False, but Beautiful
by John Rollin Ridge
Dark as a demon's dream is one I love --
In soul-but oh, how beautiful in form!
She glows like Venus throned in joy above,
Or on the crimson couch of Evening warm
Reposing her sweet limbs, her heaving breast
Unveiled to him who lights the golden west.
Ah, me, to be by that soft hand carest,
To feel the twining of that snowy arm,
To drink that sigh with richest love opprest,
To bathe within that sunny sea of smiles,
To wander in that wilderness of wiles
And blissful blandishments -- it is to thrill
With subtle poison, and to feel the will
Grow weak in that which all the veins doth fill.
Fair sorceress! I know she spreads a net
The strong, the just, the brave to snare; and yet
My soul cannot, for its own sake, forget
The fascinating glance which flings its chain
Around my quivering heart and throbbing brain,
And binds me to my painful destiny,
As bird, that soars no more on high,
Hangs trembling on the serpent's doomful eye.
John Rollin Ridge also went by the names Cheesquatalawny and Yellow Bird; he was Cherokee, and, indeed, from one of the most important and influential Cherokee families. His The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta is usually named as the first Californian novel, although Ridge seems to have insisted that it was actually a historical account. Brilliant man, but somewhat unsettling: he killed a man in a horse dispute once; he was assimilationist (i.e., he thought that Anglo-American culture should be preferred to Native American culture); and he was an anti-abolitionist (who had owned slaves in Arkansas).
