The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-01-13

Kishicoquillas beautiful word,
Soft as the river it christens-
That drops from the mountain down like bird,
In trills of natural melody heard
Saying, to any who listens,
Under the hemlocks or over the willows:
"Kishicoquillas!"
Once, when boy, strayed from thy rlls,
Far in the green Aleghanies,
Adown through the clefts of the wild gray hills
To the golden valley of brooks and mills,
Where the strong Junata's refrain is:
(Waiting to bear thee away on his billows)
"Kishicoquillas!"
Shrill the bald eagle screamed to tear
Thy silvery trout he had taken;
The eyes of the red fox winked from his lair;
Deep in thy sands were the tracks of the bear;
By the stag's tall antlers shaken
The boughs of the sycamore murmured to thrillus:
"Kishicoquillas!"
Down the long aisles of beech and oak,
Shyly the deer were grazing;
Cheerily echoed the lumbermen's stroke;
Bluely arose their camp-fires smoke;
Dreamy by distance the song they were raising,
Thou with thy life in thy name seemed to thrill
us:
"Kishicoquillas!"
Called the young quail from the messy brake;
The woodcock whirred a-soaring;
Rang his alarum the rattlesnake,
The cataract climbed the beard of the lake;
The old red mill slept a-snoring;
Bending, the cattle drank under thy willows,
"Kishicoquillas !"
SWccter tiny water imam sugar tnat drlpS
In the cup of thy naples wounded,
Sweet as kisses on virgin lips
Thy name, that is music to him who sips,
Each time that its prattle is sounded,
Liquid and loving, like thee, to thrill us:
'Kishicoquillas! !"
Mr.. Townsends muse is roamer like him
self, and the mood of these poems is as varied
as their subject. Many of Them show not
enly keen observation and fine appreciation
l.. -.
of a finer fibre and more elevated tone of
thought than would be expected from Mr..
Townsends prose STYLE AS a thoroughly
American poem, for instance, the following
will repay more than one perusal-
WILDCAT JUNCTION.
woman in calico dress, who smokes her pipe
as she sits;
A hairy man, in slouched hat who whittles
and yaWns and spits;
A travelling Jew asleep by the stove, with his
head on carpet-bag;
And the wind Accusing out OF doors like child
forsaken hag.
Two railroads chased across moor, bya CHASTITY
lanterns CLEAN;
The ''bob-tail" train gone bowling away like
half of O nightmare dream:
The naked station caught between, in the juno
tons iron vice,
And one stark gin-mll over the way with
Hoosers throwing dice.
III.
] sit in heather awe, and muse: the night ex-
press is late;
Crunched bloodily perhaps, afar, against some
dawdling freight; ~ a.l a.s
Or down some yielding trestle-bridge shot in
some rivers ooze,
To give some wildcat journalist bit OF morn
ing news.
God help the brave and sallow folk who farm
this Western waste
The young men withered with the chills the
young girls, weary-faced;
The savage children chasing down the lean, lank
geese and pigs;
The gaunt wife scoldng her old man, who mopes
1900 and swears and swigs.
How lone the cracked and parched world save
when the trains go by
How lone the river-beds, so broad scorched up,
and scooped and dry
How lone the flat, shorn fields of stalks, be-
strewn with stump and chunk
How lone the scrubby woods, that know no
satyr but the skunk
VI.
All year the hutted homes look down the rutted
roads of slough;
All life, the stunted shaggy nags, detected,
mounch and plough;
The plank towns, pitched at random, seem to
$3.50. Lnelr cruue spires TO say:
40 God, it is our destiny and slavery to pray ~
at VII.
Hard lines of cunning avarice the strong mems
faces rift, .T n
And garbs and tables primitive and desperate
with thrift,
show life, like all the landscapes stark and
starveling as the scope I
OF souls immortal, by their greed, but ignorant
of hope
VIII
Still midst these bare-legged folks, perhaps,
grew up some wondrous men,
AS grows some silver poplar shaft deep in some
dogwood fen;
Some Crockett heard his mother sing in yonder
crones shrill Groom,
In yonder lank-haired giant burns the soul OF
Daniel Boone. I
TX.
Here Lincoln, with his jaundiced face, hoed corn
to buy his shoes;
Miraculous intelligence that he could read the
news,
When once month the papers came, and round
about 70 list, M
The neighbors eheered to hear how hung some
abolitionist