AN ANSWER by CINCINNATUS HEINE MILLER

Well! who shall lay hand on my harp but me,
Or shall chide my song from the sounding trees?
The passionate sun and the resolute sea,
These were my masters, and only these.

These were my masters, and only these,
And these from the first I obey'd, and they
Shall command me now, and I shall obey
As a dutiful child that is proud to please.

There never were measures as true as the sun,
The sea hath a song that is passingly sweet,
And yet they repeat, and repeat, and repeat,
The same old runes though the new years run.

By unnamed rivers of the Oregon north,
That roll dark-heaved into turbulent hills,
I have made my home. . . . The wild heart thrills
With memories fierce, and a world storms forth.

On eminent peaks that are dark with pine,
And mantled in shadows and voiced in storms,
I have made my camps: majestic gray forms
Of the thunder-clouds, they were companions of mine;

And face set to face, like to lords austere,
Have we talk'd, red-tongued, of the mysteries
Of the circling sun, of the oracled seas,
While ye who judged me had mantled in fear.

Some fragment of thought in the unfinish'd words;
A cry of fierce freedom, and I claim no more.
What more would you have from the tender of herds
And of horse on an ultimate Oregon shore?

From men unto God go forth, as alone,
Where the dark pines talk in their tones of the sea
To the unseen God in a harmony
Of the under seas, and know the unknown.

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