But all in vain the enchanter's wand we wave: No stroke of ours recalls his magic vision; The incantation that its power gave Sleeps with the dead magician. Lone Mountain. (Cemetery, San Francisco.) This is that hill of awe That Persian Sindbad saw,-- The mount magnetic; And on its seaward face, Scattered along its base, The wrecks prophetic. Here come the argosies Blown by each idle breeze, To and fro shifting; Yet to the hill of Fate All drawing, soon or late,-- Day by day drifting;-- Drifting forever here Barks that for many a year Braved wind and weather; Shallops but yesterday Launched on yon shining bay,-- Drawn all together. This is the end of all: Sun thyself by the wall, O poorer Hindbad! Envy not Sindbad's fame: Here come alike the same, Hindbad and Sindbad. California's Greeting to Seward. (1869.) We know him well: no need of praise Or bonfire from the windy hill To light to softer paths and ways The world-worn man we honor still; No need to quote those truths he spoke That burned through years of war and shame. While History carves with surer stroke Across our map his noon-day fame; No need to bid him show the scars Of blows dealt by the Scaean gate, Who lived to pass its shattered bars, And see the foe capitulate; Who lived to turn his slower feet Toward the western setting sun, To see his harvest all complete, His dream fulfilled, his duty done,-- The one flag streaming from the pole, The one faith borne from sea to sea,-- For such a triumph, and such goal, Poor must our human greeting be. Ah! rather that the conscious land In simpler ways salute the Man,-- The tall pines bowing where they stand, The bared head of El Capitan, The tumult of the waterfalls, Pohono's kerchief in the breeze, The waving from the rocky walls, The stir and rustle of the trees; Till lapped in sunset skies of hope, In sunset lands by sunset seas, The Young World's Premier treads the slope Of sunset years in calm and peace. The Two Ships. As I stand by the cross on the lone mountain's crest, Looking over the ultimate sea, In the gloom of the mountain a ship lies at rest, And one sails away from the lea: One spreads its white wings on a far-reaching track, With pennant and sheet flowing free; One hides in the shadow with sails laid aback,-- The ship that is waiting for me! But lo, in the distance the clouds break away! The Gate's glowing portals I see; And I hear from the outgoing ship in the bay The song of the sailors in glee: So I think of the luminous footprints that bore The comfort o'er dark Galilee, And wait for the signal to go to the shore, To the ship that is waiting for me. The Goddess. For the Sanitary Fair. "Who comes?" The sentry's warning cry Rings sharply on the evening air: Who comes? The challenge: no reply, Yet something motions there.