bright necromancy
That excels the adorning of Art!

And you rise and look out and the glory
Of Hood is before you again,

While the sun weaves a gold-threaded story
In the purple of mountain and glen.
Stand up and look out from the mansion

That adorns the old homestead today,
On the fruitage of hopes-the expansion
Of dreams that are real and to stay.

While the shadows of Hood have been wheel-
ing

Away from the face of the sun,

What a glamour of change has been stealing
On the fields you have valiantly won,
Till a state in the shimmering armor,
Of the Pallas of Athens has come,

And her purple is fringed with the warmer
Refulgence that circles the home.
Like the castles that fade at cockcrowing
Her enchantments arise and advance
Where the cities of commerce are glowing
Like pearls in the braids of Romance.

As for you, you are gray, and the thunder
Of battle has smitten each brow
Where the beauty of youth was turned under
By Time's immemorial plow;

But the pictures of memory linger

Like the shadows that turn to the East,

And point with tremulous finger

To the things that have perished and ceased.
The trail and the footlog have vanished,
The canoe is a song and a tale.

And the flickering church spire has banished
The red-man away from the vale.

A giant was dragged from the fountain
To be harnessed with steel to the car,

While the red wing that flashed on the moun

tain

Flits by on the sentient wire.

The cayuse is no longer in fashion,
He is gone with a flutter of heels;

And the old wars are dead, and their passion
In the crystal of culture congeals.
And the wavering flare of the pitchlight
That illumined your cabin before
Is a will-o'-the-wisp and witch-light
That encumbers the fancies of yore,
When you danced to old Arkansaw gaily,
In brogans that followed the bear,
And quaffed the delights of Castly
From a fiddle that wailed like despair,

And lightly you wrought with the hammer,
And so truly with ax and with plow,

And you blazed your own path through the
grammar,

And were festively keen for a row.

But you builded a state, in whose arches
Should be carved well your deeds and your

name,

As posterity lengthens it marches

In the golden star-light of your fame.

N. B.-This poem is copyrighted by The Pacific Monthly, but may be reproduced in whole or in part by any other periodical, provided full credit is given this magazine and

Mr. Fidler.-Editor.

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