The Great Valley

by Edgar Lee Masters

I had an uncle back in Ireland
Who failed at everything except his Latin.
He could spout Virgil till your head would ache.
And when I was a boy he used to roll
The Latin out, translating as he went:
The ghost of Hector comes before Æneas,
And warns him to leave Troy. His mother Venus
Tells him to settle in another land!
The Delphic oracle misunderstood,
Æneas goes to Crete. He finds at last
His ships are fired by the Trojan women,
Great conflagration! Down he goes to hell,
And then the Sibyl shows him what’s to be:
What race of heroes shall descend from him,
And how a city’s walls he shall up-build
In founding Rome....

So last night in my dream
This uncle came to me and said to me:
“‘Aeneas’ Whistler you shall found a city.
You’ve built Fort Dearborn, that is the beginning.
Imperial Rome could be put in a corner
Of this, the city which you’ll found. Fear not
The wooden horse, but have a care for cows:
I see ships burning on your muddy Tiber,
And toppling walls.” I dreamed I felt the heat.
But then a voice said “Where’s your little boy
George Washington?”—come sit on father’s knee,
And hear about my dream—there little boy!
Well, as I said, I felt the heat and then
I felt the cruelest cold and then the voice:
“You cannot come to Russia with your boy,
He’ll make his way.” I woke up with these words,
And found the covers off and I was cold.
And then no sooner did I fall asleep
Than this old uncle re-appeared and said:
“A race of heroes shall descend from you,
Here shall a city stand greater than Rome.”
With that he seemed to alter to a witch,
A woman’s form, the voice of him changed too,
And said: “I’m Mother Shipton, Captain Whistler.
“Men through the mountains then shall ride,
“Nor horse nor ass be by their side”—
Think, gentlemen, what it would be to ride
In carriages propelled by steam! And then
This dream became a wonder in a wonder
Of populous streets, of flying things, of spires
Of driven mist that looked like fiddle strings
From tree to tree. Of smoke-stacks over-topping
The tallest pine; of bridges built of levers,
And such a haze of smoke, and cloud like shapes
Passing along like etchings one by one:
Cathedrals, masts as thick as hazel thickets,
And buildings great as hills, and miles of lights.
Till by some miracle the sun had moved,
And rose not in the east but in the south.
And shone along the shore line of the Lake,
As he shines o’er the Lake when he arises,
And makes an avenue of gold, no less
This yellow sand took glory of his light.
And where he shone it seemed an avenue,
And over it, where now the dunes stretch south,
Along the level shore of sand, there stood
These giant masses, etchings as it were!
And Mother Shipton said: “This is your city.
“A race of heroes shall descend from you;
“Your son George Washington shall do great deeds.
“And if he had a son what would you name him?”
Well, as I went to sleep with thoughts of Sarah
And praises for James Abbott, it was natural
That I should say “I’d name him after James.”
“Well done” said Mother Shipton and then vanished....
I woke to find the sun-light in my room,
And from my barracks window saw the Lake
Stirred up to waves slate-colored by the wind;
Some Indians loitering about the fort.
They knew this was James Abbott’s wedding day,
And Sarah’s day of leaving.

Soldiers! Comrades!
What is most real, our waking hours, our dreams?
Where was I in this sleep? What are our dreams
But lands which lie below our hour’s horizon,
Yet still are seen in a reflecting sky,
And which through earth and heaven draw us on?
Look at me now! Consider of yourselves:
Housed, fed, yet lonely, in this futile task
By this great water, in this waste of grass,
Close to this patch of forest, on this river
Where wolves howl, and the Indian waits his chance—
Consider of your misery, your sense
Of worthless living, living to no end:
I tell you no man lives but to some end.
He may live only to increase the mass
Wherewith Fate is borne-down, or just to swell
The needed multitude when the hero passes,
To give the hero heart! But every man
Walks, though in blindness, to some destiny
Of human growth, who only helps to fill,
And helps that way alone, the empty Fate
That waits for lives to give it Life.

