The Great Valley

by Edgar Lee Masters

And the fort at thirty-fifth street vanished.
And where the Little Giant lived
They made a park
And put his statue
Upon a column of marble.
Now the glare of the steel mills at South Chicago
Lights the bronze brow of Douglas.
It is his great sorrow
Haunting the Lake at mid-night.

When the South was beaten
They were playing
John Brown’s body lies mouldering in the Grave,
And Babylon is Fallen and Wake Nicodemus.
Now the boys and girls are dancing
To the Merry Whirl and Hello Frisco
Where they waltzed in crinoline
When the Union was saved.

There was the Marble Terrace
Glory of the seventies!
They wrecked it,
And brought colors and figures
From later Athens and Pompeii
And put them on walls.
And beneath panels of red and gold,
And shimmering tesseræ,
And tragic masks and comic masks,
And wreaths and bucrania,
Upon mosaic floors
Red lipped women are dancing
With dark men.
Some sit at tables drinking and watching,
Amorous in an air of French perfumes.

Like ships at mid-night
The kingdoms of the world
Know not whither they go nor to what port.
Nor do you, embryo hands,
In the seed not yet sown
Know of the wars to come.

They may fill the sky with armored dragons
And the waters with iron monsters;
They may build arsenals
Where now upon marble floors
The boys and girls
Are dancing the Alabama Jubilee,
The processional of time is a falling stream
Through which you thrust your hand.
And between the dancers and the silence forever
There shall be the livers
Gazing upon the torches they have lighted,
And watching their own which are failing,
And crying for oil,
And finding it not!

II
CAPTAIN JOHN WHISTLER

(Captain John Whistler built Fort Dearborn in 1803. His son, George Washington, who was an engineer and built a railroad in Russia for the Czar in 1842, was the father of the artist, James Abbott McNeill Whistler.)

Throw logs upon the fire! Relieve the guard
At the main gate and wicket gate! Lieutenant
Send two men ’round the palisades, perhaps
They’ll find some thirsty Indians loitering
Who may think there is whiskey to be had
After the wedding. Get my sealing wax!
Now let me see “November, eighteen four:
Dear Jacob: On this afternoon my daughter
Was married to James Abbott, it’s the first
Wedding of white people in Chicago—
That’s what we call Fort Dearborn now and then.
They left at once on horseback for Detroit.”
The “Tracy” will sail in to-morrow likely.
“To Jacob Kingsbury”—that’s well addressed.
Don’t fail to give this letter to the captain,
That it may reach Detroit ere they do.
I wonder how James Abbott and my Sarah
Will fare three hundred miles of sand and marsh,
And tangled forest in this hard November?
More logs upon the fire! The mist comes down!
The lake roars like a wind, and not a star
Lights up the blackness. They have almost reached
The Calumet by now. Good luck James Abbott!
I’m glad my Sarah wed so brave a man,
And one so strong of arm.

It’s eighteen four,
It’s almost eighteen five. It’s twenty years
Since I was captured when Burgoyne was whipped
At Saratoga. Why, it’s almost twenty
Since I became an American soldier. Now
Here am I builder of this frontier fort,
And its commander! Aged now forty-nine.
But in my time a British soldier first,
Now an American; first resident
Of Ireland, then England, Maryland,
Now living here. I see the wild geese fly
To distant shores from distant shores and wonder
How they endure such strangeness. But what’s that
To man’s adventures, change of home, what’s that
To my unsettled life? Why there’s La Salle:
They say La Salle in sixteen seventy-one
Was here, and now it’s almost eighteen five.
And what’s your wild geese to La Salle! He’s born
At Rouen, sails the seas, and travels over
Some several thousand miles through Canada.
Is here exploring portages and rivers.
Ends up at last down by the Rio Grande,
And dies almost alone half way around
The world from where he started. There’s a man!
May some one say of me: There was a man!...

I’m lonely without Sarah, without James.
Tom bring my pipe and that tobacco bag.
Here place my note to Jacob Kingsbury
There on the shelf—remember, to the captain
When the “Tracy” comes. Draw, boys, up to the fire
I’ll tell you what a wondrous dream I had,
And woke with on my Sarah’s wedding day....