YORICK.

  Hard by an excavated street one sat
  In solitary session on the sand;
  And ever and anon he spake and spat
  And spake again—­a yellow skull in hand,
  To which that retrospective Pioneer
  Addressed the few remarks that follow here: 

  “Who are you?  Did you come ‘der blains agross,’
  Or ‘Horn aroundt’?  In days o’ ’49
  Did them thar eye-holes see the Southern Cross
  From the Antarctic Sea git up an’ shine? 
  Or did you drive a bull team ’all the way
  From Pike,’ with Mr. Joseph Bowers?—­say!

  “Was you in Frisco when the water came
  Up to Montgum’ry street? and do you mind
  The time when Peters run the faro game—­
  Jim Peters from old Mississip—­behind
  Wells Fargo’s, where he subsequent was bust
  By Sandy, as regards both bank and crust?

  “I wonder was you here when Casey shot
  James King o’ William?  And did you attend
  The neck-tie dance ensuin’? I did not,
  But j’ined the rush to Go Creek with my friend
  Ed’ard McGowan; for we was resolved
  In sech diversions not to be involved.

  “Maybe I knowed you; seems to me I’ve seed
    Your face afore.  I don’t forget a face,
  But names I disremember—­I’m that breed
    Of owls.  I’m talking some’at into space
  An’ maybe my remarks is too derned free,
  Seein’ yer name is unbeknown to me.

  “Ther’ was a time, I reckon, when I knowed
    Nigh onto every dern galoot in town. 
  That was as late as ’50.  Now she’s growed
    Surprisin’!  Yes, me an’ my pardner, Brown,
  Was wide acquainted.  If ther’ was a cuss
  We didn’t know, the cause was—­he knowed us.

  “Maybe you had that claim adjoinin’ mine
    Up thar in Calaveras.  Was it you
  To which Long Mary took a mighty shine,
    An’ throwed squar’ off on Jake the Kangaroo? 
  I guess if she could see ye now she’d take
  Her chance o’ happiness along o’ Jake.

  “You ain’t so purty now as you was then: 
    Yer eyes is nothin’ but two prospect holes,
  An’ women which are hitched to better men
    Would hardly for sech glances damn their souls,
  As Lengthie did.  By G——!  I hope it’s you,
  For” (kicks the skull) “I’m Jake the Kangaroo.”

A VISION OF DOOM.

  I stood upon a hill.  The setting sun
  Was crimson with a curse and a portent,
  And scarce his angry ray lit up the land
  That lay below, whose lurid gloom appeared
  Freaked with a moving mist, which, reeking up
  From dim tarns hateful with some horrid ban,
  Took shapes forbidden and without a name. 
  Gigantic night-birds, rising from the reeds
  With cries discordant, startled all the air,
  And bodiless voices babbled in the gloom—­
  The ghosts of blasphemies long ages stilled,