The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
(c)1998-2002; (c)2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
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LEGENDS OF THE LOW COUNTRY
Place the new hands
In the old hands
Of the old generation,
And let us tilt tables
In the high room
Of our imagination.
Let the thick veil glow thin,
At sunrise—at sunrise—
Let the strange eyes peer
in,
The red, the black, and the
white faces
Of the still living dead
Of the three races.
Let a quaint voice begin:
Voice of an
Indian
“Gone from the land,
We leave the music of our
names,
As pleasant as the sound of
waters;
Gone is the log-lodge and
the skin tepee,
And moons ago the ghost-canoe
brought home
The latest of our sons and
daughters—
Yet still we linger in tobacco
smoke
And in the rustling fields
of maize;
Faint are the tracks our moccasins
have left,
But they are there, down all
your ways.”
Voice of a
Slave
“We do not talk
Of hours in the rice
When days were long,
Nor of old masters
Who are with us here
Beyond all right or wrong.
Only white afternoons come
back,
When in the fields
We reached the Mercy Seat
On wings of song.”
Voice of a
Planter
“Nothing moves there
but the night wind,
Blowing the mosses like smoke;
All would be silent as moonlight
But for the owl in the oak—
Stairways that lead up to
nothing—
Windows like terrible scars—
Snakes on a log in the cistern
Peering at stars....”
Spirit of Prophecy
“Dawn with its childish
colors
Stipples the solemn vault
of night;
Behind the horizon the sun
shakes a bloody fist;
Mysteries stand naked by the
lakes of mist;
Spirits
take flight,
The
medicine man,
The
voodoo doctor—
Witches
mount brooms.
The
day looms.
Faster
it comes,
Bringing
young giants
Who
hate solitude,
And
march with drums—
Beat—beat—beat,
Down
every ancient street,
The
young giants! Minded like boys:
Action
for action’s sake they love
And
noise for noise.”
Voice of a
Poet
“The fire of the sunset
Is remembered at midnight,
But forgotten at dawn.
While the old stars set,
Let us speak of their glory
Before they are gone.”
H.A.
You who have known my city
for a day
And heard the music of her
steepled bells,
Then laughed, and passed along
your vagrant way,
Carrying only what the city
tells
To those who listen solely
with their ears;
You know St. Matthew’s
swinging harmonies,
And old St. Michael’s
tale of golden years
Far less like bells than chanted
memories.
Yet there is something wanting
in the song
Of lyric youth with voice
unschooled by pain.
And there are breathing stillnesses
that throng
Dim corners, and that only
stir again
When bells are dumb.
Not even bronze that beats
Our heart-throbs back can
tell of old defeats.
But you who take the city
for your own,
Come with me when the night
flows deep and kind
Along these narrow ways of
troubled stone,
And floods the wide savannas
of the mind
With tides that cool the fever
of the day:
One with the dark, companioned
by the stars,
We’ll seek St. Philip’s,
nebulous and gray,
Holding its throbbing beacon
to the bars,
A prisoned spirit vibrant
in the stone
That knew its empire of forgotten
things.
Then will the city know you
for her own,
And feel you meet to share
her sufferings;
While down a swirl of poignant
memories,
Herself shall find you in
her silences.
Once coaches waited row on
shining row
Before this door; and where
the thirsty street
Drank the deep shadow of the
portico
The Sunday hush was stirred
by happy feet,
Low greetings, and the rustle
of brocade,
The organ throb, and warmth
of sunny eyes
That flashed and smiled beneath
a bonnet shade;
Life with the lure of all
its swift disguise.
Then from the soaring lyric
of the spire,
Like the composite voice of
all the town,
The bells burst swiftly into
singing fire
That wrapped the building,
and which showered down
Bright cadences to flash along
the ways
Loud with the splendid gladness
of the days.
War took the city, and the
laughter died
From lips that pain had kissed.
One after one
All lovely things went down
the sanguine tide,
While death made moaning answer
to the gun.
Then, as a golden voice dies
in the throat
Of one who lives, but whose
glad heart is dead,
The bells were taken; and
a sterner note
Rang from their bronze where
Lee and Jackson led.
The rhythmic seasons chill
and burn and chill,
Cooling old angers, warming
hearts again.
The ancient building quickens
to the thrill
Of lilting feet; but only
singing rain
Flutters old echoes in the
portico;
Those who can still remember
love it so.
D.H.
[1] See the note on the chimes at back of book.
Despise the garish presences
that flaunt
The obvious possession of
today,
To wear with me the spectacles
that haunt
The optic sense with wraiths
of yesterday—
These cobbled shores through
which the traffic streams
Have been the stage-set of
successive towns,
Where coffined actors postured
out their dreams,
And harlot Folly changed her
thousand gowns.
This corner-shop was Bull’s
Head Tavern,
When names now dead on marble
lived in clay;
Its rooms were like a sanded
cavern,
Where candles made a sallow
jest of day,
And drovers’ boots came
grinding like a quern,
While merchants drank their
steaming cups of “tay.”
Here pock-marked Black Beard
covenanted Bonnet
To slit the Dons’ throats
at St. Augustine,
And bussed light ladies, unknown
to this sonnet,
Whose names, no doubt, would
rime with Magdalene.
And English parsons, who had
lost their fames,
Sat tippling wine as spicy
as their joke,
Larding bald texts with bets
on cocking mains,
And whiffing pipes churchwardens
used to smoke.
Here macaronis, hands
a-droop with laces,
Dealt knave to knave in picquet
or ecarte,
In coats no whit less scarlet
than their faces,
While bullies hiccuped healths
to King and Party,
And Yankee slavers, in from
Barbadoes,
Drove flinty bargains with
keen Huguenots.
Then Meeting Street first
knew St. Michael’s steeple,
When redcoats marched with
royal drums a-banging,
Or merchants stopped gowned
tutors to inquire
Why school let out to see
a pirate hanging;
And gentlemen took supper
in the street,
When candle-shine from tables
guled the dark,
While others passing by would
be discreet
And take the farther side
without remark,
Pausing perhaps to snuff the
balmy savor
Of turtle-soup mulled with
the bay-leaves’ flavor:
These walls beheld them, and
these lingering trees
That still preempt the middle
of the gutter;
They are the backdrops for
old comedies—
If leaves were tongues—what
stories they might utter!
H.A.
I stood once where these rows
of deep piazzas
Frown on the harbor from their
columned pride,
And saw the gallant youngest
of the cities
Lift from the jealous many-fingered
tide.
Flanked by the multi-colored
sweeping marshes,
Among the little hummocks
choked with thorn,
I saw the first, small, dauntless
row of buildings
Give back the rose and orange
of the dawn.
Above them swayed the shining
green palmettoes
Vocal and plaintive at the
winds’ caress;
While, at the edge of sight,
the fluent silver
Of sea and bay framed the
wide loneliness.
Out of the East came gaunt
razees of commerce
Troubling the dappled azure
of the seas;
While sleeping marsh awoke,
and vanished under
The thrusting open fingers
of the quays.
Ever, and more, came ships,
while others followed.
Feeling their way among unsounded
bars,
Heaping their freights upon
the groaning wharf-heads,
Filling their holds with turpentines
and tars,
Until the little twisting
streets all vanished
Into a blur of interwoven
spars.
II
One with the rest, I saw the
commerce dwindle,
High-bosomed, sturdy vessels
take the main
And leave us, with the morning
in their faces,
Never to come to any port
again.
Slowly an ominous and pregnant
silence
Grew deep upon the wharves
where ships had lain.
Laughter rang hollow in those
days of waiting,
And nameless fears came drifting
down the night.
The tides swung in from sea,
hung, and retreated,
Bearing their secrets back
beyond our sight;
Till, like the sudden rending
of a curtain,
The East reeled with the lightnings
of a fight.
Never was a night so long
with waiting.
Never was the dark more prone
to stay.
And, in the whispering gloom,
taut, listening faces
Hung in a pallid line along
the bay.
Slowly at last the mists dissolved,
revealing
A fearful silhouette against
the day.
Blue on a saffron dawn, a
frigate lifted
Out of the fog that veiled
her fold on fold,
Taking the early sunlight
on her cannon
In running spurts and rings
of molten gold;
No flag of any nation at her
masthead.
Small wonder that our pulses
fluttered cold.
Never a shot she fired on
the city,
But, when the night came blowing
in from sea,
And our ruddy windows warmed
the darkness,
Through the surrounding gloom
we heard the free
Strong sweep and clank of
rowing in the harbor,
And on the wharves raw jest
and revelry.
She was the first, but many
others followed;
Insolent, keen, and swift
to come-about,
I have seen them go smashing
down the harbor,
Loud with the boom of canvas
and the shout
Of lusty voices at the crowded
bulwarks,
Where tattooed hands were
swinging long-boats out.
Up through the streets the
roisterers would swagger,
Filling the narrow ways from
wall to wall,
Scattering gold like ringing
summer showers,
Ready with song and jest and
cheery call
For those who passed; buying
the little taverns
At any cost; opening wine
for all.
There were rare evenings when
we used to gather
Down in a coffee-house beside
the square.
Morgan knew well our little
favored corner;
Black Beard the sinister was
often there;
And we have watched the night
blur into morning
While Bonnet, quiet-voiced
and debonnaire,
Would throw the glamor of
the seas about us
In archipelagoes of mad romance;
Pointing a story with a line
from Shakespeare,
Quoting a Latin proverb; while
his glance,
Flashing across the eager,
listening circle,
Fettered—blinded—held
us in a trance.
Their bags of Spanish gold
bribed our juries,
Bought dignified officials
of the Crown;
Money and wine were ours for
the asking;
The Orient flamed out in shawl
and gown,
Until a sudden and unholy
splendor
Irradiated all the quiet town.
Those were the days when there
was open gaming,
And roaring song in tongue
of every race.
Evil, as colorful as poison
weeds,
Bloomed in the market place.
And those who should have
known, shared in the revels,
And passed their neighbors
with averted face.
Until one day a frigate entered
harbor,
And passed the city, with
a Spanish prize,
Then insolently came-about,
despoiled her,
And fired her before our very
eyes,
While the vagrant breezes
left the streaming vapor
Like red rust on the clean
steel of the skies.
III
All in the sullied hours,
While the pirates stood away
Out of the murk and horror
In a sheer white burst of
spray,
Leaving the wreck to settle
Under its winding sheet,
I felt the city shudder
And stir beneath my feet.
