[Rollin M. Daggett, My News Year's Guests, from Literary California, Poetry, Prose and Portraits (1918)]

 

34      LITERARY CALIFORNIA

 

MY NEW YEAR'S GUESTS

Scene: A chamber in Virginia City, one of the pictures on the mall being the reduced photographs of over five-hundred California Pioneers of 1849.

Time: Midnight, December 31, 1881.

The winds come cold from the southward, with incense of fir and pine,

And the flying clouds grow darker as they halt and fall in line.

The valleys that reach the deserts, mountains that greet the clouds,

Lie bare in the arms of winter, which the prudish night enshrouds.

The leafless sage on the hillside, the willows low down the stream,

And the sentry rocks above us, have faded all as a dream.

The fall of the stamp grows fainter, the voices of night sink low;

And spelled from labor, the miner toils home through the drifting snow.

 

As I sit alone in my chamber this last of the dying year,

Dim shadows of the past surround me, and faint through the storm I hear

Old tales of the castles builded, under shelving rock and pine,

Of the bearded men and stalwart I greeted in forty-nine.

 

The giants with hopes audacious, the giants with iron limb;

The giants who journeyed westward when the trails were new and dim;

The giants who felled the forests, made pathways over the snows,

And planted the vine and fig-tree where the manzanita grows;

Who swept down the mountain gorges, and painted their endless night

With their cabins, rudely fashioned, and their camp-fires' ruddy light;

Who builded great towns and cities, who swung back the Golden Gate,

And hewed from the mighty ashlar the form of a sovereign State;

Who came like a flood of waters to a thirsty desert plain,

And where there had been no reapers grew valleys of golden grain.

 

Nor wonder that this strange music sweeps in from the silent past,

And comes with the storm this evening, and blends its strains with the blast,

Nor wonder that through the darkness should enter a spectral throng,

And gather around my table with the old-time smile and song;

For there on the wall before me, in a frame of gilt and brown,

With a chain of years suspended, old faces are looking down;

Five hundred all grouped together—five hundred old Pioneers—

Now list as I raise the taper and trace the steps of the years;

 

 

Behold this face near the center; we met ere his locks were gray;

His purse like his heart was open; he struggles for bread today.

 

To this one the fates were cruel; but he bore his burden well,

And the willow bends in sorrow by the wayside where he fell.

 

Great losses and grief crazed this one; great riches turned this one's head;

And a faithless wife wrecked this one—he lives but were better dead.

 

Now closer the light on this face; 'twas wrinkled when we were young;

His torch drew our footsteps westward; his name is on every tongue.

JANUARY   35

Rich was he in lands and kindness, but the human deluge came

And left him at last with nothing but death and a deathless fame.

 

'Twas a kindly hand that grouped them—these faces of other years—

The rich and the poor together—the hopes, and the smiles, and the tears

Of some of the fearless hundreds, who went like knights of old,

The banner of empire bearing to the land of blue and gold.

For years have I watched these shadows, as others I know have done;

As death touched their lips with silence, I have draped them one by one,

Till, seen where the dark-plumed Angel has mingled them here and there,

The brows I have flecked with sable, the living cloud everywhere.

 

Darker and darker and darker these shadows will yearly grow,

As, changing, the seasons bring us the bud and the falling snow,

And soon—let us not invoke it!—the final prayer will be said,

And strangers will write the record, "The last of the group is dead."

And then—but why stand here gazing? A gathering storm in my eyes

Is mocking the weeping tempest that billows the midnight skies;

And, stranger still—is it fancy? are my senses dazed and weak?—

The shadowy lips are moving as if they would ope and speak;

And I seem to hear low whispers, and catch the echo of strains

That rose from the golden gulches and followed the moving trains.

 

The scent of the sage and desert, the path o'er the rocky height,

The shallow graves by the roadside—all, all have come back tonight;

And the mildewed years, like stubble, I trample under my feet,

And drink again at the fountain when the wine of life was sweet;

 

And I stand once more exalted where the white pine frets the skies,

And dream in the winding canyon where early the twilight dies.

Now the eyes look down in sadness. The pulse of the year beats low;

The storm has been awed to silence; the muffled hands of the snow,

Like the noiseless feet of mourners, are spreading a pallid sheet

On the breast of dead December and glazing the shroud with sleet.

 

Hark ! the bells are chiming midnight; the storm bends its listening ear,

While the moon looks through the cloud-rifts and blesses the new-born year.

 

And now the faces are smiling. What augury can it be?

No matter; the hours in passing will fashion the years for me.

 

Bar closely the curtained windows; shut the light from every pane,

While, free from the world's intrusion and curious eyes profane,

I take from its leathern casket, a dinted old cup of tin,

More precious to me than silver, and blessing the draught within,

I drink alone in silence to the "Builders of the West"—

"Long life to the hearts still beating, and peace to the hearts at rest."

Rollin Mallory Daggett.