Poetry Codex

American

Bret Harte

1836–1902

Francis Brett Harte (1836-1902) was an American short-story writer and poet, born in Albany, New York. He went to California in the 1850s, worked as a typesetter and journalist in San Francisco, and edited the Overland Monthly, in which his stories of the Gold Rush country, including The Luck of Roaring Camp (1868), first appeared.

His verse, notably the comic ballad known as Plain Language from Truthful James (1870), made him famous across the United States and Britain. From 1878 he lived abroad as a U.S. consul in Krefeld and Glasgow and then in London, where he died. East and West: Poems (1871), from which these poems are taken, gathers his Californian and Civil War verse with a second part of parodies and humorous pieces.

Poems (122)

  1. A Greyport Legend
  2. A Newport Romance
  3. The Hawk's Nest
  4. In the Mission Garden
  5. The Old Major Explains
  6. "Seventy-Nine"
  7. Truthful James's Answer to "Her Letter"
  8. Further Language from Truthful James
  9. The Wonderful Spring of San Joaquin
  10. On a Cone of the Big Trees
  11. A Sanitary Message
  12. The Copperhead
  13. On a Pen of Thomas Starr King
  14. Lone Mountain
  15. California's Greeting to Seward
  16. The Two Ships
  17. The Goddess
  18. Address
  19. The Lost Galleon
  20. The Second Review of the Grand Army
  21. Before the Curtain
  22. The Stage-Driver's Story
  23. Aspiring Miss de Laine
  24. California Madrigal
  25. St. Thomas
  26. Ballad of Mr. Cooke
  27. Legends of the Rhine
  28. Mrs. Judge Jenkins: Being the Only Genuine Sequel to "Maud Muller"
  29. Avitor
  30. A White Pine Ballad
  31. Little Red Riding-Hood
  32. The Ritualist
  33. A Moral Vindicator
  34. Songs without Sense: The Personified Sentimental
  35. Songs without Sense: The Homely Pathetic
  36. Songs without Sense: Swiss Air
  37. “Jim”
  38. Plain Language from Truthful James
  39. John Burns of Gettysburg
  40. "How Are You, Sanitary?"
  41. Battle Bunny (Malvern Hill, 1864)
  42. The Reveille
  43. Our Privilege
  44. Relieving Guard: Thomas Starr King. Obiit March 4, 1864
  45. The Aged Stranger: An Incident of the War
  46. The Idyl of Battle Hollow (War of the Rebellion, 1884)
  47. Caldwell of Springfield (New Jersey, 1780)
  48. Poem: Delivered on the Fourteenth Anniversary of California's Admission into the Union, September 9, 1864
  49. Miss Blanche Says
  50. An Arctic Vision
  51. Off Scarborough (September, 1779)
  52. Cadet Grey
  53. The Miracle of Padre Junipero
  54. The Angelus (Heard at the Mission Dolores, 1868)
  55. Concepcion De Arguello (Presidio De San Francisco, 1800)
  56. "For the King" (Northern Mexico, 1640)
  57. Ramon (Refugio Mine, Northern Mexico)
  58. Don Diego of the South (Refectory, Mission San Gabriel, 1869)
  59. At the Hacienda
  60. Friar Pedro's Ride
  61. Chiquita
  62. Dow's Flat (1856)
  63. In the Tunnel
  64. "Cicely" (Alkali Station)
  65. Penelope (Simpson's Bar, 1858)
  66. The Society upon the Stanislaus
  67. Luke (In the Colorado Park, 1873)
  68. "The Babes in the Woods" (Big Pine Flat, 1871)
  69. The Latest Chinese Outrage
  70. Truthful James to the Editor (Yreka, 1873)
  71. An Idyl of the Road (Sierras, 1876)
  72. Thompson of Angels
  73. Her Letter
  74. "The Return of Belisarius" (Mud Flat, 1860)
  75. After the Accident (Mouth of the Shaft)
  76. The Ghost That Jim Saw
  77. A Question of Privilege: Reported by Truthful James
  78. The Thought-Reader of Angels: Reported by Truthful James
  79. The Spelling Bee at Angels (Reported by Truthful James)
  80. Artemis in Sierra
  81. Jack of the Tules (Southern California)
  82. San Francisco (From the Sea)
  83. The Mountain Heart's-Ease
  84. Grizzly
  85. Madrono
  86. Coyote
  87. To a Sea-Bird (Santa Cruz, 1869)
  88. What the Chimney Sang
  89. Dickens in Camp
  90. "Twenty Years"
  91. Fate
  92. Grandmother Tenterden (Massachusetts Shore, 1800)
  93. Guild's Signal
  94. A Legend of Cologne
  95. The Tale of a Pony
  96. Alnaschar
  97. Dolly Varden
  98. Telemachus versus Mentor
  99. Half an Hour Before Supper
  100. What the Bullet Sang
  101. The Old Camp-Fire
  102. The Station-Master of Lone Prairie
  103. The Mission Bells of Monterey
  104. "Crotalus" (Rattlesnake Bar, Sierras)
  105. On William Francis Bartlett: Dead at Pittsfield, Mass., 1876
  106. The Birds of Cirencester
  107. Lines to a Portrait, by a Superior Person
  108. Her Last Letter: Being a Reply to "His Answer"
  109. To the Pliocene Skull (A Geological Address)
  110. The Ballad of the Emeu
  111. A Geological Madrigal
  112. The Willows (After Edgar Allan Poe)
  113. North Beach (After Spenser)
  114. The Lost Tails of Miletus
  115. What the Engines Said (Opening of the Pacific Railroad)
  116. Master Johnny's Next-Door Neighbor
  117. Miss Edith's Modest Request
  118. Miss Edith Makes It Pleasant for Brother Jack
  119. Miss Edith Makes Another Friend
  120. What Miss Edith Saw from Her Window
  121. On the Landing (An Idyl of the Balusters)
  122. Chicago

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