Thrilling against the morning,
As audible as song,
I heard the city waken
Out of her night of wrong.
That was a day to cherish
When Rhett and a gallant few
Summoned the best among us;
Called for a daring crew.
New and raw at the business,
To the smithy’s roar
and clang,
We drove our aching muscles
And as we worked we sang,
Until one blowing morning
With summer on the sea,
The Henry to the windward,
The Sea Nymph down
alee,
Flecking the wide Atlantic
With a flaring, lacy track,
We went, as glad as the winds
are glad,
To buy our honor back.
IV
Over the wooded shore-line,
Where the hidden rivers stray
Down to the sea like timid
girls,
I saw in the first faint gray
A burst of cloudy topsails
Go blowing swiftly by,
With the stars aswirl behind
them
Like bright dust down the
sky.
Gone were the days of waiting,
And the long, blind search
was gone;
With a cheer we swung to meet
them
On the forefoot of the dawn.
Out of the screening woodland
Into the open sound
The frigate crashed, then
staggered
Careening, fast aground.
White water tugged behind
us,
We felt the Henry reel
And spin as the hard impartial
sand
Closed on her vibrant keel.
All through the high white
morning,
While the lagging tide crawled
out,
Fate held us bound and waiting,
While, turn and turn about,
We manned the fuming cannon
And bartered hell for hell,
While the scuppers sang with
coursing life
Where the dead and dying fell.
Till, like the break of fever
When life thrills up through
pain,
We felt the current stirring
Under the keel again.
Then it was hand to cutlass,
And pistols in the sash.
“All hands stand by
for boarding,—
Now, close abeam and lash!”
But the ensign that had mocked
us
With its symbol of the dead
Fluttered and dropped to the
bloody deck,
And a white square spoke instead.
Home from the kill we thundered
On the tail of the equinox,
To the thrum of straining
canvas,
And the whine and groan of
blocks.
Leaping clear of the shallows,
Chancing the creaming bars,
We heard the first faint cheering
As the late sun limned our
spars.
Safe in the lee of the city
We moored in the afterglow,
The Sea Nymph and the
Henry
With the buccaneers in tow.
Glad we had been in the going,
But God! it was good to come
Out of the sky-wide loneliness
To the walls and lights of
home.
V
Under these shouldering rows
of stone
That notch the quiet sky;
Under the asphalt’s
transient seal
The same old mud-flats lie;
And I have felt them surge
and lift
At night as I passed by.
Yes, I have seen them sprawling
nude
While an Autumn moon hung
chill,
And the tide came shuddering
in from sea,
Lift by lift, until
It held them under a silver
mesh,
Responsive to its will.
Then slowly out from the crowding
walls
I have seen the gibbets grow,
And stand against the empty
sky
In a desolate, windblown row,
While their dancers swayed,
and turned, and spun,
Tripping it heel and toe;
With a flash of gold where
the peering moon
Saw an earring as it swung,
And a silver line that leapt
and died
Where the salt-white sea-boots
hung,
And the pitiful, nodding,
silent heads,
With half of their songs unsung.
D.H.
[2] See the note on the pirates.
"And these squaws,
waiting in vain the return of their husbands,
sought out braves among
the other tribes, and so men say the Sewees
have become Wandos."
“One flask of rum for
fifty muskrat skins!
A horn of powder for a bear’s
is not enough;
A whole winter’s hunting
for some blanket stuff—
Ugh!” said the Sewee
Chief,
“The pale-face is a
thief!”
Ever, from the north-north-east,
The great winged canoes
Swept landward from the shining
water
Into Bull’s Bay,
Where the poor Sewees trapped
the otter,
Or took the giant oysters
for their feast—
Ever the ships came from the
north and east.
Surely, at morning, when they
walked the beaches,
Over the smoky-silver, whispering
reaches,
Where the ships came from,
loomed a land,
Far-off, one mountain-top,
away
Where the great camp-fire
sun made day:
“There are the pale-face
lodges,” they would say.
So all one winter
Was great hunting on that
shore;
Much maize was pounded,
And of acorn oil great store
Was tried;
And collops of smoked deer
meat set aside,
And skins and furs,
And furs and skins,
And bales of furs beside.
And all that winter, too,
The smoke eddied
From many a huge canoe,
Hollowed by flame from cypress
trees
That with stone ax and fire
The Sewee shaped to the good
shape
Of his desire.
So when next spring
The traders came from Charles
Town,
Bringing a gift of blankets
from the king,
The Sewees would not trade
a pelt—
Saying, “We go to see
The Great White Father in
his own tepee—
Heap, heap much rum!”
And then they passed the pipe
of peace,
And puffed it, and looked
glum.
The traders thought the redskins
must be daft;
They saw the huge canoes,
And, wondering at their use,
Asked, “What will you
do with these?”
And the chief pointed east
across the seas;
And then the pale-face laughed.
And yet—
There was a story told
By one of Black Beard’s
men
Who had done evil things for
gold,
That one morning, out at sea,
The fog made a sudden lift,
And from the high poop, looking
through the rift,
He saw
Twenty canoes, each with six
warriors,
Paddling straight toward the
rising sun,
Where the wind made a flaw—
He swore he saw
And counted twenty hulls,
Circled about by screaming
gulls—
Then such a storm came down
That some prayed on that hellion
ship,
But he did not—
He was not born to drown.
This was the tale Told with much bluster, Over ale And oaths, At Charles Town. He swore he saw the Indians in the dawn, And he’d be danged! And by Christ’s Mother— Take his rings in pawn! But he was hanged With poor Stede Bonnet, later on.
H.A.
[3] See the note at the back of the book.
That evening, gathered on
the vessel’s poop,
They saw the glimmering land,
And far lights moved there,
As once Columbus saw them,
winking, strange;
Around the ship two darkies
in a small canoe
Paddled and grinned, and held
up silver fish.
Over the high ship’s
tumble-home
A pinnace slid,
Slow, lowered from the squealing
davit-ropes,
And from a port a-square with
lantern light,
The little, leather trunks
were passed,
Ironbound and quaint; while
down the vessel’s side
With voluble advice, bon
voyage and au revoir,
The chatting Frenchmen came—
Click-clap of rapiers clipping
on hard boots,
Cocked hats and merry eyes.
The great ship backs its yards,
With drooping sails, await,
A spider-web of spars and
lantern-lights,
While like a pilot shark,
the slim canoe,
A V-shaped ripple wrinkling
from its jaws,
Slides noiselessly across
the swells,
Leading the swinging boat’s
crew to the beach;
And all the world slides up—
And then the stars slide down—
As ocean breathes; while evening
falls,
And destiny is being rowed
ashore.
The twilight-muffled bells
of town, the bark of dogs,
The distant shouts, and smell
of burning wood,
Fall graciously upon their
sea-tired sense.
Wide-trousered, barefoot sailors
carry them to land,
Tho’ snake-voiced waves
flaunt frothing up the beach;
The horse-hide trunks are
piled upon a dune;
And there a little Frenchman
takes his stand,
Hawk-faced and ardent,
While his brown cloak droops
about him
Like young falcon plumes.
Gray beach, gray twilight,
and gray sea—
How strange the scrub palmettoes
down the coast!
No purple-castled heights,
like dear Auvergne,
Against the background of
the Puy de Dome,
But land as level as the sea,
a sandy road
That twists through myrtle
thickets
Where the black boys lead.
Far down a moss-draped avenue
of oaks
There is a flash of torches,
and the lights
Go flitting past the bottle
panes;
A cracked plantation bell
dull-clangs;
The beagles bay,
Black faces swarm, with ivory
eyeballs glazed—
Court dwarfs that served thick
chocolate, on their knees
In damasked, perfumed rooms
at grand Versailles,
Were all the blacks the French
had ever seen.
Major Huger, lace-ruffled
shirt, knee-breeks,
A saddle-pistol in his hand,
Waits on the terrace,
Ready for “hospitality”
to British privateers;
But now no London accent takes
his ears,
No English bow so low, “Good
evening, sair;
I am de la Fayette, and these,
monsieur,
My friends, and this, le Baron
Kalb.”
Welcome’s the custom
of the time and land—
And these are noblemen of
France!
Now is Bartholomew for turkeycocks,
Old wines decant, the chandeliers
flare up,
The slave row brims with lights;
And horses gallop off to summon
guests.
After the ship—how
good the spacious rooms!
How strange mosquito canopies
on beds!
Knights of St. Louis sniff
the frying yams,
Venison, and turtle,—
The old green turtle died
tonight—
The children’s eyes
grow wider on the stairs.
Down in the library,
The Marquis, writing back
to old Auvergne,
Has sanded down the ink;
Again the quill pen squeaks:
“A ship will sail tomorrow
back to France,
By special providence for
you, dear wife;
Tonight there will be toasts
to Washington,
To our good Louis and his
Antoinette—
There will be toasts tonight
for la Fayette....”
He melts the wax;
Look, how the candle gutters
at the flame!
And now he seals the letter
with his ring.
H.A.
[4] See the note at the back of the book.
A BALLAD OF THEODOSIA BURR
And must the old priest wake
with fright
Because the wind is high tonight?
Because the yellow moonlight
dead
Lies silent as a word unsaid—
What dreams had he upon his
bed?
Listen—the storm!
The winter moon scuds high
and bare;
Her light is old upon his
hair;
The gray priest muses in a
prayer:
“Christ Jesus, when
I come to die
Grant me a clean, sweet, summer
sky,
Without the mad wind’s
panther cry.
Send me a little garden breeze
To gossip in magnolia trees;
For I have heard, these fifty
years,
Confessions muttered at my
ears,
Till every mumble of the wind
Is like tired voices that
have sinned,
And furtive skirling of the
leaves
Like feet about the priest-house
eaves,
And moans seem like the unforgiven
That mutter at the gate of
heaven,
Ghosts from the sea that passed
unshriven.
And it was just this time
of night
There came a boy with lantern
light
And he was linen-pale with
fright;
It was not hard to guess my
task,
Although I raised the sash
to ask—
‘Oh, Father,’
cried the boy, ’Oh, come!
Quickly with the viaticum!
The sailor-man is going to
die!’
The thirsty silence drank
his cry.
A starless stillness damped
the air,
While his shrill voice kept
piping there,
’The sailor-man is going
to die’—
The huge drops splattered
from the sky.
