In honor of Columbus Day, I am offering the poem “Columbus” by Joaquin Miller, the Poet of the Sierras.
Miller, like the Quaker abolitionist and politician John Greenleaf Whittier, is far more interesting as a person than as a poet.
Miller seems to have tried his hand at practically every line of work available on the American frontier: lawyer, judge, pony express rider, reporter, teacher, cook, miner, cowboy and, by some accounts, horse thief.
But the accounts are not always reliable. Least of all the accounts left by Miller himself. Fellow-writer Ambrose Bierce went so far as to call him “the greatest liar this country has ever produced.” Miller, for his part, insisted that he never lied about anything: he just exaggerated the truth a bit.
What is beyond dispute is that Miller was an ardent conservationist and a poet of sorts. What sort of poet he was may be determined from his poem about Columbus, which I remember from my days in elementary school. A teacher of mine, a dear, romantic spinster, read this poem aloud to the class one long-ago October day, with such genuine feeling that I never forgot it.
It’s not a great poem, but I think it’s good fun.
Columbus
by Joaquin Miller
BEHIND him lay the gray Azores,
Behind the Gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of shores,
Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said: “Now must we pray,
For lo! the very stars are gone.
Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say?”
“Why, say, ‘Sail on! sail on! and on!’”
“My men grow mutinous day by day;
My men grow ghastly wan and weak.”
The stout mate thought of home; a spray
Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek.
“What shall I say, brave Admiral, say,
If we sight naught but seas at dawn?”
“Why, you shall say at break of day,
‘Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!’”
They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow,
Until at last the blanched mate said:
“Why, now not even God would know
Should I and all my men fall dead.
These very winds forget their way,
For God from these dread seas is gone.
Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say”—
He said: “Sail on! sail on! and on!”
They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate:
“This mad sea shows his teeth to-night.
He curls his lip, he lies in wait,
With lifted teeth, as if to bite!
Brave Admiral, say but one good word:
What shall we do when hope is gone?”
The words leapt like a leaping sword:
“Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!”
Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck,
And peered through darkness. Ah, that night
Of all dark nights! And then a speck—
A light! A light! A light! A light!
It grew, a starlit flag unfurled!
It grew to be Time’s burst of dawn.
He gained a world; he gave that world
Its grandest lesson: “On! sail on!”
Comments (1)
And I remember the preacher as he spoke on the mission of man. The poem moved me, I say, moved me. thank you for the memory.
Posted by R Johnson | January 18, 2008 4:39 PM
Posted on January 18, 2008 16:39