The Gold-Gated West/The Wizard Owl

by Samuel Leonidas Simpson

THE WIZARD OWL

A New Year's Story in Rhyme

In Portland's far heroic day,
When forest firs disputed sway,
While but a mythic spear was set
To show where spires would glimmer yet,
And all a city's grace and sheen
Arise o'er conquered ranks of green,
A little lonely cabin stood
Within the border of the wood.

Lowly it was, but not unsightly,
For sombre firs, erect and knightly
A marvellous dark background lent
To cabin rude and roving tent,
And in those bold, free-handed days
Of earnest toil and homely ways,
When no tall mansion rose to shut
The sunlight from the meanest hut,
The dweller here might chance to be
The lordliest of the strong and free.

Yet 'twas not thus; almost unknown,
He dwelt there quietly alone,
A youth of manners smooth and mild,
Who all his waking hours beguiled
With books or gun and rod, and ne'er
Seemed bent on other work or cheer.

The smoke that curled in wreaths of blue
Above his chimney's ragged flue
Was typical of peace within,
A life devoid of care and sin,
And those strange dreams his fancy wove
Beneath the whispers of the grove
When slow winds swept the trees, and bore
Sad music down the wooded shore.

On many a fragrant summer day
When Hood, exultant in his sway,
Swung to the sky his golden shield,
As if to call the battle-steeled
To hew the wilderness, and build
The empire from creation willed,
The dreamer in his door would stand,
And gaze upon the river's strand
Until his thoughts would soar and soar
Into the future dim and hoar.
Then in a vision he could see
Pale shadows of the things to be;
And in the city built of mist,
Afloat in tender amethyst,
His own great mansion spread and towered,
And lo! its portal, lotus-flowered
Foretold a lulling life of ease
Amid delightful harmonies;
And then he turned and saw the town
Along the river straggling down,
And sought his cabin with a sigh
To dream of far futurity!
He could not see what force could change
That park of stumps, a rude Stonehenge,
And that wild forest sighing deep
O'er centuries so long asleep,
Into the city he had seen
Portrayed on Fancy's lofty screen.

But they who toiled with hand and brain
To open avenues of gain,
And lay the keels and weave the sails
Which some day, with fair Fortunes gales,
Should bring them honor, wealth and ease
From o'er the dim unresting sees,
Had little time to think of one
Who stood from all the strife apart,
And so, alike in rain and sun,
Kept to their tasks with loyal heart;
While he among them came and went,
Approving still their bold intent,
But too half-hearted to begin
The life that lives, the deeds that win.
Time sped, and on a New Year's night,
When all the stars were sprinkling light
In showers of radiant golden rain
Upon the wheeling world again,
And mists, like scarfs of pearl, were laid
Upon the mountains' armor-braid,
The dreamer, by his lonely fire,
Grew mournful over thoughts of home,
And wondered that a vain desire
Had ever led his steps to roam.
"But life is full of waste and folly,
Away with weary melancholy!"
He cried, and filled the glass whose rays
Are crimson with the art that slays,
And drank to all things good and fair,
To happy, happy other days,
Dim vanishing down Memory's stair.

Once on a listless summer day
A hapless owl became hi prey
As, gun in hand, in idle mood,
He loitered in the shady wood.
This bird, alive, and passing well,
And rife with bloody passions fell,
Portrayed in cruel beak and grip,
He thus in classic faith had borne
Unto his cabin hearth forlorn,
For mystical companionship.
So, on this night of lonely longing,
While shadows of the past were thronging
With many a mute and wan reproof,
Upon a table, half in shade,
The owl, with all his eyes arrayed,
To dulling slumber still aloof,
Discreetly sat, as if he too
Saw ghosts of things in long review.
Under the great firs' tasselled tent,
When dusk had come and dews were sprent,
Again he plied his gory trade;
Soft as a whisper in the dark
He flit Led swiftly to his mark,
And there was not a sound to tell
What helpless victim instant fell.