I shivered at my midnight
toil,
But took the elements and
oil,
And hurried down into the
street
That barked and clamored at
our feet—
And as we ran there came a
hum
Of round shot slithered on
a drum,
While like a lid of sound
shut down
The thunder-cloud upon the
town;
Jalousies banged and loose
roofs slammed,
Like hornbooks fluttered by
the damned;
And like a drover’s
whip the rain
Cracked in the driving hurricane.
Only the lightning showed
the door
That like two cats we darted
for;
It almost gave a man a qualm
To find the house inside so
calm.
I sloshed all dripping up
the stair,
Up to an attic room a-glare
With candle-shine and lightning-flare—
With little draughts that
moved its hair
A wrinkled mummy sat a-stare,
Rigid, huddling in a chair.
I thought at first the thing
was dead
Until the eyes slid in its
head.
It seemed as if the Banshee
storm
Knocked screaming for his
withered form;
It shrieked and whistled like
a parrot,
Clucking and stuttering through
the garret.
With-out, the mailed hands
of hail
Battered the casements, and
the gale
About his low roof shuddered,
sighing,
As if it knew that he was
dying.
It breathed like waiting beasts
outside,
While soft feet made the shingles
slide.
Then, like a blow upon the
cheek,
The mummy’s voice began
to speak:
’Give me a priest! I’m going to die!’ The Banshee wind took up the cry: ‘Give him a priest, he’s going to die!’ The old house seemed to rock with laughter, Shaking its sides and every rafter.
There was a terror in that
room
Like faint light streaming
from a tomb.
I tried three times before
I spoke,
And then the bald words made
me choke:
’Be quiet, man, for
I am come
To bring you the viaticum!’—
I made the sign of holiness.
He rattled out a startled
cry.
I whispered low, ‘Confess,
confess!’
His thin hands quivered with
distress.
It is a bitter thing to die.
Just when a blast fell on the town, I felt his lean claws clutch me down. It seemed as if the hands of death Were beating at my breast for breath; His arms were like a twisted rope Of rotten strands that tugged at hope. ’Listen, my father, listen well!’ The wind went tolling like a bell:
’She’s lying fifty fathoms deep, Where fishes like white birds go by Through water-air in ocean-land; She has a prayer-book in her hand— Tonight she walks; tonight she spoke; Her hair goes floating out and up, Blown one way, with the water weeds, Always one way, like amber smoke.
She asks the gift she gave to me— This ring—I cannot get it off!’ His hand and hand fought like two claws— ’I hear her calling from the sea!’ His terror made my own heart pause.
His voice went moaning with
the wind,
And groaned and rattled, ‘I
have sinned,’
And moaned and murmured at
my ear
Of bat-winged angels standing
near.
’The little schooner “Patriot”— I can’t forget the vessel’s name; We met her rounding Naggs Head Bank; We made her people walk the plank, Twelve men whose faces I forgot.
But there was one sweet lady there, With lovely eyes and lovely hair, Whose face has stayed like pain and care. For every man she made a prayer; And when the last had found the sea, I cried to her to pray for me.
She prayed—and took this ring, and said: "Wear this for me when I am dead." She bowed her head, then steadfastly She walked into the hungry sea. But silent words were on her lips, And there was comfort in her hand; It was as if she walked a bridge That led into a pleasant land. All that was long and long ago, So long ago this ring has grown To be a very part of me, One with my finger and the bone:’ His voice went trailing in a moan.
’This is her ring— This is her ring! I dare not die and wear the thing!’ His hand plucked at his finger thin As if to ease him of his sin. I gave a sudden gasping shout— The wind that blew the window in Had blown the candle out.
’Quick, father, quick! The ring ... her name....’ There came a jagged spurt of flame; The window seemed a furnace door That gave upon a bed of ore; The thunder rumbled out the muttered Words that his failing tongue had uttered— Another flash, a rending crack— The old man crumpled like a sack; I felt his stringy arms go slack. How could he sit so dead, so still! While wind snouts snuffed along the sill?
White shone his glimmering
face, and dull
The sodden silence of the
lull,
For when he died the wind
had dropt;
And with his heart the storm
had stopt,
All but a far-off mouthing
sound
That seemed to sough from
underground;
While silence paused to plan
some ill,
Thwarted by thunder growling
still.
All in the darkness of the
place
With lightning playing on
its face,
I fumbled with the corpse’s
ring
To which the dead hands seemed
to cling;
The stiffening joints were
loth to play—
After awhile it came away!
Out, like a sneak-thief through
the gloom,
I tiptoed from the dead man’s
room;
The door behind me like a
hatch
Banged—the white
splash of my match
Made shadow shapes dance on
the wall
As if the devil pulled the
string.
The light ran melting round
the ring;
Inside the worn script scrawled
a-blur:
’J.A.
to Theodosia Burr’
Confession is a sacred thing!
I’ll keep his secret
like the sea;
The ring goes to the grave
with me.”
H.A.
[5] See the note at the back of the book.
Sea-island winds sweep through
Palmetto Town,
Bringing with piney tang the
old romance
Of Pirates and of smuggling
gentlemen;
And tongues as languorous
as southern France
Flow down her streets like
water-talk at fords;
While through iron gates where
pickaninnies sprawl,
The sound floats back, in
rippled banjo chords,
From lush magnolia shade where
mockers call.
Mornings, the flower-women
hawk their wares—
Bronze caryatids of a genial
race,
Bearing the bloom-heaped baskets
on their heads;
Lithe, with their arms akimbo
in wide grace,
Their jasmine nods jestingly
at cares—
Turbaned they are, deep-chested,
straight and tall,
Bandying old English words
now seldom heard,
But sweet as Provencal.
Dreams peer like prisoners
through her harp-like gates,
From molten gardens mottled
with gray-gloom,
Where lichened sundials shadow
ancient dates,
And deep piazzas loom.
Fringing her quays are frayed
palmetto posts,
Where clipper ships once moored
along the ways,
And fanlight doorways, sunstruck
with old ghosts,
Sicken with loves of her lost
yesterdays.
Often I halt upon some gabled
walk,
Thinking I see the ear-ringed
picaroons,
Slashed with a sash or Spanish
folderols,
Gambling for moidores or for
gold doubloons.
But they have gone where night
goes after day,
And the old streets are gay
with whistled tunes,
Bright with the lilt of scarlet
parasols,
Carried by honey-voiced young
octoroons.
H.A.
Against the swart magnolias’
sheen
Pronged maples, like a stag’s
new horn,
Stand gouted red upon the
green,
In March when shaggy buds
are shorn.
Then all a mist-streaked,
sunny day
The long sea-islands lean
to hear
A water harp that shallows
play
To lull the beaches’
fluted ear.
When this same music wakes
the gift
Of pregnant beauty in the
sod,
And makes the uneasy vultures
shift
Like evil things afraid of
God,
Then, then it is I love to
drift
Upon the flood-tide’s
lazy swirls,
While from the level rice
fields lift
The spiritu’ls of darky
girls.
I hear them singing in the
fields
Like voices from the long-ago;
They speak to me of somber
worlds
And sorrows that the humble
know;
Of sorrow—yet their
tones release
A harmony of larger hours
From easy epochs long at peace
Amid an irony of flowers.
So if they sometimes seem
a choir
That cast a chill of doubt
on spring,
They have still higher notes
of fire
Like cardinals upon the wing.
H.A.
I
Spring found us early that
eventful year,
Seeming to know in her clairvoyant
way
The bitterness of hunger and
despair
That lay upon the town.
Out of the sheer
Thin altitudes of day
She drifted down
Over the grim blockade
At the harbor mouth,
Trailing her beauty over the
decay
That war had made,
Gilding old ruins with her
jasmine spray,
Distilling warm moist perfume
From chill winter shade.
Out of the south
She brought the whisperings
Of questing wings.
Then, flame on flame,
The cardinals came,
Blowing like driven brands
Up from the sultry lands
Where Summer’s happy
fires always burn.
Old silences, that pain
Had held too close and long,
Stirred to the mocker’s
song,
And hope looked out again
From tired eyes.
Down where the White Point
Gardens drank the sun,
And rippled to the lift of
springing grass,
The women came;
And after them the aged, and
the lame
That war had hurled back at
them like a taunt.
And always, as they talked
of little things,
How violets were purpling
the shade
More early than in all remembered
Springs,
And how the tides seemed higher
than last year,
Their gaze went drifting out
across the bay
To where,
Thrusting out of the mists,
Like hostile fists,
Waited the close blockade—
Then, dim to left and right,
The curving islands with their
shattered mounds
That had been forts;
Mounds, which in spite
Of four long years of rending
agony
Still held against the light;
Faint wraiths of color
For the breeze to lift
And flatten into faded red
and white.
These sunny islands were not
meant for wars;
See, how they curve away
Before the bay,
Bidding the voyager pause.
Warm with the hoarded suns
of centuries,
Young with the garnered youth
of many Springs,
They laugh like happy bathers,
while the seas
Break in their open arms,
And the slow-moving breeze
Draws languid fingers down
their placid brows.
Even the surly ocean knows
their charms,
And under the shrill laughter
of the surf,
He booms and sings his heavy
monotone.
II
There are rare nights among
these waterways
When Spring first treads the
meadows of the marsh,
Leaving faint footprints of
elusive green
To glimmer as she strays,
Breaking the Winter silence
with the harsh
Sharp call of waterfowl;
Rubbing dim shifting pastels
in the scene
With white of moon
And blur of scudding cloud,
Until the myrtle thickets
And the sand,
The silent streams,
And the substantial land
Go drifting down the tide
of night
Aswoon.
On such a night as this
I saw the last crew go
Out of a world too beautiful
to leave.
Only a chosen few
Beside the crew
Were gathered on the pier;
And in the ebb and flow
Of dark and moon, we saw them
fare
Straight past the row of coffins
Where the fifth crew lay
Waiting their last short voyage
Across the bay.
And, as they went, not one
among them swerved,
But eyes went homing swiftly
to the West,
Where, faint and very few,
The windows of the town called
out to them
Yet held them nerved
And ready for the test.
Young every one, they brought
life at its best.
In the taut stillness, not
a word
Was uttered, but one heard
The deep slow orchestration
of the night
Swell and relapse; as swiftly,
one by one,
Cutting a silhouette against
the gray,
They rose, then dropped out
softly like a dream
Into the rocking shadows of
the stream.
