Joaquin Miller Quotes

I count the columned waves at war With Titan elements; and they, In martial splendor, storm the bar And shake the world, these bits of spray.

Where storm-born shadows hide and hunt I knew thee, in thy glorious youth, And loved thy vast face, white as truth; I stood where thunderbolts were wont To smite thy Titan-fashioned front, And heard dark mountains rock and roll; I saw the lightning's gleaming rod Reach forth and write on heaven's scroll The awful autograph of God!

This creature comes from out the dim Far centuries, beyond the rim Of time's remotest reach or stir.

Oh, great is the hero who wins a name, But greater many and many a time Some pale-faced fellow who dies in shame, And lets God finish the thought sublime. And great is the man with a sword undrawn, And good is the man who refrains from wine; But the man who fails and yet still fights on, Lo, he is the twin-born brother of mine.

For the Right, through thickest night, Till the man-brute Wrong be driven From high places; till the Right Shall lift like some grand beacon light. For the Right! Love, Right and duty; Lift the world up, though you fall Heaped with dead before the wall; God can find a soul of beauty Where it falls, as gems of worth Are found by miners dark in earth.

These be but men. We may forget The wild sea-king, the tawny brave, The frowning wold, the woody shore, The tall-built, sunburnt men of Mars. . . But what and who was she, the fair? The fairest face that ever yet Look'd in a wave as in a glass; That look'd as look the still, far stars, So woman-like, into the wave To contemplate their beauty there, Yet look as looking anywhere?

Lo! all things moving must go by. The sea lies dead. Behold, this land Sits desolate in dust beside His snow-white, seamless shroud of sand; The very clouds have wept and died, And only God is in the sky.

Man's books are but man's alphabet, Beyond and on his lessons lie — The lessons of the violet, The large gold letters of the sky; The love of beauty, blossomed soil, The large content, the tranquil toil: The toil that nature ever taught, The patient toil, the constant stir, The toil of seas where shores are wrought, The toil of Christ, the carpenter; The toil of God incessantly By palm-set land or frozen sea.

He rode as rides the hurricane; He seem'd to swallow up the plain; He rode as never man did ride, He rode, for ghosts rode at his side, And on his right a grizzled grim — No, no, this tale is not of him.

The mountains from that fearful first Named day were God's own house. Behold, 'Twas here dread Sinai's thunders burst And showed His face. 'Twas here of old His prophets dwelt. Lo, it was here The Christ did come when death drew near.

Each gives to each, and like the star Gets back its gift in tenfold pay. To get and give and give amain The rivers run and oceans roll. O generous and high-born rain When reigning as a splendid whole! That man who lives for self alone Lives for the meanest mortal known.

Give a man five years, and, with unfortunate exceptions of course, he will find his level on the Pacific, and his place, whether high or low, as naturally as a stream of water.

"All honor to him who shall win the prize," The world has cried for a thousand years; But to him who tries, and who fails and dies, I give great honor and glory and tears. Give glory and honor and pitiful tears To all who fail in their deeds sublime; Their ghosts are many in the van of years, They were born with Time in advance of Time.

I only saw her as she pass'd — A great, sad beauty, in whose eyes Lay all the loves of Paradise. . . . You shall not know her — she who sat Unconscious in my heart all time I dream'd and wove this wayward rhyme, And loved and did not blush thereat.

O woman, born first to believe us; Yea, also born first to forget; Born first to betray and deceive us, Yet first to repent and regret! O first then in all that is human, Lo! first where the Nazarene trod, O woman! O beautiful woman! Be then first in the kingdom of God!