["It is announced from Vancouver that the rumours of a big strike of gold at Bitter Creek have been confirmed."—@3Daily Paper.@1] GOLD!' mid the North's magnetic hush, They've struck it in the good old manner, Not the beringed promoter's gush, No swank of your prospectus-planner, But the true kind that played its part With bowies, "guns," and forty-niners, When (by the magic of Bret Harte) You found no life excelled the miner's! How often have you, beat but game, Your old red shirt without a collar, Toiled at the stiff, abandoned claim You'd purchased with your last half dollar; Sure-armed, you swung your pick aloft Through days of doubt and hours of danger, Then, lo! the vein—dull, yellowy, soft, And — "Sort o' think you'd struck it, Stranger!" And up the pass, through pine and snow, You've heard the river in the cañon Shouting a thousand foot below, The timber-wolf your sole companion; With aching back you've faced the hill, You've searched each likely ledge and dug it, And whooped the eagle from his kill When you acclaimed a ten-ounce nugget! You've swaggered into camp at night, Bronzed, bold, a devil of a fellow; You've seen the windy dark alight, Stern faces round the fire grown mellow; And, where the fanged Sierras rise Up to the moon's cold flooding crystal, You've lain and watched the opal skies, Your head upon a loaded pistol! Tap of the pick! it's waked, in sooth, The kindly, half-forgotten fairies, Friends of the camping fires of youth That shone on Indians, trails, and prairies; Whose sparks still through the darkness fall In flashing showers of gold unstinted, The purest metal of them all, A finer ore than e'er was minted! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE SINGER OF ONE SONG by HENRY AUGUSTIN BEERS FROM THE IONIAN ISLANDS by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES IDYLLS OF THE KING: THE HOLY GRAIL by ALFRED TENNYSON HESPERIDES by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH EURIPIDES by ALEXANDER AETOLUS A CHRISTMAS HYMN by CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER DAVIDS ELEGIE UPON JONATHAN by JOSEPH BEAUMONT |