A sudden grind of metal scarred
the hush;
A marsh-hen threshed the water
with her wings,
And, for a breath, the marsh
life woke and throbbed.
Then, down beneath our feet,
we caught the gleam
Of folded water flaring left
and right,
While, with a noiseless rush,
A shadow darker than the rest
Drew from its fellows swarming
round the quay,
Took an oncoming breaker,
Shook its shoulders free,
And faced the sea.
Then came an interval that
seemed to be
Part of eternity.
Years might have passed, or
seconds;
No one knew!
Close in the dark we huddled,
each to each,
Too stirred for speech.
Our senses, sharpened to an
agony,
Drew out across the water
till the ache
Was more than we could bear;
Till eyes could almost see,
Ears almost hear.
And waiting there,
I seemed to feel the beach
Slip from my reach,
While all the stars went blank.
The smell of oil and death
enveloped me,
And I could feel
The crouching figures straining
at a crank,
Knees under chins, and heads
drawn sharply down,
The heave and sag of shoulders,
Sting of sweat;
An eighth braced figure stooping
to a wheel,
Body to body in the stifling
gloom,
The sob and gasp of breath
against an air
Empty and damp and fetid as
a tomb.
With them I seemed to reel
Beneath the spin and heel
When combers took them fair,
Bruising their bodies,
Lifting black water where
Their feet clutched desperate
at the floor.
And as each body spent out
of its ebbing store
Of strength and hope,
I felt the forward thrust,
At first so sure,
Fail in its rhythm,
Falter slow,
And slower—
Hang an endless moment—
Till in a rush came fear—
Fear of the sea, that it might
win again,
Gathering one crew more,
Making them pay in vain.
Then through the horror of
it, like a clear
Sweet wind among the stars,
I felt the lift
And drive of heart and will
Working their miracles until
Spent muscles tensed again
to offer all
In one transcendent gift.
III
A sudden flood of moonlight
drenched the sea,
Pointing the scene in sharp,
strong black and white.
Sumter came shouldering through
the night,
Battered and grim.
The curve of ships shook off
their dim
Vague outlines of a dream;
And stood, patient as death,
So certain in their pride,
So satisfied
To wait
The slow inevitableness of
Fate.
Close, where the channel
Narrowed to the bay,
The Housatonic lay
Black on the moonlit tide,
Her wide
High sweep of spars
Flaunting their arrogance
among the stars.
Darkness again,
Swift-winged and absolute,
Gulping the stars,
Folding the ships and sea,
Holding us waiting, mute.
Then, slowly in the void,
There grew a certainty
That silenced fear.
The very air
Was stirring to the march
of Destiny.
One blinding second out of
endless time
Fell, sundering the night.
I saw the Housatonic
hurled,
A ship of light,
Out of a molten sea,
Hang an unending pulse-beat,
Glowing, stark;
While the hot clouds flung
back a sullen roar.
Then all her pride, so confident
and sure,
Went reeling down the dark.
Out of the blackness wave
on livid wave
Leapt into being—thundered
to our feet;
Counting the moments for us,
beat by beat,
Until the last and smallest
dwindled past,
Trailing its pallor like a
winding-sheet
Over the last crew and its
chosen grave.
IV
Morning swirled in from the
sea,
And down by the low river-wall,
In a long unforgettable row,
Man faces tremulous, old;
Terrible faces of youth,
Broken and seared by the war,
Where swift fire kindled and
blazed
From embers hot under the
years,
While hands gripped a cane
or a crutch;
Patient dumb faces of women,
Mothers, sisters, and wives:
And the vessel hull-down in
the sea,
Where the waters, just stirring
from sleep,
Lifted bright hands to the
sun,
Hiding their lusty young dead,
Holding them jealously close
Down to the cold harbor floor.
There would be eight of them.
Here in the gathering light
Were waiting eight women or
more
Who were destined forever
to pay,
Who never again would laugh
back
Into the eyes of life
In the old glad, confident
way.
Each huddled dumbly to each;
But eyes could not lift from
the sea,
Only hands touched in the
dawn.
"He would have gone, my man; He was like that. In the night When I awoke with a start, And brought his voice up from my dream: That was goodbye and godspeed. I know he is there with the rest."
Brave, but with quivering
lips,
Each alone in the press of
the crowd,
Was saying it over and over.
The day flooded all of the
sky;
And the ships of the sullen
blockade
Weighed anchor and drew down
the wind,
Leaving their wreck to the
waves.
Hour heaved slowly on hour,
Yet how could the city rejoice
With the women out there by
the wall!
Night grew under the wharves,
And crept through the listening
streets,
Until only the red of the
tiles
Seemed warm from the breath
of the day;
And the faces that waited
and watched
Blurred into a wavering line,
Like foam on the curve of
the dark,
Down there by the reticent
sea.
What if the darkness should
bring
The lean blockade-runners
across
With food for the hungry and
spent....
Who could joy in the sudden
release
While the faces, still-smiling,
but wan,
Turned slowly to hallow the
town?
D.H.
[6] See the note at the back of the book.
Bring me one breath from the
deep salt sea,
Ye vagrant upland airs!
Over your forest and field
and lea,
From the windy deeps that
have mothered me,
To the heart of one who cares.
Clear to the peace of the
sunlit park,
You bring with your evening
lull
The vesper song of the meadow
lark;
But my soul is sick for the
seething dark,
And the scream of a wind-blown
gull.
And bring to me from the ocean’s
breast
No crooning lullaby;
But the shout of a bleak storm-riven
crest
As it shoulders up in the
sodden West
And hurtles down the sky.
That, breathing deep, I may
feel the sweep
Of the wind and the driving
rain.
For so I know that my heart
will leap
To meet the call of the strident
deep,
And will thrill to life again.
D.H.
FROM THE BOOK OF THE SEA ISLANDS
SHADOWS
There is deliberateness in
all sea-island ways,
As alien to our days as stone
wheels are.
The Islands cannot see the
use of life
Which only lives for change.
There days are flat,
And all things must move slowly;
Even the seasons are conservative—
No sudden flaunting of wild
colors in the fall,
Only a gradual fading of the
All human souls are glasses
which reflect
The aspects of the outer world;
See what terrible gods the
huge Himalayas bred!
And the fierce Jewish Jaywah
came
From the hot Syrian deserts
With his inhibitory decalogue.
The gods of little hills are
always tame;
Here God is dull, where all
things stay the same.
No change on these sea-islands!
The huge piled clouds range
White in the cobalt sky;
The moss hangs,
And the strong, tiring sea-winds
blow—
While day on glistering day
goes by.
The horses plow with hanging
heads,
Slow, followed by a black-faced
man,
Indifferent to the sun;
The old cotton bushes hang
with whitened heads;
And there among the live-oak
trees,
Peep the small whitewashed
cabins,
Painted blue, perhaps, and
scarlet-turbaned women,
Ample-hipped, with voices
soft and warm
With the lean hounds and chocolate
children swarm.
Day after day the ocean pumps
The awful valve-gates of his
heart,
Diastole and systole through
these estuaries;
The tides flow in long, gray,
weed-streaked lines;
The salt water, like the planet’s
lifeblood, goes
As if the earth were breathing
with long-taken breaths
And we were very near her
heart.
No wonder that these faces
show a tired dismay,
Looking on burning suns, and
scarcely blithe in May;
Spring’s coming is too
fierce with life;
And summer is too long;
The stunted pine trees struggle
with the sand
Till the eyes sicken with
their dwarfing strife.
There are old women here among
these island homes,
With dull brown eyes that
look at something gray,
And tight silver hair, drawn
back in lines,
Like the beach grass that’s
always blown one way;
With such a melancholy in
their faces
I know that they have lived
long in these places.
The tides, the hooting owls,
the daylight moons,
The leprous lights and shadows
of the mosses,
The funereal woodlands of
these coasts,
Draped like a perpetual hearse,
And memories of an old war’s
ancient losses,
Dwell in their faces’
shadows like gray ghosts.
And worse—
The terror of the black man
always near—
The drab level of the ricefields
and the marsh
Lends them a mask of fear.
SUNSHINE
This is a different page.
Do you suppose the sun here
lavishes his heat
For nothing, in these islands
by the sea?
No! The great green-mottled
melons ripen in the fields,
Bleeding with scarlet, juicy
pith deliriously;
And the exuberant yams grow
golden, thick and sweet;
And white potatoes, in grave-rows,
With leaves as rough as cat
tongues;
And pearly onions, and cabbages
With white flesh, sweet as
chicken meat.
These the black boatmen bring
to town
On barges, heaped with severed
breasts of leaves,
Driven by put-put engines
Down the long canals, quavering
with song,
With hail and chuckle to the
docks along,
Seeing their dark faces down
below
Reduplicated in the sunset
glow,
While from the shore stretch
out the quivering lines
Of the flat, palm-like, reflected
pines
That inland lie like ranges
of dark hills in lines.
And so to town—
Weaving odd baskets of sweet
grass,
Lazily and slow,
To sell in the arcaded market,
Where men sold their fathers
not so long ago.
For all their poverty,
These patient black men live
A life rich in warm colors
of the fields,
Sunshine and hearty foods,
Delighted with the gifts that
earth can give,
And old tales of Plateye
and Bre’r Rabbit;
While the golden-velvet cornpone
browns
Underneath the lid among hot
ashes,
Where the groundnuts
roast,
Round shadowy fires at nights,
With tales of graveyard ghost,
While eery spirituals ring,
And organ voices sing,
And sticks knock maddening
rhythms on the floor
To shuffling youngsters “cutting”
buck-and-wing;
Dogs bark;
And dog-eyed pickaninnies
peek about the door.
Sundays, along the moss-draped
roads,
The beribboned black folk
go to church
By threes and twos, carrying
their shoes,
With orange turbans, ginghams,
rainbow hats;
Then bucks flaunt tiger-lily
ties and watchet suits,
Smoking cob pipes and faintly
sweet cheroots.
Wagons with oval wheels and
kitchen chairs screech by,
Where Joseph-coated white-teethed
maidens sit
Demurely,
While the old mule rolls back
the ivory of his eye.
Soon from the whitewashed
churches roll away
Among the live oak trees,
Rivers of melancholy harmonies,
Full of the sorrows of the
centuries
The white man hears, but cannot
feel.
