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diff --git a/16064-8.txt b/16064-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a078a42 --- /dev/null +++ b/16064-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3556 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Carolina Chansons, by DuBose Heyward and +Hervey Allen + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Carolina Chansons + Legends of the Low Country + + +Author: DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen + + + +Release Date: June 14, 2005 [eBook #16064] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAROLINA CHANSONS*** + + +E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Melissa Er-Raqabi, and the Project +Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) + + + +Transcriber's Notes: + + Two variations, Sewee and Seewee, are used in this book, and have + been left as in the original. + + Where poems cross a page boundary in the original, they have been + left as one stanza except where the structure clearly indicates + otherwise. I have been unable to confirm with another source if + stanza breaks should occur in those places or not. See the html + version of this file (16064-h.htm or 16064-h.zip) to see where + page breaks occur. + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/0/6/16064/16064-h/16064-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/0/6/16064/16064-h.zip) + + + + + +CAROLINA CHANSONS + +Legends of the Low Country + +by + +DuBOSE HEYWARD AND HERVEY ALLEN + +The MacMillan Company +New York Boston Chicago Dallas +Atlanta San Francisco + +MacMillan & Co., Limited +London Bombay Calcutta +Melbourne + +The MacMillan Co. of Canada, Ltd. +Toronto + +1922 + + + + + + + +TO JOHN BENNETT + + + + +ACKNOWLEDGMENTS + + +The thanks of the authors are due to the editors of _The London +Mercury_, _The North American Review_, _Poetry, A Magazine of Verse_, +_The Reviewer_, _The Book News Monthly_, and _Contemporary Verse_ for +permission to reprint many of the poems in this volume. + +Grateful acknowledgment is also made to many friends for first-hand +information and for the loan of letters, diaries, pictures, and old +newspaper clippings. + + + + +PREFACE + + +In a continent but recently settled, many parts of which have as yet +little historical or cultural background, the material for this volume +has been gathered from a section that was one of the first to be +colonized. Here the Frenchman, Spaniard, and Englishman all passed, +leaving each his legend; and a brilliant and more or less feudal +civilization with its aristocracy and slaves has departed with the +economic system upon which it rested. + +From this medley of early colonial discovery and romance, from the +memories of war and reconstruction, it has been as difficult to choose +coherently as to maintain restraint in selection among the many +grotesque negro legends and superstitions so rich in imagery and music. +Coupled with this there has been another task; that of keeping these +legends and stories in their natural matrix, the semi-tropical landscape +of the _Low Country_, which somehow lends them all a pensively +melancholy yet fitting background. Not to have so portrayed them, would +have been to sacrifice their essentially local tang. To the reader +unfamiliar with coastal Carolina, the unique aspects of its landscapes +may seem exaggerated in these pages; the observant visitor and the +native will, it is hoped, recognize that neither the colors nor the +shadows are too strong. These poems, however, are not local only, they +are stories and pictures of a chapter of American history little known, +but dramatic and colorful, and in the relation of an important part to +the whole they may carry a decided interest to the country at large. + +Local color has a fatal tendency to remain local; but it is also true +that the universal often borders on the void. It has been said, perhaps +wisely, that the immediate future of American Poetry lies rather in the +intimate feeling of local poets who can interpret their own sections to +the rest of the country as Robinson and Frost have done so nobly for New +England, rather than in the effort to _yawp_ universally. Hence there is +no attempt here to say, "O New York, O Pennsylvania," but simply, "O +Carolina." + +The South, however, has been "interpreted" so often, either with +condescending pity or nauseous sentimentality, that it is the aim of +this book to speak simply and carefully amid a babel of unauthentic +utterance. Nevertheless, the contents of this volume do not pretend to +exact historical accuracy; this is poetry rather than history, although +the legends and facts upon which it rests have been gathered with much +painstaking research and careful verification. It should be kept in mind +that these poems are impressionistic attempts to present the fleeting +feeling of the moment, landscape moods, and the ephemeral attitudes of +the past. Legends are material to be moulded, and not facts to be +recorded. Above all here is no pretence of propaganda. + +As some of the material touched on is not accessible in standard +reference, prose notes have been included giving the historical facts or +background of legend upon which a poem has been based. These notes +together with a bibliography will be found at the back of the volume. + +If the only result of this book is to call attention to the literary and +artistic values inherent in the South, and to the essentially unique and +yet nationally interesting qualities of the Carolina Low Country, its +landscapes and legends, the labor bestowed here will have secured its +harvest. + +DuBOSE HEYWARD--HERVEY ALLEN. + +Charleston, S.C. + December, 1921. + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE + +Preface 9 + + _Poems_ +Séance at Sunrise 17 +Silences 20 +Presences 23 +The Pirates 25 +The Sewees of Sewee Bay 34 +La Fayette Lands 38 + + _Legend of Theodosia Burr_ +The Priest and the Pirate 42 + +Palmetto Town 50 +Carolina Spring Song 52 + + _The First Submarine_ +The Last Crew 54 + +Landbound 65 +Two Pages from the Book of the Sea Islands 66 + 1. SHADOWS 66 + 2. SUNSHINE 69 + + _Negro Poems_ +Modern Philosopher 72 +Upstairs-Downstairs 73 +Hag-hollerin' Time 74 +Macabre in Macaws 75 +Gamesters All 76 +Eclipse 81 + + _Poe_ +Edgar Allan Poe 83 +Alchemy 86 + +Osceola 88 + + _Ashley River Gardens_ +Magnolia Gardens 89 +Middleton Garden 92 + + _Cooper River Legends_ +The Goose Creek Voice 95 +The Leaping Poll 98 + +The Blockade Runner 101 +Beyond Debate 111 +Marsh Tackies 112 +Back River 114 +Dusk 117 + + _Prose Notes and Bibliography_ +On the Chimes 121 +On the Pirates 122 +On the Sewee Indians 124 +On La Fayette 125 +On Theodosia Burr 126 +On "The Last Crew" 127 +On Edgar Allan Poe 128 +On "Marsh Tackies" 130 +Bibliography 131 + + + + +CAROLINA CHANSONS + +LEGENDS OF THE LOW COUNTRY + + + + +SÉANCE AT SUNRISE + + 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. + + + + +SILENCES[1] + + 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. + + + + +PRESENCES + + 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 _écarté_, + 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. + + + + +THE PIRATES[2] + + + 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. + + + + +THE SEWEES OF SEWEE BAY[3] + + _"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. + + + + +LA FAYETTE LANDS[4] + + + 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. + + + + +THE PRIEST AND THE PIRATE[5] + +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 mailéd 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. + + + + +PALMETTO TOWN + + + 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 Provençal. + 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. + + + + +CAROLINA SPRING SONG + + + 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. + + + + +THE LAST CREW[6] + + + 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. + + + + +LANDBOUND + + + 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. + + + + +TWO PAGES + +FROM THE BOOK OF THE SEA ISLANDS + + +PAGE ONE + +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 green, + As if the earth turned slowly, + Or looked with one still face upon the sun + As Venus does-- + Until the trees, the fields, the marshes, + All turn dun, dull Quaker-brown, + And a mild winter settles down, + And mosses are more gray. + + 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. + + +PAGE TWO + +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 _quank_ + Among the tidal flats and rushes rank on rank; + On island tufts the heron feeds its viscid young; + And the quick mocker catches + From lips of sons of slaves the eery snatches, + And trolls them as no lips have ever sung. + + 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. + + + + +MODERN PHILOSOPHER + + + 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. + + + + +UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS + + + 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. + + + + +HAG-HOLLERIN' TIME + + + 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. + + + + +MACABRE IN MACAWS + + + 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. + + + + +GAMESTERS ALL[7] + + + 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. + + + + +ECLIPSE + + + 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. + + + + +EDGAR ALLAN POE[8] + + + 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. + + + + +ALCHEMY[9] + + + 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. + + + + +OSCEOLA[10] + +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. + + + + +MAGNOLIA GARDENS + +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 cloisonné 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-leggéd 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. + + + + +MIDDLETON GARDEN + + + 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. + + + + +THE GOOSE CREEK VOICE + + + 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. + + + + +THE LEAPING POLL + + + 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 swathèd 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. + + + + +THE BLOCKADE RUNNER + + + 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. + 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. + + + 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. + + + + +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. + + 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. + + + + +BACK RIVER + +"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. + + + + +DUSK + + + 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 AND BIBLIOGRAPHY + + + + +NOTES + + +NOTE ON THE CHIMES + +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. + + +NOTE ON "THE PIRATES" + +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." + + +NOTE ON "THE SEEWEES OF SEEWEE BAY" + +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. + + +NOTE ON LA FAYETTE + +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. + + +NOTE ON THEODOSIA BURR + +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. + + +NOTE TO "THE LAST CREW" + +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. + + +NOTE ON POE + +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. + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY + + +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 + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAROLINA CHANSONS*** + + +******* This file should be named 16064-8.txt or 16064-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/0/6/16064 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. 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