The Poet of the Sierras

How shall I greet him--him who seems
To me the greatest of our singers?
As one who hears Sierra streams,
And, gazing under arching fingers,
Feels all the eagle feels that screams,
The savage dreams, what time he lingers?

Son of the West, out of the West
We heard thee sing,--who still allurest,--
That land where God sits manifest;
That land where man stands freest, surest;
That land, our wildest and our best,
The grandest and the purest.

Wild hast thou sung,--as some strange bird,--
Of gold and men and peaks that glistened,
Of seas and stars, and we have heard--
And one, whose soul cried out and listened,
He sends his young, unworthy word
To thee the Master’s hand hath christened