But it is always Sunday on
sea-islands.
Plantation bells, calling
the pickers from the fields,
Are like old temple gongs;
And the wind tells monodies
among the pines,
Playing upon their strings
the ocean’s songs;
The ducks fly in long, trailing
lines;
Skeows squonk and marsh-hens
Oh! It is good to be
here in the spring,
When water still stays solid
in the North,
When the first jasmine rings
its golden bells,
And the “wild wistaria”
puts forth;
But most because the sea then
changes tone;
Talking a whit less drear,
It gossips in a smoother monotone,
Whispering moon-scandal in
the old earth’s ear.
H.A.
They fight your battles for
you every day,
The zealous ones, who sorrow
in your life.
Undaunted by a century of
strife,
With urgent fingers still
they point the way
To drawing rooms, in decorous
array,
And moral Heavens where no
casual wife
May share your lot; where
dice and ready knife
Are barred; and feet are silent
when you pray.
But you have music in your
shuffling feet,
And spirituals for a lenient
Lord,
Who lets you sing your promises
away.
You hold your sunny corner
of the street,
And pluck deep beauty from
a banjo chord:
Philosopher whose future is
today!
D.H.
The judge, who lives impeccably
upstairs
With dull decorum and its
implication,
Has all his servants in to
family prayers,
And edifies his soul
with exhortation.
Meanwhile his blacks live
wastefully downstairs;
Not always chaste, they manage
to exist
With less decorum than the
judge upstairs,
And find withal a something
that he missed.
This painful fact a Swede
philosopher,
Who tarried for a fortnight
in our city,
Remarked, one evening at the
meal, before
We paralyzed him silent with
our pity—
Saying the black man living
with the white
Had given more than white
men could requite.
H.A.
Black Julius peered out from
the galley fly;
Behind Jim Island, lying long
and dim;
An infra owl-light tinged
the twilight sky
As if a bonfire burned for
cherubim.
Dark orange flames came leering
through the pines,
And then the moon’s
face, struggling with a sneeze,
Along the flat horizon’s
level lines
Her nostrils fingered with
palmetto trees.
Her platinum wand made water
wrinkles buckle;
Old Julius gave appreciative
chuckle;
“It’s jes about
hag-hollerin’ time,” he said.
I watched the globous buckeyes
in his head
Peer back along the bloody
moon-wash dim
To see the fish-tailed water-witches
swim.
H.A.
After the hurricane of the
late forties,
Peter Polite says, in the
live-oak trees
Were weird, macabre macaws
And ash-colored cockatoos,
blown overseas
From Nassau and the West Indies.
These hopped about like dead
men’s thoughts
Among the draggled Spanish
moss,
Preening themselves, all at
a loss,
Preening faint caws,
And shrieking from nostalgia—
With dull screams like a child
Born with neuralgia—
And this seems true to me,
Fitting the landscape’s
drab grotesquery.
H.A.
The river boat had loitered
down its way;
The ropes were coiled, and
business for the day
Was done. The cruel noon
closed down
And cupped the town.
Stray voices called across
the blinding heat,
Then drifted off to shadowy
retreat
Among the sheds.
The waters of the bay
Sucked away
In tepid swirls, as listless
as the day.
Silence closed about me, like
a wall,
Final and obstinate as death.
Until I longed to break it
with a call,
Or barter life for one deep,
windy breath.
A mellow laugh came rippling
Across the stagnant air,
Lifting it into little waves
of life.
Then, true and clear,
I caught a snatch of harmony;
Sure lilting tenor, and a
drowsing bass,
Elusive chords to weave and
interlace,
And poignant little minors,
broken short,
Like robins calling June—
And then the tune:
“Oh, nobody knows when
de Lord is goin ter call,
Roll dem bones.
It may be in de Winter time,
and maybe in de Fall,
Roll dem bones.
But yer got ter leabe yer
baby an yer home an all—
So roll dem bones,
Oh my brudder,
Oh my brudder,
Oh my brudder,
Roll dem bones!”
There they squatted, gambling
away
Their meagre pay;
Fatalists all.
I heard the muted fall
Of dice, then the assured,
Retrieving sweep of hand on
roughened board.
I thought it good to see
Four lives so free
From care, so indolently sure
of each tomorrow,
And hearts attuned to sing
away a sorrow.
Then, like a shot
Out of the hot
Still air, I heard a call:
“Throw up your hands!
I’ve got you all!
It’s thirty days for
craps.
Come, Tony, Paul!
Now, Joe, don’t be a
fool!
I’ve got you cool.”
I saw Joe’s eyes, and
knew he’d never go.
Not Joe, the swiftest hand
in River Bow!
Springing from where he sat,
straight, cleanly made,
He soared, a leaping shadow
from the shade
With fifty feet to go.
It was the stiffest hand he
ever played.
To win the corner meant
Deep, sweet content
Among his laughing kind;
To lose, to suffer blind,
Degrading slavery upon “the
gang,”
With killing suns, and fever-ridden
nights
Behind relentless bars
Of prison cars.
He hung a breathless second
in the sun,
The staring road before him.
Then, like one
Who stakes his all, and has
a gamester’s heart,
His laughter flashed.
He lunged—I gave
a start.
God! What a man!
The massive shoulders hunched,
and as he ran
With head bent low, and splendid
length of limb,
I almost felt the beat
Of passionate life that surged
in him
And winged his spurning feet.
And then my eyes went dim.
The Marshal’s gun was
out.
I saw the grim
Short barrel, and his face
Aflame with the excitement
of the chase.
He was an honest sportsman,
as they go.
He never shot a doe,
Or spotted fawn,
Or partridge on the ground.
And, as for Joe,
He’d wait until he had
a yard to go.
Then, if he missed, he’d
laugh and call it square.
My gaze leapt to the corner—waited
there.
And now an arm would reach
it. I saw hope flare
Across the runner’s
face.
Then, like a pang
In my own heart,
The pistol rang.
The form I watched soared
forward, spun the curve.
“By God, you’ve
missed!”
The Marshal shook his head.
No, there he lay, face downward
in the road.
“I reckon he was dead
Before he hit the ground,”
The Marshal said.
“Just once, at fifty
feet,
A moving target too.
That’s just about as
good
As any man could do!
A little tough;
But, since he ran,
I call it fair enough.”
He mopped his head, and started
down the road.
The silence eddied round him,
turned and flowed
Slowly back and pressed against
the ears.
Until unnumbered flies set
it to droning,
And, down the heat, I heard
a woman moaning.
D.H.
[7] “Contemporary Verse,” prize poem for 1921.
Once melodies of street-cries
washed these walls,
Glad as the refluent song
Of cheerful waters from a
happy spring
That shout their way along;
Such cries were born in other
days from lips
A spirit taught to sing.
Now it is gone!
Memory expects those hymns
for shrimp and prawn,
Or the mellifluous chaunt
from the black gorge
Of Orpheus inside a murky
skin,
Who looked the gold sun in
the eye
While garden mists grew thin,
And intoned “Hoppin’
John!”
As when the shadow of the
gray eclipse
Haggards the countryside,
When moon-fooled birds have
nothing more to say,
And soft untimely bats begin
to slide;
As darkness sweeps the morning
light away,
So silence brushes music now
from lips.
Oh! Can it be the songless
spirit of this age
Has slain the ancient music,
or that ears
Have harsher thresholds?
Only this I know:
The streets grow more discordant
with the years;
And that which bids the huckster
sing no more,
Will drive the flower-woman
from the door.
H.A.
Once in the starlight
When the tides were low,
And the surf fell sobbing
To the undertow,
I trod the windless dunes
Alone with Edgar Poe.
Dim and far behind us,
Like a fabled bloom
On the myrtle thickets,
In the swaying gloom
Hung the clustered windows
Of the barrack-room.
Faint on the evening
Tenuous and far
As the beauty shaken
From a vagrant star,
Throbbed the ache and passion
Of an old guitar.
Life closed behind us
Like a swinging gate,
Leaving us unfettered
And emancipate;
Confidants of Destiny,
Intimates of Fate.
I could only cower,
Silent, while the night,
Seething with its planets,
Parted to our sight,
Showing us infinity
In its breadth and height.
But my chosen comrade,
Tossing back his hair
With the old loved gesture,
Raised his face, and there
Shone the agony that those
Loved of God must bear.
Oh, we heard the many things
Silence has to say;
He and I together
As alone we lay
Waiting for the slow, sweet
Miracle of day.
When the bugle’s silver
Spiralled up the dawn,
Dew-dear, night-cool,
And the stars were gone,
I arose exultant,
Like a man new born.
But my friend and master,
Heavy-limbed and spent,
Turned, as one must turn at
last
From the sacrament;
And his eyes were deep with
God’s
Burning discontent.
D.H.
[8] See the note on Poe.
Some souls are strangers
in this bourne;
Beauty is born from such men’s discontent;
Earth’s grass and stones,
Her seas, her forests, and her air
Are seas and forests till they mirror on some
pool
Unusually reflecting in an exile’s mind,
Who tarries here protesting and alone;
And then they get strange shapes from memories
of other stars
The banished knew, or spheres he dreams will
be.
Thus is the fivefold vision of the earth recast
By ghostly alchemy.
But there are favored spots
Where all earth’s moods conspire to make
a show
Of things to be transmuted into beauty
By alchemic minds.
Such is this island beach where Poe once walked,
And heard the melic throbbing of the sea,
With muffled sound of harbor bells—
Bells—he loved bells!
And here are drifting ghosts of city chimes
Come over water through the evening mist,
Like knells from death-ships off the coasts
of spectral lands.
I think some dusk their metal
voices
Yet will call him back
To walk upon this magic beach again,
While Grief holds carnival upon the harbor bar.
Heralded by ravens from another air,
The master will pass, pacing here,
Wrapped in a cape dark as the unborn moon.
There will be lightning underneath a star;
And he will speak to me
Of archipelagoes forgot,
Atolls in sailless seas, where dreams have married
thought.
H.A.
[9] See the note on Poe.
AN EPITAPH
The feathers of the eagle-bonnets
ride upon the north wind;
The sachems and their totems have perished in
the fire;
Through the valleys and the rivers and the mountains
that you fought for
Beats the quick desire.
In the happy hunting ground of proven warriors,
You have passed the pipe of peace at council
fire
With the pale-face and the Zulus’ mighty
chieftains—
Rest with dead desire.
