"My brother lies in yonder field, Face downward to the quiet grass: Go back! he cannot see thee now; But here thou shalt not pass."
A crack upon the evening air, A wakened echo from the hill: The watch-dog on the distant shore Gives mouth, and all is still.
The sentry with his brother lies Face downward on the quiet grass; And by him, in the pale moonshine, A shadow seems to pass.
No lance or warlike shield it bears: A helmet in its pitying hands Brings water from the nearest brook, To meet his last demands.
Can this be she of haughty mien, The goddess of the sword and shield? Ah, yes! The Grecian poet's myth Sways still each battle-field.
For not alone that rugged war Some grace or charm from beauty gains; But, when the goddess' work is done, The woman's still remains.
Opening of the California Theatre, San Francisco, Jan. 19, 1870
Brief words, when actions wait, are well The prompter's hand is on his bell; The coming heroes, lovers, kings, Are idly lounging at the wings; Behind the curtain's mystic fold The glowing future lies unrolled,-- And yet, one moment for the Past; One retrospect,--the first and last.
"The world's a stage," the master said. To-night a mightier truth is read: Not in the shifting canvas screen, The flash of gas, or tinsel sheen; Not in the skill whose signal calls From empty boards baronial halls; But, fronting sea and curving bay, Behold the players and the play.
Ah, friends! beneath your real skies The actor's short-lived triumph dies: On that broad stage, of empire won Whose footlights were the setting sun, Whose flats a distant background rose In trackless peaks of endless snows; Here genius bows, and talent waits To copy that but One creates.
Your shifting scenes: the league of sand, An avenue by ocean spanned; The narrow beach of straggling tents, A mile of stately monuments; Your standard, lo! a flag unfurled, Whose clinging folds clasp half the world,-- This is your drama, built on facts, With "twenty years between the acts."
One moment more: if here we raise The oft-sung hymn of local praise, Before the curtain facts must sway; _Here_ waits the moral of your play. Glassed in the poet's thought, you view What _money_ can, yet cannot do; The faith that soars, the deeds that shine, Above the gold that builds the shrine.