And I had won; For on the fourth day as I sat In the black coffin-shadow of a boat, The burning decks a-wash with lime-white sun, I saw the graybeard lookout swell his throat And utter forth a glad and bronze hurrah, “Land Ho!” he cried—­ We lined the windward side To cheer the washing palm tops of Nassau.

H.A.

[11] See the note on the chimes at back of book.

BEYOND DEBATE

    Out from the wrought-iron gate
    Miss Perdee drives in state;
    Miss Perdee wears the thin smile
    And the sleeves of 1888.

    Miss Perdee’s face is stifled as a sonnet;
    Upon her wire-tight hair a duck-shaped bonnet
    Nests, nodding with a cachepeigne
    Of violets on it.

    East Bay, some tea and talk, them home by King. 
    The horses have an antiquated plod;
    The team is old, but not too old to balk
    If driven north of Broad.

    Miss Perdee wears the sure air of a queen,
    Which only queens and Perdees can achieve. 
    The Perdees had blue blood in Adam’s veins
    When Adam had the rib he gave to Eve.

    Back through the wrought-iron gate
    Miss Perdee drives in state. 
    Miss Perdee lives down on the Battery! 
    Beyond debate.

H.A.

MARSH TACKIES[12]

    Browsing on the salty marsh grass,
    Barrel-ribbed and blowsy-bellied,
    With a neigh as shrill as whistles
    And their mouths red-raw from thistles,
    I have seen the brown marsh tackies,
    Hiding in the swamps at Kiawah,
    With the gray mosquito patches
    Gory on their shaggy thatches. 
    Balky, vicious, and degenerates,
    They are small as Spanish jennets,
    But their sires were with El Tarab,
    When he conquered Andalusia
    For the Prophet and the Arab;
    And they came with Ponce de Leon,
    When the Spaniard made a peon
    And a Christian of the Carib. 
    Peering from palmetto thickets
    At some fort’s coquina wickets,
    Startled Indians saw them grazing,
    Thunder-stamping and amazing
    As the beasts from other stars,
    When they galloped down savannas,
    And their masters seemed centaurs
    With the new white metal blazing. 
    Thus they came, these little beasts,
    With the men-at-arms and priests,
    In the west with Coronado
    When he reached the Colorado,
    In the east with bold De Soto
    In the search for El Dorado,
    And they packed the bells and toys
    That the chieftains loved like boys;
    Struggling through the swamps and briars
    After dons and tonsured friars;
    Dying in the forests dismal,
    Till the shrill of silver clarion
    Brought the buzzards to the carrion
    Round the smoke of lonely fires
    In a continent abysmal.