Miller, Cincinnatus Heine
Cincinnatus Heine (1841-), an American poet known usually by his pen name of Joaquin Miller. He was a native of Indiana, but spent most of his life on the Pacific coast. He was by turns a miner, a lawyer, a judge, and an editor. He tried at first to sell his poems in the East, but, unable to do so, he took them to London, where they were published under the title of Songs of the Sierras and brought their author considerable fame. Other volumes of poems are: Songs of the Sun Lands, Songs of the Desert, Songs of Italy, and Songs of Mexican Seas. He produced several works of fiction: The Baroness of New York, The Danites of the Sierras, and '49, or the Gold-Seekers of the Sierras. Of the following quotations, the first is the opening stanza of Miller's well known poem, Columbus; the other gives a hint of the stand he took regarding his relations to his fellow men:
Behind the Gates of Hercules,
Before him not the ghost of shores,
Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said, "Now must we pray,
For, lo, the very stars are gone;
Speak, Admiral, now what shall I say?
"Why, say, 'Sail on, sail on, sail on and on.'"
In men whom men condemn as ill,
I find so much of goodness still;
In men whom men pronounce divine,
I find so much of sin and blot,
I hesitate to draw the line
Between the two, when God has not.