The dark-haired dreamer drank once more
A toast to pleasures gone before,
Then from the headstones of the past,
In rain and sunshine fading fast,
Turned to the coming time to grace
The portent of its misted face.
What could he see in that dark glass?
Only his pale conjectures pass,
The old procession of his dreams,
Fabrics of fleeting shades and beams
Which drifted evermore away
Before the Present's stern array—
The stumps and canyons, and the town
By fair Willamette straggling down.
Thus fitfully, as Fancy soared,
He darkly guessed and deeply pored
Until unto himself he said,
"It may be, in dim years ahead!
But oh, the waiting! who shall say
How many years must roll away
Before this mountain camp shall be
A mistress of the sail-swept sea,
Waving her sinewy, jewelled hands
In empire over boundless lands?"
A gurgling flow of elfish laughter
Echoed from rough log wall to rafter,
A sound the trav'ller hears with dread
In gloomy firs high overhead,
When night and forest shake his soul
With terror all beyond control.
Startled, the moody dreamer turned,
And lo! upon him glared and burned
The owl's wide eyes, commingled rays
Of yellow, purple, chrysoprase,
Burned deep, burned wide, as ne'er before,
As with Dodona's awful lore,
When muffled kings sought her dark ways.
"Aha! Those eyes that must have slept
When Hector bled and Priam wept
Are luminous this New Year's night
And I am vainly asking light,"
He softly said, then paling, faltered,
As one who with the unseen paltered;
For, as when vapors black and gray
From lilied dawn are swept away,
A filmy curtain seemed to fade
From mind and soul, and in those eyes,
Lustrous with mighty destinies
And flames of life, unfixed, unmade,
He saw the wondrous Future rise;—
Swiftly in panoramic view,
The old times were displaced by new:
The crested firs went down like knights
Lance-struck in ringing olden fights,
And all the century-furrowed land,
The church, the school, the court, the mart,
Temples of pleasure, toil and art,
With glimmering spires and gleaming domes,
Were set in landscape bright with homes—
He saw the swarm of men like bees,
The building of the pillared quays,
The lordly ships with canvas furled,
From seas that roll around the world,
The thronging river craft that broke
The lucid wave in spray and smoke;
And from converging ways, strange steeds,
With trailing plumes and shining mail,
Flying in answer to the hail
Of wider action, swifter needs ;
He saw a city throned and shining,
And fairer than his best divining
In any roseate revery—
A city in its regal power;
Glowing and crescent, proud and free.
All this with hints of things aside,
The theatre of action wide;—
The sable smoke of border wars,
With hecatombs to stormy Mars—
The sudden sparkling in the sun
Of towns beginning and begun—
Cleaving of mountains and fierce air
Tossing the brown earth everywhere.

Then from those wondrous eyes the fire
Went out; he saw the flame expire;—
Then pausing with a flush elate,
He lightly murmured, "I shall wait!"
And once again from wall to rafter
Echoed the gurgling elfish laughter.
But when he looked, the wise-eyed owl,
With whom his life was cheek by jowl,
There in the firelight's fitful play,
Sat bleakly staring, calm and gray.

The Old Year's closed and finished book
Was shrined among the scrolls of Fame;
Splendid in robes of gold and azure,
And all untried in toil and pleasure,
The New Year to his empire came,
And from his diamond sceptre shook
An all resplendent virgin flame.
The dreamer, with an inward smile,
Looked over gorge and stump and tree,
And clothed them radiantly the while
In purple-misted destiny.
His ways change not; why should he toil
When other forces heaped the spoil?
He would evade the primal curse,
For there was money in has purse
To bide the day, foretold to come,
When that forbidding slope should bloom
With rose and myrtle and the glory
Of life's exultant, changing story.
The sapient bird he kept, and none
His matchless secret ever won;
And so the years rolled on and on
Through dusky twilight to the dawn,
And through its silvery, rising arch,
To day's illumined, joyful march.
'Tis New Year's night again, the earth
Is radiant o'er the royal birth,
With star-drift and the flower of pearl:
A robe of beauty and of light
Around its wintry dusk to-night
The woven snow-flakes softly furl.
Bowed down in helplessness and gloom,
A lodger in a squalid room
Sits brooding by a rusted stove,
In which a low fire, brooding, too,
Drops into ashes, pale and rue,
For some bird-haunted breezy grove.
And in that bent and mournful form,
Drooping to keep its thin blood warm—
Those matted locks of iron gray,
That sad and worn and wrinkled face—
The feeble semblance you can trace
Of one who knew another day;
And, gray and tattered, like his master,
With solitude and chill disaster,
A quaint old owl, still staring wide,
Sits on a table at his side.
Through all the long eventful years,
Rainbowed with joys, bedewed with tears,
The man had kept his tryst with fate,
True to his saying, "I shall wait."
His purse and little stint of land
Had vanished all, an idle hand
And dreaming brain, that builded fair
Its gorgeous tableaux in the air,
But never in its mazy coil
Had fixed the ritual of toil;
And yet in all his dreary waiting,
And vexed with troubles past relating,
He had maintained the wizard bird
Though unillumined and unheard.
To-night the rounded fateful time
Was trilling to its silvery chime,
For all the vision of the past,
In glorious truth arose at last—
A queenly city on her throne
Ruled where the olden firs made moan,
But what was that to him? He stood
Without the gates in solitude,
A haunting shadow of the meed
That answers manhood's ringing creed;

For Time may come with gems and flowers,
But lo! they are not always ours!

He raised his head, the gray bird's gaze
Kindled with deep prophetic blaze,
And with a flush of glad surprise
The master peered in those wild eyes,
Fading again to filmy veil,
And there, as in a desert pale,
He saw himself in rags and woe—
Only himself—deserted, lone,
And closed his eyes no more to know,
His life-long vigil closed and done;
And o'er him gurgled elfish laughter—
The owl's last rite—no more hereafter!