for the Return of Birds_ 15
_The Forest Cotillion_ 16
_The Spruces of the Forest_ 17
_The Wild Lover_ 18
_Homeward Bound_ 19
_Approaching Night_ 20

FOREWORD

Songs from a far-away world; a cry from another sphere. To those of
us who once experienced the still and pitiless cold, a cry terribly
suggestive of the horror-charged gloom, of the icy silence as
unbroken as that of unfathomable deeps, of the stern and
uncompromising individuality of a disturbed and vengeful North.

Yet one is also reminded that, even in the Klondyke, in due season
the brooding spruces are awakened from slumber by the songs of
happy-throated songsters, that the melancholy of the forest is
brightened by gay flowers. The weight is then lifted from men's
hearts; singing is heard in the cabin, and the sound of laughter on
the trail. When the mighty Yukon is open to the Behring Sea, the far
North is in touch with the world and men are glad.

But the Arctic summer is short-lived. The days of the bird and the
flower and the rippling creeks are numbered. Soon the sky turns grey,
the wind chants the sun's requiem, the snow falls; and then returns
the cold, the gloom, the feeling of isolation, the indescribable
terror.

I heard these songs sung in the Arctic, the singer at my side--these
songs of nature, songs of hope, home, heart. They seem a part of my
life. I heard them as the cry of a lone bird in the vast silence of
eternal snows.

JOAQUIN MILLER
THE HEIGHTS, CAL.
_Nov. 15th '99_

_The Northern Light_

Who drapes that mystic veil across that everbrooding sky?
Who hues it with a soul of pearl? Who draws it to and fro?
Who breathes upon it with the breath that makes it glow and die,
Lighting that crystal river, those mountains cowl'd with snow?

_In Winter_

Beneath the snow the mosses sleep
Amid the forest's silence;
Above, the stately birches keep
Unbroken vigils.

The spruce trees dream of summer hours
And birds that carrolled sweetly,
Of gentle winds and smiling flowers
That died too quickly.

_Lyric_

Tell me, tell me, gentle stars,
Ever watchful, ever brig