H.A.
[10] The Indian Chief, Osceola, lies buried at Fort Moultrie.
A PROSE-POEM
In the spring when the first midges dance and warm days lure the last-year’s butterfly, the scarlet of the cardinals begins to flicker through the ivory smoke of the mosses. Then the alligator leaves his winter ooze, and the widening “O” of the ripple which his gar-like nose makes, travels slowly across the sullen ponds, where the pendant gonfalons of the mosses kiss their imaginary duplicates, hanging head downward in the red water.
When the first frog honks with the bull-voiced trumpet of resurgent spring, the jasmine rings its little hawk-bells, golden harp notes through the forest; and the usurping wistaria assumes the purple, reigning imperial and alone, flaunting its palidementum in a cascade of lilac amid the matrix of the mosses. Its sleek, muscular vine-arms writhe round the clasped bodies of live oaks as if two lovers slept beneath a cloak, and the cloisonne pavilion of their dalliance drips a blue-glaze of shadows overhead.
Underneath this motley canopy of gray and blue, lush with the early tenderness of leaves, the pink azaleas open light-shy eyes like pupils of albinos, sloughing off delicate pods that smoulder, when the wind blows, live coals among the gray of furnace ashes. Here are magenta carpets fit for leprechauns, when crescent moons glimmer upon the ocher ponds, and the slow fireflies light their phantom lanterns, weaving to and fro about the ivory-orange marble of the tomb.
Each April day brings opalescent waves of birds that dart like living brands about the aisles to light the flower lamps; nonpareils, orioles, and hummingbirds, a mist of speed upon their wings, while the blue heron stands one-legged by the ponds, watching the garden till it seethes and flames with colors from the cloaks of mandarins.
High in the ancient forest the magnolias burn the perfect alban lucence of their lamps; white are their ivory cups like priestly linen, and fragrant with the tang of foreign citrons. An esoteric, mirrored swan slides by like Cleopatra’s barge, while drums of color beaten by a maniac blend with old tints of Leonardo’s dreams, colors that God might see if his own lightning blasted out his eyes.
This march of color chants a strange barbaric fitness of dithyrambic chords, and moves processional across the days like some encarnadined durbar, where a huge Ethiopian eunuch in red moon-shaped slippers and an orange turban walks with a glittering scimetar, leading a brace of sleepy leopards drugged and golden eyed; the caparisoned elephants swing down a latticed street; silk shawls hang from balconies, brushing the domed gilt of howdahs; and ruby-roped, the maharajahs sway behind the mahout with his peavey-goad.
The stark denial of the blue-ribbed sky looks down upon this garden, where the wantonness of earth is flaunted in the spring against the face of heaven’s void sterility. Here stolid faces look ashamed. When the sun leans on boreal wings, there is a month that lovers walk here justified, while flower throats cry in vast choirs, “Glory to life!” and the uplifted trumpets of vine tubas shout with noise of color set to notes of bloom.
This is a garden where the
Son of Heaven
Well might walk,
With all his dragon-broidered
mandarins,
To the plucked sound of tenor
instruments,
With peacocks, kites, and
little red balloons,
Mirrored with incense and
rice-paper lights,
And old bronze lanterns on
the full moon nights,
Upon the lacquered, porcelain-pink
lagoons.
If cardinals in sun-blood
robes were here
To kiss the ring of gorgeous
Borgia popes;
Or bold de Gama’s loot
from Malabar:
Topaz and ruby, chrysolite
and beryl,
The golden idol with a thousand
hands,
And ropes of pearl;
They would seem lesser than
these flowers are,
Whose masculine magnificence
makes riches pale.
And yet with all its oriental
hue
There is a touch of Holland,
Of canals at Loo,
Where Orange William planned
a boxwood maze.
The house has Flemish curves
upon its eaves;
Its doorways yearn for buckle-shoed
young bloods,
Smoking clay pipes, with lace
a-droop from sleeves—
Moonlight on terraces is like
a story told
By sleepy link-boys ’round
old sedan chairs
In days when tulip bulbs were
gold.
The faint, crisp rustle of
magnolia leaves
Rasps with the crackling scratch
of old brocade,
The low bird-voices ripple
like the laugh
Of Watteau beauties coiffured,
with pomade;
Here ribboned dandies offered
scented snuffs
To other ghosts, beneath the
giant trees—
Was that a flash of rose-flamingo
stuffs—
Azaleas?—was a
sneeze blown down the breeze?
This terrace is a stage set
by the years,
Fit for the pageants of the
centuries;
That fire-scarred ruin marks
an act of tears—
Charm is more winsome coped
with tragedies.
Here flaunted tilted hats
and crinolines,
Small parasols, hoopskirts,
and bombazines,
When turbaned slaves walked
dykes in single file,
And rice-fields made horizons,
otherwhile.
All, all has passed, but change,
Gnawed by the rat-like teeth
of avid years,
The masters, through the door,
to mysteries
Beyond blind panels ’mid
the moss-scarved trees,
Uncanny gates, where negroes
faintly bold,
At high noon in the tide of
summer heat,
Stand in the draught of tomb-air
deathly cold
That flows like glacial water
’round their feet.
H.A.
This is the low-doored house among
funereal trees,
Where one May dusk they brought Louise,
With music slow,
And sobbing low,
The old slaves crooning eerily.
She died asleep and weeping wearily.
She had a poppy-strange disease;
A beauty that was more than carnal,
How durst they leave her in the charnel?
She might be sleeping eerily!
Hush! They have locked her
in the tomb,
Among the silences and wilting bloom;
Life’s melody of voices drifts away—
Mistaken!
Was it an owlet in the thorns that moaned?
The churchyard moonlight turns ash-gray—
Hush! Pale Louise!
The dead must not awaken.
Something a twittering cry is uttering.
Is that a bird there on her breast,
Lost in the fragrant gloom,
Wakening to morning twilight in the tomb?
No bird—it is her folded hands a-fluttering!
I think I should have died to see her rise
Among the withered wreaths
And spider-cluttered palls
Of her dead uncles’ funerals,
While streams of horror fed the blue lakes of
her eyes.
I known I would have died to see her rise.
Over the fields a voice calls from the tomb, Pleading and pleading drearily, But all the slaves have fled And left her talking to her coffined dead, And whimpering eerily. The young birds die To see old hands thrust from the window-slit, Clutching the light in handfuls of despair; Stark fear has stroked the color from her hair, While from the window comes The babbled whisper of her prayer. Night is like spiders in her mouth; By day they spin a film across her eyes. Now night; now day— The birds come back; It is another year: The withering voice they fear Has nothing more to say.
But yet once more
Her kinsmen came
With nodding plume and pall
And music slow,
And, sobbing low,
They fluttered back the door,
and lo!—
She leaned against the slit-window
Her web-like, bony hands against
the wall,
And all about her, like a
summer cloud
Rippled her leprous hair,
One bleached and shuddering
shroud.
H.A.
At early morning when the
earth grows cold,
When river mists creep up,
And those asleep are nearest
death,
She died.
The feather would not flutter
in her breath;
And those who long had watched
her slipped away,
Too weary then to weep;
They could do that next day—
They left her lonely on the
bed,
Under a long, glistening sheet,
in feeble tallow-shine,
Rigid from muffled feet to
swathed head.
This in old days before the
Turkish cure
Had driven out the pox;
Next morning, while slave
carpenters
Were hammering at the oblong
box,
The sun revived her and she
breathed again,
Like Lazarus, and in later
years grew beautiful,
And was the mother of strong
men.
These things her father, master
of an ancient place,
Pondered, and read of men
in antique times
Who wakened in the charnel
from a trance.
Often his eyes would rest
on her askance,
And fear grew on him, and
strange dreams he had a-bed,
Till waking and asleep he
turned his head,
Front-back, front-back, from
side to side,
Looking for Death. At
last, one night
He heard crisp footfalls in
his room,
And stared his soul out in
the gloom,
Peering until he died.
But when they broke the seals
upon his will,
They found each codicil and
long bequest
Was held in trust until
The heirs should carry out
his last request—
To burn his body (naming witnesses);
And they, all eagerness to
share,
Prepared to carry out this
strange behest.
A pile of lightwood on the
river bank,
Neighbors on horseback, and
the slaves,
With teeth as white as eyeballs,
rank on rank,
Watched on the pyre the form
wrapped in a shroud,
Lonely among the lolling tongues
of flames—
The smoke streamed, trailing
in a saffron cloud,
The greedy noise of fire grew
loud,
Then, “whiff,”
the shroud burned with a flare:
The dead man’s eyes
looked down
Like china moons upon the
crowd.
They saw him slowly shake
his head,
The thing denied that it was
dead,
While from the blacks arose
a babblement of prayer.
Surely the head must stop—
Not till the fire caved!
Then from the very top
The loosened poll came with
a leap,
Bounding three times, it took
the river-steep;
Down, down the river bank—all
they
Ran after it like school boys
for a ball.
God! How the thing could
roll!
It seemed the devil kicked
the leaping poll.
At last it stopped at bay,
Staring across a tidal flat,
Where spider lilies frightened
day.
They buried it within a lonesome
wood,
With trembling hands, beneath
a foreign stone.
But there were some who said
It moved its lips;
And when they went away, the
earth stirred
And they heard it moan.
Now it comes leaping down
the tunnel roads
Where the moss hangs like
stalactites,
Screaming out curses, snapping
at the toads;
Negroes who pass there on
the moonless nights
Behind them hear a sound that
stops their breath.
The keen wind whistles through
its teeth,
And the white skull goes bounding
by
Looking for Death.
H.A.
I
Three years!
Since I had seen the city,
in the time
We waited through the tenseness
of the hours,
While nerves were zither strings
For fate to jar upon:
All through that night we
counted old St. Michael’s chimes
Now three o’clock—
The bells spoke as they had
on marriage days,
With high and silver-happy
tongues
Yet somehow they had gained
an irony,
For out across the quiet April
bay
Grim, new-built forts grinned
at old Sumter
Through the morning mist—
One—two—three—four—
And no sound yet! Then—
Thirty minutes like a life
too long;
A red flash dirked the night;
I thought a voice cried, “DOOM”;
That was the gun that killed
a million men.
