Classic Poem

O there's many a vista grand and bright
 By mountain and plain and sea,
But the loveliest spot that the wide earth owns
 Is the valley of Yomoree.

The hills sweep round like a mighty bowl,
 And the vale it lies below,
Where the river winds in a silver band
 And tufted palm-trees grow.

A thousand feet from the sheer, sheer verge!
 A thousand feet of air!
A grisly brink, and a ghastly fall
 From the cliff to the valley fair!

In fiery Alvarado's time,
 When the Spaniard swept the land,
'Twas here by the brink of the lofty steep
 A chieftain took his stand.

His brow was dusk, but his mien was high.
 He could not be a slave,
To toil in the mines of the pitiless foe
 And fill a brutish grave.

With horse and hound come the hireling troop,
 With devilish yell and sneer.
“And prithee, friend,” quoth a jibing voice,
 “What doeth your lordship here?

“The mountain air is fresh and cool,
 But the mines they are dark and damp.
The sunshine is gay, but a dismal thing
 Is the dim and flaring lamp.”

Then another spoke in a sterner tone:
 “Ho, chieftain of Camaguey!
Death or life—be the choice your own.
 Our errand is no child's play.”

The Spanish speech to the chieftain's ear
 Was little but senseless sound;
But “death or life,” he caught the words,
 And his heart gave a joyous bound.

For the life that had once so blithesome been
 Was a weary weight to bear,
And the sombre shade of his people's doom
 Dimmed all the sunny glare.

His power was crushed and his hope was gone;
 Kindred nor land had he.
What wonder he looked on the doom of death
 As the guerdon of liberty?

What thoughts of fire through his spirit whirled
 No mortal man may know.
This answer he made in his native tongue,
 Syllabled sternly slow:

“Death or life—would ye grant the choice?
 It never was yours to give.
Lo, death lies here at my very feet,
 And ye cannot bid me live.

“My choice is taken: 'tis death, not life;
 Yet my death, like my life, shall be free.
No hireling hand shall speed my soul.
 I have answered,—Yomoree.”

He turned and leaped in the awful void.
 Aghast they looked below,
A whirling form and a headlong rush—
 And death had claimed their foe.

A dizzy crowd on the beetling cliff;
 And down in the valley fair
A shapeless mass 'mid the tangled herbs.
 A thousand feet of air!

The cliff still bares its rugged front
 To the tropic sun and storm.
But a name that shall last till the ages end
 Was left by that mangled form.

O there's many a sepulchre grand and proud
 By mountain and plain and sea,
But never man had a nobler tomb
 Than the valley of Yomoree.