The Gold-Gated West

by Samuel Leonidas Simpson

 

The Gold-Gated West

 

 

This volume is published by the sister and sons of the author

 

The
Gold-Gated West

Songs and Poems

By Samuel L. Simpson

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Edited, with an Introductory Preface, by
W. T. BURNEY

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PHILADELPHIA & LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1910

Copyright, 1910

By J. B. Lippincott Company

Published June, 1910

Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company

The Washington Square Press, Philadelphia, U.S.A.

 

TO JULIA

O she was fair as a red-lipped lily,
A rosy marble of moulded song.

 

Beauty is regnant in all God's looms.
Even the thistle has purple blooms.

 

PREFACE

Samuel L. Simpson, the author of this collection of poems, was born in the State of Missouri on the 10th day of November, 1845, and was the second son of Hon. Ben Simpson and Nancy Cooper Simpson. In 1846 Ben Simpson organized and conducted an emigrant train across the plains to Oregon. The trials, hardships and triumphs of that great undertaking are most interestingly told in the poem entitled " The Campfires of the Pioneers."

Sam Simpson, as he was familiarly known, was taught the alphabet by his mother at the age of four years, from copies traced in the ashes on the hearthstone of their pioneer home. He attended the country schools of the time and was reputed precocious in his earlier life. He has left one gem, a reminiscence of his school-days, "The Lost Path."

At the age of fifteen he was employed in the sutler's store, owned by his father, on the Grande Ronde Indian Reservation, a military post at that time. Here the precocious boy met and became the flattered protege of Grant, Sheridan, and others of that post. General Sheridan presented him a copy of Byron's poems, which he prized very highly and read with great interest.

He entered, at sixteen, the Willamette University, at Salem, Oregon, from which he was graduated in the class of '65. He immediately took up the study of the law, and passed the required examination for admission to practice in 1866, but, not being of the required age, he was not admitted until 1867.

His prospects in the practice were reasonably good, though his characteristic timidity qualified his deserved success. In 1870 he abandoned the practice of law, assumed the editorial charge of the "Corvalis Gazette," and entered on a general journalistic career, which he pursued through the rest of his life.

In 1868 he married Miss Julia Humphrey, to whom these poems are dedicated. She was noted for her beauty and enrapturing voice in music his "sweet-throated thrush," of whom he writes :

Lurlina, Heaven flies not
From souls it once has blessed;
First love may fade, but dies not,
Though wounded and distressed.

"Though after-days deride us
With Hymen's broken rings,
We know that once beside us
An angel furled his wings."

And, though after-days did deride him with Hymen's broken rings, he never faltered or wavered in his devotion to his first and only love. There were born to Mr. Simpson and wife two sons, Eugene H. and Claude L.

Samuel L. Simpson died in the city of Portland on the 14th day of June, 1900, and was buried in Lonefir Cemetery.

Simpson has been classed by his Western admirers with Burns and Poe, and in many of his poems he portrays that keen appreciation of the grandeur and beauty of nature and that matchless rhythmic style which certainly render the comparison not uncomplimentary to those immortal bards. And he too, as they, labored within the bonds of a habit that has no kindred seal of woe, and to this limitation was attributable the failures he so bitterly bemoans in the poems "Quo Me, Bacche?", "Wreck," and others of like sentiment.

The Angel of Silence has now brushed him with his wings and the pining is hushed. Life's stormy seas have baffled and shipwrecked many a divine genius, who bravely faced the gale with little thought of anchor or the safe bestowal of his sail; to whom the flag at the peak was more important than a strong hand at the helm. Such a sailor was Sam Simpson; but he has left us many a beautiful strain of music, caught from the song of wind and tide; many a picture glowing with the gold of sunset or the rose of blossoming spring. We, who knew him best, know that he never reached the achievement that was possible to his talents. His poems breathe rather of pathos and shadow than of joy, for they take their tint from a mind oftentimes world weary. And we who knew him will judge him gently, and prize the treasures he brought home from many voyages of fancy, in air and sea and sky.

W. T. Burney.

CONTENTS

Preface ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

7

Salutation ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

15

POEMS ON NATURE

Beautiful Willamette ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

19

Snowdrift ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

21

Autumn Leaves ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

22

After Harvest ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

25

Molokai ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

26

An Out-of-Door Song ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

28

Hood ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

30

The Winter Flower ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

33

Sullied Waters ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

34

The Sisters ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

39

The Lost Path ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

40

Oregon in Summer ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

42

The First Fall of the Snow ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

45

The Oregon Chinook ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

48

The Feast of Apple Bloom ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

50

Falls of the Willamette ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

52

The Maple at the Gate ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

53

Oregon Rain ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

56

The King Disrobed ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

60

The Mystic River ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

62

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