And look
Here are we housed and fed, here is a fire
And here a bed. A hundred years ago
Marquette, La Salle, scarce housed and poorly fed
Gave health and life itself to find the way
Through icy marshes, treacherous swamps and forests
For this Fort Dearborn, where to-night we sit
Warming ourselves against a roaring hearth.
And what’s our part? It is not less than theirs.
And what’s the part of those to come? Not less
Than ours has been! And what’s the life of man?
To live up to the God in him, to obey
The Voice which says: You shall not live and rest.
Nor sleep, nor mad delight nor senses fed,
Nor memory dulled, nor tortured hearing stopped
To drown my Voice shall leave you to forget
Life’s impulse at the heart of Life, to strive
For men to be, for cities, nobler states
Moving foreshadowed in your dreams at night,
And realized some hundred years to come.
When this Fort Dearborn, you and all of you,
And I who sit with pipe and son on knee,
Regretting a dear daughter, who this hour
Is somewhere in the darkness (like our souls
Which move in darkness, listening to the beat
Of our mysterious hearts, or with closed eyes
Sensing a central Purpose) shall be dust—
Our triumphs, sorrows, even our names forgotten.
And all we knew lost in the wreck and waste
And change of things. And even what we did
For cities, nobler states, and greater men
Forgotten too. It matters not. We work
For cities, nobler states and greater men,
Or else we die in Life which is the death
Which soldiers must not die!

III
EMILY BROSSEAU: IN CHURCH

Domine, Jesu Christe, Rex gloriae, libera animas omnium fidelium defunctorum de poenis inferni, et de profundo lacu.

Leave me now and I will watch here through the night,
And I’ll put in new candles, if these fail.
I’ll sit here as I am, where I can see
His brow, his nose’s tip and thin white hair,
And just beyond his brow, above the altar,
The red gash in the side of Jesus like
A candle’s flame when burning to the socket.
Go all of you, and leave me. I don’t care
How cold the church grows. Michael Angelo
Went to a garret, which was cold, and stripped
His feet, and painted till the chill of death
Took hold of him, a man just eighty-seven,
And I am ninety, what’s the odds?—go now ...

Now Jean we are alone! Your very stillness
Is like intenser life, as in your brow
Your soul was crystallized and made more strong,
And nearer to me. You are here, I feel you.
I close my eyes and feel you, you are here.
Therefore a little talk before the dawn,
Which will come soon. Dawn always comes too soon
In times like this. It waits too long in times
Of absence, and you will be absent soon....

I want to talk about my happiness,
My happy life, the part you played in it.
There never was a day you did not kiss me
Through nearly seventy years of married life.
I had two hours of heaven in my life.
The first one was the dance where first we met.
The other when last fall they brought me roses,
Those ninety roses for my birth-day, when
They had me tell them of the first Chicago
I saw when just a child, about the Fort;
The cabins where the traders lived, who worked,
And made the fortune of John Jacob Astor.
Poor Jean! It’s scarce a week since you were struck.
You sat down in your chair, ’twas after dinner,
Then suddenly I saw your head fall forward.
You could not speak when I went over to you.
But afterwards when you were on the bed
I leaned above you and you took the ribbon,
That hung down from my cap and pressed it trembling
Against your lips. What triumph in your death!
Your death was like a mass, mysterious, rich
Like Latin which the priests sing and the choir—
May angels take you and with Lazarus,
Once poor, receive you to eternal rest....
Two hours of heaven in my life that’s true!
And years between that made life more than good.
My first sight of Chicago stands for all
My life became for you and all I’ve lived.
The year is 1829, you know of course.
I’ve told you of the trip in Prairie schooners
From Ft. Detroit round the lake, we camped
Along the way, the last time near the place
Where Gary and the steel mills are to-day.
And the next morning what a sky! as blue
As a jay’s wing, with little rifts of snow
Along the hollows of the yellow dunes,
And some ice in the lake, which lapped a little,
And purplish colors far off in the north.
So round these more than twenty miles we drove
That April day. And when we came as far
As thirty-ninth or thirty-first perhaps—
Just sand hills then—I never can forget it—
What should I see? Fort Dearborn dazzling bright,
All newly white-washed right against that sky,
And the log cabins round it, far away
The rims of forests, and between a prairie
With wild flowers in the grasses red and blue—
Such wild flowers and such grasses, such a sky,
Such oceans of sweet air, in which were rising
Straight up from Indian wigwams spires of smoke,
About where now the Public Library stands
On Randolph Street. And as we neared the place
There was the flag, a streaming red and white
Upon a pole within the Fort’s inclosure.
I cried for happiness though just a child,
And cry now thinking....

I must set this candle
To see your pale brow better! What’s the hour?
The night is passing, and I have so much
To say to you before the dawn....