God! How the city woke! With what a rush of wonder in her streets, “Burr” of strained voices, earthquakes of feet, Tramping to rolling drums, The crowd swept to the Battery. Roofs were black with gazing folk in knots, Leveling their spyglasses Like phalanx spears, From sea wall to the chimney tops.
Over the rippling harbor came
The growling, bull-dog bark
of culverins,
Red rockets curved and plunged
Across the dawn.
The world seemed drunk with
confidence
That day—
Some secret nervousness about
the slaves;
What they might think or say;
But they did neither;
The bugles shouted at the
Citadel.
Hours were punctuated by glad
bells,
Soon to be hid away,
And gales of laughter came
from gardens,
Where bright tear-dashed eyes
must weep farewells
The braver lips refused to
falter—
Mouths then seemed only made
to kiss
For men in gray,
Who left the ancient houses
of proud names,
Through magic gates upon that
magic day
When the lost cause was still-born
in its hope.
II
And I had gone—
It seemed no man’s work
then—
To buy supplies from “good
friends” at the North—
Two years at old St. Louis
and then down the river,
Past winking lights of towns
and federal rams,
In flat-boats with a precious
freight of barrels,
Marked for the Yankees; but
one night
We supped past their last
fort
And floated down to Vicksburg
through the dark.
How dull the lanterns glimmered
at the quay!
But there was welcome, too,
Proud, thankful hands,
To take the medicine and powder,
And unload sorghum barrels
That we might change to quinine
and to gold,
If we could ever get them
to Nassau.
The column which they printed
in the “News”
On wall-paper, first made
me think
That it was worth-while man’s
work after all.
Then, out across the miles
of leaguered states,
Through pine-barrens where
frowsy men in gray
Lay with their wounded in
the haggard camps—
A glimpse of old times in
Atlanta
Like a last febrile glow in
well-loved eyes.
Now rolling in flat cars,
trundling to the sea,
Back of the bull-head, wood-devouring
engines.
At last by night to Charleston
Just before the iron ring
closed—
Ours was the last freight
train of the war,
Before the anaconda squeezed;
But I had won (perhaps) if
we could get
Those precious barrels to
England or Nassau.
How changed my city was—
The grass grew in her streets,
And there were blackened ruins
raw with fire;
A few old darkies crept along
her ways;
The busy thunder of the drays
was gone;
And ruin spoke with statue
lips.
Such were the streets—
And it was starving time in
houses
Where fat generosity once
ran amuck,
No fires in inns, no cheerful
bark of hounds,
Or stroke of social hoofs
upon the stones.
And the long docks bit the
black water
Like old loosened fangs that
held the sea
In one last grinning jaw-clamp
of despair.
I knew those docks
When at the hour of noon
A molten clangor shivered
cheerful air
And thousand ship-bells rang—
And now—only a
drifting buoy-bell rung
The knell of hope with its
emphatic tongue,
Cut loose by the blockaders
To wander down the harbor
in despair.
III
Close in the shadow of a warehouse
lay
The blockade-runner with her
smokestacks gray,
Back-raking like her masts,
and up her hatches
Came voices, and the furnace-light
in patches
Beat on the sails, and there
alone was life—
The stevedores sang muffled
snatches, and a strife
Of bales and barrels streamed
down her yawning hold;
Cotton more valuable than
money,
And barrels of the St. Louis
sorghum and molasses,
Honey to lure the bees of
English gold.
Three days she lay, this arrow-pointed
boat,
With a light gold necklace,
beaded at her throat,
Something there was about
her like a stoat
That lies in wait to make
a silent rush,
And there was something in
her like a thrush,
For she had paddle-wheels,
each like a wing.
She had a long hornet stern
that seemed to hold a sting.
Sometimes her paddles slowly
turned,
For they kept steam up, waiting
for a gale.
It seemed as if the slim boat
chafed and yearned
To go hell-tearing under steam
and sail.
The oily water churned
And made a slap-slap
to the paddles’ stroke;
And a high painted canvas
screen cut off
The blue haze of the lightwood
smoke.
On the third evening, just
at sunset, came
A scud of driving cloud; the
lightning’s flame;
The sun glared from a vicious,
misty socket,
And in the moaning twilight
curved a rocket
While a blue flame blurred
and frayed
At Castle Pinckney; thus we
knew the storm
Had shifted the blockade.
IV
Out from the docks we shot
Into the screaming night;
We steered by lightning’s
light;
The paddles beat a mad tattoo;
The gridded walking-beam
Pumped up, pumped down,
Against the misty gleam;
Faster and faster jets the
stand-pipes’ steam.
And the white water whirls
Astern in phosphorescent whorls—
It swirls
And then leads backward green
with light
Of streaming foam across the
velvet night.
By the last lightning flare,
That must be Sumter, bare
Against a torn cloud like
a rag;
But now the wind begins to
flag,
And as it fails the engines
lag;
Then comes a low hail from
the mast
“Avast”—
Again the engines slow—
Then stop—
And we were drifting like
a log
As silent as a drowned corpse
In the sea-set tide,
Muffled in dripping fog.
No word from all the ship—
She seemed asleep—
Only the cluck of water and
the feel
Of grim Atlantic rollers at
the keel,
Nuzzling two fathoms deep;
They made her heel.
The porpoise played about
our copper lip.
It seemed as if they were
The only living things in
all that blur,
And we—
The only ship upon an ancient
sea.
When suddenly a laugh broke
through the spell;
It was so near
Our pulses lapsed a heart-beat,
Struck with fear.
The curtains of the fog were
blown apart;
Stark in the sallow moonlight’s
metal day,
The white decks of a Yankee
frigate lay.
I saw the glint of moonlight
on her bell;
She was not twenty fathoms
length away.
A man’s face leaped
out in the cherry glow
Of match flame in the hands
he cupped
About the pipe whose curling
wreaths he supped.
“Clang!” like
a fireman’s gong
Our engine signals rang;
The paddles thrashed into
a frothy song;
Five ship’s lengths
we had forged along
Before their bugles sang.
We had ten long lengths on
them
Before their ship began to
swerve.
The rabid screw was frothing
at her stern;
But I could feel the verve
Of our blithe timbers tremble;
every nerve
Of our good race-horse ship
For open water seemed to yearn.
That was a Titan’s race;
The answering rockets snaked
it down the coast,
Dying like scarlet worms
Among the fog-wreaths; but
we gained,
And when her flaming cannon
stabbed the mist
They thundered at our ghost.
So we were gone,
With cotton in our furnace,
Once the aft-stacks flared,
And then we plied pitch-pine
Dampened with turpentine,
Until the black sea glared—
But we had gone—
Over the world’s round
shoulder
Thrust the dawn,
Their ugly, black masts dipping
it hull down.
Three days the paddles beat
while we drove on!
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.
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.
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.
So De Soto left them dying,
Heedless of their human crying;
Here he turned them loose
to die
Underneath a foreign sky;
But they lived on thicket
dross,
On the leaves and Spanish
moss—
And I wonder, and I wonder,
When I hear the startled thunder
Of their hoofs die down the
reaches
Of these Carolina beaches.
H.A.
[12] See the note at the back of the book.
“MEDWAY PLANTATION”
Back River! What a name
For yesterdays come back again
today,
Reborn to be tomorrows still
the same—
A landgrave built it when
the English came;
Then men made houses well
With cunning hands.
And service wore a nearer,
feudal guise—
Witness the stone where “Rose,
A faithful servant,”
lies.
Parnassus stretches east, beyond that The plantation once called Ararat; But they have gone, Forgotten as an ancient drinking song; And the old houses, dull and roofless, Gape, with their doorways Like a dumb mouth toothless, With snake-engendering rooms that wall in fear, Silent, down forest roadways loved by deer.
Sometimes at nights
These skeletons of houses
flash with lights,
And shadow-horsemen ride,
Chasing wraith-deer
With eery cry of hounds
And shuddering cheer;
While the moon makes her rounds,
Glimmering through windows
dead
As the dead eyes in a dead
man’s head;
And there is heard a misty
horn—
Down in the woods,
Among the moss-draped solitudes,
The voodoo rooster crows,
While owls hoot on forlorn.
But Back River wears
a different face;
It has not changed;—
Time seems to love the place;
Though all about it he has
ranged,
Here he has not
Touched with his wand of rot—
Something of its immortal
live-oak sap suffuses
Its sturdy men and houses
and transfuses
Change into state.
The sunny hours wait at strange
behest.
Here restless Time himself
has come to rest.
The golden ivory of primeval
light
Dwells in its Spanish moss,
Falling in living cascades
from the trees,
And who goes there in summer
hears the bees
Booming among the Pride of
India trees,
Dull grumbling tones,
A deaf man dreams,
Like far-off rumbling sound
of boulder-stones
Washed down by headlong streams.
This is Time’s temple;
Here he sleepy lies,
Watching the buzzards circle
in the skies,
While shrubs slough off the
pod,
Making a carpet delicate
Of petals strewn upon the
sod,
Fit for the silver slippers
of the moon
Upon the streets of Nod.
I saw him once asleep
Down by the dark ponds
Where alligators creep.
He had been fishing with a
willow withe,
And by him lay his hourglass
and scythe,
Resting upon the grass;
They lay there in the sun,
And through the glass the
sands had ceased to run.
H.A.
They tell me she is beautiful,
my City,
That she is colorful and quaint,
alone
Among the cities. But
I, I who have known
Her tenderness, her courage,
and her pity,
Have felt her forces mould
me, mind and bone,
Life after life, up from her
first beginning.
How can I think of her in
wood and stone!
To others she has given of
her beauty,
Her gardens, and her dim,
old, faded ways,
Her laughter, and her happy,
drifting hours,
Glad, spendthrift April, squandering
her flowers,
The sharp, still wonder of
her Autumn days;
Her chimes that shimmer from
St. Michael’s steeple
Across the deep maturity of
June,
Like sunlight slanting over
open water
Under a high, blue, listless
afternoon.
But when the dusk is deep
upon the harbor,
She finds me where
her rivers meet and speak,
And while the constellations
ride the silence
High overhead, her cheek is
on my cheek.
I know her in the thrill behind
the dark
When sleep brims all her silent
thoroughfares.
She is the glamor in the quiet
park
That kindles simple things
like grass and trees.
Wistful and wanton as her
sea-born airs,
Bringer of dim, rich, age-old
memories.
