FEINBERG/WHITMAN Literary File Poetry File "Death's Valley" )1889) Proof Sheet Box 26 Folder 56 Includes Horace Traubel notes. Also includes poems "For Us Two, Reader Dear," "For Queen Victoria's Birthday," and "Ship Ahoy!"SHIP AHOY! IN dreams I was a ship, and sail'd the boundless seas, Sailing and ever sailing––all seas and into every port, or out upon the offing, Saluting, cheerily hailing each mate, met or pass'd, little or big, "Ship ahoy!" thro' trumpet or by voice, if nothing more, some friendly merry word at least, For companionship and good will for ever to all and each [*This is[?] hand of Jonathan Cutler[?]*] DEATH'S VALLEY. To Accompany a Picture. By Request. NAY, do not dream, designer dark, Thou hast portray'd or hit thy theme entire; I, hoverer of late by this grim valley, by its confines, having glimps'd it, Here enter lists with thee to make a picture too. For I have seen many wounded soldiers die, After long suffering, wasting––and have seen their lives pass off with smiles; And I have watch'd the death-hours of the old––and seen the infant die, The rich with all his nurses and his doctors, And the poor in meagreness and poverty; And I myself for long, O Death, have breath'd my every breath Amid the nearness and the thought of thee. [*This with [?]*] And out of these, recalling these, I make a scene, a song, brief, (not fear of thee O Death; Nor gloom's ravines, nor bleak, nor dark––for I do not fear thee, Nor celebrate the struggle or contortion, or the hard-tied knot,) Out of the blessed light, and perfect air, with meadows, rippling tides and flowers and grass, And the low hum of living breeze––and, in the midst, thee, God's eternal beautiful right hand; Thee, holiest minister of Heaven--thee, only envoy, usherer to the best, to God; Rich, florid, thee, thou loosener of the stricture-knot call'd life, Sweet, peaceful, welcome Death. [*In his Poem Death Valley he speaks of "sweet peaceful welcome death" The gift of "God's eternal beautiful right hand" *] [*neither published*][*Poems laid aside in galley*] [*Property of N L Frankel:[?] to be returned to him-*] [*All notes March 15-20 -1891 there abouts*] For us two, reader dear Simple, spontaneous, curious, two souls interchanging, With the original testimony for us continued to the last. FOR QUEEN VICTORIA'S BIRTHDAY. An American arbutus bunch to be put in a little vase on the royal breakfast table, May 24th, 1890. LADY, accept a birth-day thought--haply an idle gift and token, Right from the scented soil's May-utterance here, (Smelling of countless blessings, prayers, and old-time thanks,)* A bunch of white and pink arbutus, silent, spicy, shy, From Hudson's, Delaware's, or Potomac's woody banks. *NOTE—Very little, as we Americans stand this day, with our sixty-five or seventy millions of population, an immense surplus in the treasury, and all that actual power or reserve power (land and sea) so dear to nations—very little I say do we realize that curious crawling national shudder when the "Trent Affair" promis'd to bring upon us a war with Great Britain—follow'd unquestionably, as that war would have, by recognition of the Southern Confederacy from all the leading European nations. It is now certain that all this then inevitable train of calamity hung on arrogant and peremptory phrases in the prepar'd and written missive of the British Minister, to America, which the Queen (and Prince Albert latent) positively and promptly cancell'd; and which her firm attitude did alone actually erase and leave out, against all the other official prestige and Court of St. James's. On such minor and personal incidents (so to call them,) often depend the great growths and turns of civilization. This moment of a woman and a queen surely swung the grandest oscillation of modern history's pendulum. Many sayings and doings of that period, from foreign potentates and powers, might well be dropt in oblivion by America—but never this, if I could have my way. W. W. [*These two simply laid aside W made[?] [room] blank for last page of poems*]