Page:The Pacific Monthly volumes 1-3.djvu/1062

 The stars, on their cold eminences, May weave immortelles of the light, But my soul, in its vapor of senses, Is crowned with the sorrow of night; And the oceans may chant, as they follow The glittering shield of the moon, But their music is weary and hollow — A gloomy, unsyllabled rune. Forever, forever, forever, Is a lonesome refrain, if it sever A soul from the loves of its June.

There's an odor of death in the flowers That droop in this chaplet of mine; Believe me, in sunnier hours They breathed an aroma divine — And so I shall wear them forever, Thus drying in garlands of death, As I turn with sick lips and a shiver From the kiss of a following wraith. Forever, forever, forever, Is the song of a shadowless river That shall heal the old sorrows of faith.

I N THE legendary lore of the Tlah- tsops all objects, the air, the water, the earth and rocks and trees are endowed with life and intelligence.

For instance, the roar of the sea was not to them the sound of the waves breaking upon the shore, but the voice of a spirit chained in depths of the ocean who clamored to be free. When the wind was from the south the captive spirit roared for storm. When it veered to the north he roared for fair weather. The story of his captivity was this:

In the beginning the earth was inhab- ited by mighty giants — cheatcos — who were man monsters. This spirit was a cheatco, but in the days when he lived in that form his race had all but vanished, and the sight of him filled the minds of men with terror. When they heard him passing through the distant forest on a still day, striking down trees with his staff made of dead men's bones, they were like to die of fear. At last a young war- rior, braver than his fellows, plotted to free the land from the presence of this terrible monster. The warrior was aided in this undertaking by the friendly ele- ments, and the cheatco was cleverly lured into a tide stream and carried out to sea. where he was securely fettered, but with the privilege of roaming from north to south and back again along the coast. And you can hear him to this day, on a still afternoon, or a breathless morning, drag his clanking chains through the heavy surf. It is a sound that always portends a change in the weather.

Of the winds themselves, who were spirits, the Tlah-tsops had many traditions. The contention of the northwest wind, the southwest and the east wind, with their sons and daughters, was a sto ry told in many chapters, and drawn out by good story-tellers to a great length. Of the storms, too, and the clouds, and the thunder bird whose eye flashed light- ning, and whose outspread wings dark- ened the sky, they told countless tales. They gave minute descriptions of the nest of the thunder bird on the summit of Swalla-la-chast and told of its excur- sions to the sea where it fished for whales.

But the stories of the rocks, those lonely sentinels along the seashore or river stretches, now shrouded in mist or curtained in cloud, or again gilded ana resplendent in the sunlight, were perhaps the favorite subjects of all. Each had its legend. They were said to be human souls fixed in these rude rock forms in punishment for some transgression.

A group of rocks off Tillamook Head were a man and his familv, who had com- mitted some unpardonable follv and were turned to stone bv the exasperated pow- er. A rock off Chinook was a girl who shamelesslv bathed in the river. There was a higher power, not highest, but