Only a glimmering candle lurked in landward windows,
    Dim through shimmering shutter chinks—­
    Silence—­silence was over all—­no bells—­
    St. Michael’s were in hiding,
    And St. Philip’s spoke another voice,
    And rung a blatant dirge to bluecoats, far
    [11]In old Virginia, with Lee’s batteries. 
    The miles of cotton rotted on the wharfs,
    And the Swamp Angel belled with distant shocks
    Like earthquake jars;
    There was heat-lightning in the sky
    That God had never made,
    From our sea-island batteries;
    And once a shell fell somewhere in the town
    With a despairing scream that hope was dead.

    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.