The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems, by John Hay

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Title: Poems

Author: John Hay

Release Date: December 23, 2003 [EBook #10518]

Language: English

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POEMS

By John Hay

Note to Revised Edition

The Publishers of this volume, desiring to print it in an improved form, have asked me to write something by way of preface or supplement to the new edition. After some deliberation I have found myself unable to comply with this request. These pages were written in the first half of the year 1870, a time of intense interest and importance, to Spain. I left Madrid in the memorable August of that year, passing through Paris when that beautiful city was lying in the torpor which followed the wild excitement of the declaration of war, and preceded the fury of despair that came with the catastrophe of Sedan. I then intended to return to Spain before long; and, in fact, few years have passed since that time in which I have not nourished the dream of revisiting the Peninsula and its scenes of magic and romance. But many cares and duties have intervened; I have never gone back to Spain, and I have arrived at an age when I begin to doubt if I have any castles there requiring my attention.

I have therefore nothing to add to this little book. Reading it again after the lapse of many years, I find much that might be advantageously modified or omitted. But as its merits, if it have any, are merely those of youth, so also are its faults, and they are immanent and structural; they cannot be amended without tearing the book to pieces. For this reason I have confined myself to the correction of the most obvious and flagrant errors, and can only hope the kindly reader will pass over with an indulgent smile the rapid judgments, the hot prejudices, the pitiless condemnations, the lyric eulogies, born of an honest enthusiasm and unchecked by the reserve which comes of age and experience. I venture to hope, though with some anxiety and uncertainty, that the honest enthusiasm may itself be recognized, as well as the candor which the writer tried to preserve in speaking of things which powerfully appealed to his loves and his hates.

I therefore commit this book to the public once more with its imperfections on its head; with its prophecies unfulfilled, its hopes baffled, its observations in many instances rendered obsolete by the swift progress of events. A changed Europe—far different from that which I traversed twenty years ago—suffers in a new fever-dream of war and revolution north of the Pyrenees; and beyond those picturesque mountains the Spanish monarchy enjoys a new lease of life by favor of circumstances which demand a chronicler of more leisure than myself. I must leave what I wrote in the midst of the stirring scenes of the interregnum between the secular monarchy and the short-lived Republic—whose advent I foresaw, but whose sudden fall was veiled from my sanguine vision—without defense or apology, claiming only that it was written in good faith, from a heart filled with passionate convictions and an ardent love and devotion to what is best in Spain. I recorded what I saw, and my eyes were better then than now. I trust I have not too often spoken amiss of a people whose art, whose literature, whose language, and whose character compelled my highest admiration, and with whom I enjoyed friendships which are among the dearest recollections of my life.

John Hay.

Lafayette Square, Washington, April, 1890.

Contents.

The Pike County Ballads.

  Jim Bludso
  Little Breeches
  Banty Tim
  The Mystery of Gilgal
  Golyer
  The Pledge at Spunky Point

Wanderlieder.

  Sunrise in the Place de la Concorde
  The Sphinx of the Tuileries
  The Surrender of Spain
  The Prayer of The Romans
  The Curse of Hungary
  The Monks of Basle
  The Enchanted Shirt
  A Woman's Love
  On Pitz Languard
  Boudoir Prophecies
  A Triumph of Order
  Ernst of Edelsheim
  My Castle in Spain
  Sister Saint Luke

New And Old.

  Miles Keogh's Horse
  The Advance Guard
  Love's Prayer
  Christine
  Expectation
  To Flora
  A Haunted Room
  Dreams
  The Light of Love
  Quand-Même
  Words
  The Stirrup Cup
  A Dream of Bric-a-Brac
  Liberty
  The White Flag
  The Law of Death
  Mount Tabor
  Religion and Doctrine
  Sinai and Calvary
  The Vision of St. Peter
  Israel
  Crows at Washington
  Remorse
  Esse Quam Vlderi
  When the Boys Come Home
  Lèse-Amour
  Northward
  In the Firelight
  In a Graveyard
  The Prairie
  Centennial
  A Winter Night
  Student-Song
  How It Happened
  God's Vengeance
  Too Late
  Love's Doubt
  Lagrimas
  On the Bluff
  Una
  "Through the Long Days and Years"
  A Phylactery
  Blondine
  Distichs
  Regardant
  Guy of the Temple

Translations.

  The Way to Heaven
  After Heine: Countess Jutta

The Pike County Ballads.

Jim Bludso, of the Prairie Belle.

Wall, no! I can't tell whar he lives,
  Becase he don't live, you see;
Leastways, he's got out of the habit
  Of livin' like you and me.
Whar have you been for the last three year
  That you haven't heard folks tell
How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks
  The night of the Prairie Belle?

He weren't no saint,—them engineers
  Is all pretty much alike,
One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill
  And another one here, in Pike;
A keerless man in his talk was Jim,
  And an awkward hand in a row,
But he never flunked, and he never lied,—
  I reckon he never knowed how.

And this was all the religion he had,—
  To treat his engine well;
Never be passed on the river
  To mind the pilot's bell;
And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire,—
  A thousand times he swore,
He'd hold her nozzle agin the bank
  Till the last soul got ashore.

All boats has their day on the Mississip,
  And her day come at last,
The Movastar was a better boat,
  But the Belle she would n't be passed.
And so she come tearin' along that night—
  The oldest craft on the line—
With a nigger squat on her safety-valve,
  And her furnace crammed, rosin and pine.

The fire bust out as she clared the bar,
  And burnt a hole in the night,
And quick as a flash she turned,