Out on the gloom-deep water,
when the nights
Are choked with fog, and perilous,
and blind,
She is the faith that tends
the calling lights.
Hers is the stifled voice
of harbor bells
Muffled and broken by the
mist and wind.
Hers are the eyes through
which I look on life
And find it brave and splendid.
And the stir
Of hidden music shaping all
my songs,
And these my songs, my all,
belong to her.
D.H.
NOTES
TO ACCOMPANY “SILENCES”
The bells of Charleston, like the bells of London Town, have a peculiar interest. St. Michael’s bells and clock were brought from England in 1764. When the British evacuated Charleston in 1782 they took the bells with them. A Mr. Ryhineu bought them in England and returned them. They were rehung in November, 1783. During the Civil War, St. Michael’s steeple was the target for Federal artillery and fleet guns. In 1861 the bells were taken to Columbia, S.C., where two of them were stolen, and the rest injured by fire when the city was burned. Those left were again sent to England, and recast in the original moulds. In March, 1867, they once again rang out from the spire.
St. Phillip’s Church stands in the old part of the town. During the Civil War its bells were cast into cannon. For a long time its steeple was used as a lighthouse. It is the center of forgotten things.
The bells of St. Matthew’s are modern and speak of a new order, but all the bells are the voice of the town. They speak for her silences, which are eloquent.
The many inlets and sheltering coves of the Carolina coasts very early made the “low country” seaboard a rendezvous for pirates and a shelter to refit, and to bury their treasure.
As early as 1565 the French from Ribault’s settlement succumbed to the temptation to plunder their rich Spanish neighbors; and in the century before the coming of the English, the lonely bays and estuaries saw strange ships from time to time. There was a pirate settlement by 1664 at Cape Fear River, where Governor Sayle did not arrive until 1670 to take formal possession for the Lords Proprietors of the colony.
The Peace of Utrecht turned many privateers into pirates, ships which had been habitually preying upon Spanish commerce since Blake’s victory at Santa Cruz in 1657, and these gentlemen of fortune were at first welcome in the Carolinas. Nearly all the coin in circulation then was at first brought by such doubtful adventurers, and they were regarded as the natural protectors of the Carolinas against their powerful enemy, the Spaniard, to the south.
Gradually, however, this cordial attitude changed. It was a small step from attacking Spanish to plundering English commerce, and with the cultivation and export of rice and indigo, the demand for a safe sea passage grew overwhelming, while the coasts continued to be ravaged. The royal government was slow to act. In 1684 we learn that “the governor will not in all probability always reside in Charles Town, which is so near the sea as to be in danger of sudden attack by pirates;” nor was this an idle thought, for the town was blockaded by pirate ships at the harbor’s mouth, and medicines and supplies demanded while citizens were held as hostages.
In 1718 Governor Spotswood of Virginia sent an expedition to North Carolina, which succeeded in surprising, capturing, and beheading the notorious “Black Beard,” who in company with one Stede Bonnet, had long ravaged the coast with impunity.
In August of the same year word was brought to Charlestown that Bonnet with his ship the Royal James was refitting in the Cape Fear River. Colonel William Rhett volunteered to attack him. With two sloops of eight guns each, the Henry and the Nymph, and about 130 men in all, he set sail, and found Bonnet at anchor in the Cape Fear River. In making the attack, and during the encounter, all three ships ran aground. The fight raged desperately all day between the Henry and the Royal James, the Nymph being unable to get off the shoal and come to the help of her companion ship. Bonnet finally surrendered and was taken prisoner to Charlestown. It is this adventure which the poem celebrates.
Bonnet escaped, but was afterwards recaptured by Colonel Rhett on Sullivan’s Island. He and about thirty of his crew were hanged about the corner of Meeting and Water Streets. Bonnet, himself, was hanged later than his crew, after a masterpiece of invective by the judge, who painted hell vividly. This pirate leader was dragged fainting to the gallows, and there was much sympathy for him, as it was said, “His humor of going a-pirating proceeded from a disorder of the mind ... occasioned by some discomforts he found in the married state.”
The Seewee Indians, who lived on the shores of what is now known as Bull’s Bay, S.C., but was formerly called Seewee Bay, became discontented with the small prices obtained from the white traders for pelts. Seeing the ships constantly coming into the Bay from England, they conceived the idea of building large canoes and reaching England over the ocean. Several huge canoes, larger than any heretofore built by Indians, were accordingly constructed; these were loaded with the proceeds of a season’s hunting, and, manned by all the braves of the tribe, set out in the direction from which the ships came. A gale came up and the braves were never seen again. Their squaws gradually wandered off to other tribes. This event took place about 1696.
TO ACCOMPANY “LA FAYETTE LANDS”
The Marquis de la Fayette, under the name of Gilbert du Motier, sailed from Bordeaux on the 26th of March, 1777, accompanied by the Baron Kalb and several French Army Officers. On the 14th of June, 1777, he first landed in America on North Island in Winyah Bay, near Georgetown, S.C., and was received at the house of Major Huger. In a letter to his wife, written soon after his landing, La Fayette says, “I first saw and judged of the life of the country at the house of a Major Huger.” Detailed accounts of La Fayette’s landing and reception still exist.
TO ACCOMPANY “THE PRIEST AND THE PIRATE”
In 1801 Theodosia, daughter of Aaron Burr, Vice-President of the United States, married Joseph Alston of “The Oaks,” Hobcaw Barony, S.C. They had one son, Aaron Burr Alston, who died in 1812, the same year that Joseph Alston was elected Governor of the State. On December 30th, 1812, at the urgent solicitation of her father, who had just returned from Europe, and who awaited her eagerly in New York, Theodosia set sail from Georgetown, S.C., in the pilot-boat schooner, “Patriot.” Those on board were never seen again.
The vessel, which was being fitted out as a privateer, was carrying dismounted guns under her deck, and may have foundered in the severe gale of January 1st, 1813.
In 1869, however, a Dr. W.C. Pool attended a fisher family at Naggs Head, Kittyhawk, N.C. In the fisherman’s hut hung an oil painting of a beautiful woman, which had been taken from an abandoned pilot-built schooner that drifted onto the North Carolina coast in that vicinity in January, 1813. No one was aboard and the vessel had evidently been looted. Ladies’ clothes were found in great disorder in the cabin.
There was also a story told by a dying sailor who confessed that he had seen the crew of such a boat walk the plank, and that among them was a beautiful woman who walked into the sea with a Bible or prayer-book in her hand.
The painting is in the possession of the Burr-Alston connection, and is thought by them, on account of its striking family resemblance, to be a picture of Theodosia Burr. The painting story has often been scouted, but there is too much circumstantial evidence to ignore it in treating the legend.
The “Fish-Boat” of the Confederate Navy, which exhaustive research indicates to have been the first submarine vessel to sink an enemy ship in time of war, was designed by Horace L. Hundley in 1863. This boat was twenty feet long, three and one-half feet wide, and five feet deep. Her motive power consisted of eight men whose duty it was to turn the crank of the propeller shaft by hand until the target had been reached. When this primitive craft was closed for diving there was only sufficient air to support life for half an hour. Since the torpedo was attached to the boat itself there was no chance of escape. The only hope was to reach and destroy the enemy vessel before the crew were suffocated or drowned.
Five successive volunteer crews died without reaching their objectives. But the sixth crew was successful in sinking the Federal blockading ship “Housatonic,” their own craft being caught and crushed beneath the foundering vessel. These crews went to certain death in the night time, in such secrecy that it was often months before their own families knew the names of the men. And now, with the lapse of scarcely more than half a century, it has been possible to find the names of only sixteen of those who paid the price.
Because no nation of any time can point to a more inspiring example of self-sacrifice, and because now, in a country reunited and indissoluble, the traditions of both the North and the South are a common, glorious heritage, the poem, which presents the final episode in the drama, is written as a memorial to all who gave their lives in the venture.
D.H.
TO ACCOMPANY “EDGAR ALLAN POE” AND “ALCHEMY”
In May, 1828, Poe enlisted in the army under the name of Edgar A. Perry, and was assigned to Battery “H” of the First Artillery at Fort Independence. In October his battery was ordered to Fort Moultrie, Charleston, S.C. Poe spent a whole year on Sullivan’s Island. Professor C. Alphonso Smith, the well-known Poe authority, says, “So far as I know, this was the only tropical background that Poe had ever seen.” That the susceptible nature of the young poet was vastly impressed by the weirdness and melancholy scenery of the Carolina coast country, there can be very little doubt. The dank tarns and funereal woodlands of his landscapes, or at least the strong suggestion of them, may all be found here, and the scene of The Goldbug is definitely laid on Sullivan’s Island. Here are dim family vaults, and tracts of country in which the House of Usher might well stand.
“Dim vales and shadowy
floods
And cloudy-looking woods
Whose forms we can’t
discover,
From the tears that drip all
over”
was written while Poe was in the army at Fort Moultrie, and appeared in his second volume in 1829. There are later echoes.
“Around by lifting winds
forgot
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.”
H.A.
“MARSH TACKIES”
“Marsh Tackies” is the name given by the negroes to the little, wild horses of the Carolina coast country’s swamps and sea islands. Early traditions say that these horses were found by the English when they first came and that they are the descendants of runaways from the Spanish settlements to the South about St. Augustine, or horses turned loose by DeSoto upon his ill-fated march to the Mississippi. These horses pick up a precarious living in out-of-the-way sections along the coast, and are occasionally taken and broken in by the negroes. They are the “poor horse trash” of the section.
Alstons and Allstons of South Carolina
S.C. GRAVES
Annual Report of the Am. Hist. Ass.
1913
Aaron Burr, Memoirs, Life, and Letters
Charleston Courier
OLD FILES
Charleston Mercury
OLD FILES
Charleston the Place and the People
RAVENEL
Colonial History of South Carolina
LAWSON
Defense of Charleston Harbor
JOHNSON
Diary from Dixie
CHESTNUT
Edgar Allan Poe
WOODBURY
Edgar Allan Poe, How to Know Him
SMITH
Edgar Allen Poe
HARRISON
Mobile Mercury
OLD FILES
Proceedings of the American Philos. Soc.
VOL. XXVI
Pirates, The Carolina HUGHSON,
JOHNS HOPKINS
PRESS
PAMPHLET
Submarines PAMPHLET, SMYTHE,
A.T., JR.
South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine
VOL. XIV
Theodosia
PIDGIN