Chapter II: Part 2

Day by day muttered hate; thick slime
Oozing from mouths that judged my crime,
Till they told me: “You die!” And set the time.
I crawled to the bow and looked out ahead
For the time was short and the land I dreamed
Hidden, but near, me-seemed.
And then--Jesu!--atop one foaming wave
The Miracle rode--the Carvéd Stick,
Knobby and rough, its black bark brave
Notched with rough taboo words and signs
Of living beings--strange words and lines....

And then--O Mother of God! it sailed--
_The branch of strange berries_, its long bough trailed
On a wave that broke where the sunlight paled.
Red toppling balls on the white sea-crest
That heaved it up from the shining West,
And bore it straight to my sobbing breast.

The Branch of Strange Berries sailed forth to me
For the sign of Land and fecundity!

Shuddering, staggering as one dead,
I heard them.... “Land.... Land.... Land....” they said.
“Land!” they shrieked and again they shrieked;
The wallowing caravel’s timbers creaked
And I sank down on the deck quite dumb,
For my answering miracle had come.
The unbelievable Land was there;
It slowly loomed on the atmosphere.
Oh, the dim, dark, strange, unspeakable shore,
Fringed out on the blue ...! Then I heard them roar,
“San Salvador.... San Salvador ...!”
They tossed up their arms, they leaped on the deck,
Black faces grinned through crusted fleck;
Bloody-bearded eye and skeleton hand
Pointed me.... “Senor.... Senor.... Land!”
Water they brought in an olive wood cup--
The last roiled drops; to my feet they crept,
And laughed and kissed me, and raved and wept,
And my fame they sang (I, who had been
Believer in things I had not seen).

Judge of me, God, that I never quailed,
But that as through hell and horror we sailed,
“Sail on.... Sail on....” I said.
Judge of me, God, who, when I cried
For sign, sent the carved stick overside,
And the Branch of Strange Berries that rode the tide.
And pardon my sins, for I was, I ween,
True to the Country I had not seen....

Then, Jesu ... judge of those whose speed
To those new fair shores was confident greed,
(Now that of courage there was no need);
Who called me “Master” and called me “Friend,”
When the bitter doubting was at an end....
Pity all men whose fate has been--
“They steer for a Country they have not seen!”

FROM A WINDOW.

On other quiet summer nights like these,
I have leaned forth where honey-suckles pressed
The twilight pane, and watched the priory West
Send forth its cowled clouds over purple seas--
Seeing, through eve-blurred glass, the waters rise
Beyond sea-lavender’s fringed traceries;
Worshipping, as I worship now, the Sign
That God and Earth are ever one Divine.

Only, the flower of lily in the green,
The scarlet feathered black-bird in the sedge;
Even the white shell by the water’s edge,
Seem to have seen God--whom I have not seen.
Yet with these wistful eyes that may not know,
Let me dare every doubt and darkness. So,
Walking blind roads, spanning all voids, I tread
Earth’s flowing Beauty to its Fountain Head.

RESPONSIBLE.

I looked over the purple fields and out to the sunlit sea
And the curve and waft of a gull’s white wing was
solace enough for me;
And I had signals from tall green grass and the light
of sand on the beach,
But I heard the laughter of girls together,
Young and vibrant with sunlit weather,
Laughter of skyward reach.
And hurrying by with ardent paces,
I saw anticipance on their faces ...
Wisdom no age can teach.
Youth with unconscious gleam and shining
Kept its eyes on a glad divining,
Keyed to the tall cliff reach;
I saw the bloom of these girls together,
Bloom as of grape and peach;
And they plained of the wearying wars of men,
Quivering.... “Give us our world again.
Give us the youth that shall clasp us close,
Give us the heart of the perfumed rose,
Life is our gift while the world is young;
Shall our eyes be blinded, our song unsung?
Give us our destiny of yore--
Do ye pour us all in your Hopper-of-War?”

Only the young girls down on the beach;
But out to the world their voices reach,
Voices of maidens over the dune,
Flickering back in a windy rune:
“Give us our oldtime destiny,
Our tall young mates and our babes to hold;
Is life for us a tale that is told ...
Caught in your Battle-Industry?
Shall we grow wrinkled and pale and old,
Pouring the lead and smoothing the bore
In munition moulding forevermore?
Shall our slender fingers pick lint and bands
For the shell-shocked eyes and the frozen hands?
Shall we give our youth for the killing of men,
And turn us to blood and hating again?
Give us our destinies of yore,
Give us our homes by city and shore ...
Do ye pour us all in your Hopper-of-War?”

Then I saw the sky in a passion of grey
Sweep them with fog and shut them away;
And their voices seemed to die with the years,
And the mist dripped round them with furtive tears;
And the waves, wild foaming from tidal deep,
Stiffened and blanched in their curling leap.
And a bird, mist-baffled with heavy wing,
Beat on the chill air wavering....
And I watched the young forms wistful go
Where the foggy fields stretched dun and low;
And their eyes were heavy with solemn woe.
While far up the beach and across the sea,
The voices of youth cast a curse on me;
And the ancient weed on the windblown shore
Bared me the barren breast of War.

TREE WORSHIP.

My room has great windows,
Clear water-like windows
Awash with golden sun;
My books shine green and red,
And the bed is white as milk;
The rugs flecked like a brook,
And the shelf holds a silver bowl
And a candle of honey-gold.

But I look out of the room,
Away from the wine-red books,
To one gaunt shag-bark tree
That stands playing itself
Like a swaying cloud-keyed Harp,
Or writing upon the sky,
With a myriad twig-keen pens.

My room has a cushion, soft
As sea foam on the sand;
But I look out on the tree--
It draws me, holds me, speaks,
And does not speak; is still,
Dumb, yet singing and glad.

And I know that I, in the room,
Silken and warm and soft,
Am as ignorant as the man
Who sat in a Dacian cave,
Clad in blood-soaked skins,
Gnawing at roots and nuts.

A man who looked at a tree
And feared it, and felt its spell;
And bowed him down in awe,
And sacrificed, and prayed;
And was subject to the Tree,
Thinking it might be--God!

ANOTHER CHANCE.

Spring’s first Robin perched on the apple tree;
“Hello!” said I. “Hello!” said he.
He ruffled his feathers and cocked his eye;
“We’re back,” said he. “We’re back,” said I.

He bit the cold buds cheerfully;
“I see it’s the same old you,” said he.
I looked him over, perched on high;
“I see it’s the same old you,” said I.

“What do you work for this year?” asked he;
“The same old hopes of last year,” said I.
“What do you work for this year?” asked I;
“The same old hopes of last year,” said he--

“What? After the Cat and that tragedy
Of your whole nest blown from the apple tree?
You’ve got the courage that takes you high,
If you build again after that,” said I.

“Well, what of your dreams that didn’t come true,
And the world that mocked and cheated you?
You must be brave, and I do not see
How you dare build again,” said he.

“What d’ye want this year?” asked I;
“A strong nest under a placid sky
And your brood to cherish tenderly?”
“Well, you’ve got it about right,” said he.

“What do you want this year?” asked he;
“An answer to all the Mystery?
Some haven within a faith’s clear sky?”
“Please God! Yes, Robin, dear,” said I.

“Well, Spring’s here, anyhow,” said he;
“Good luck!” and flew from the apple tree;
“Yes, what ever the hopes that die,
God gives us another Spring,” said I.

DARK MINSTRELS.

We heard the poets singing in the dark,
We saw their lovely lights toss to and fro,
The while they gathered in their golden Ark
All the bright images of after-glow....
They struck us magic chords within the wood,
Showed us fair shapes alive with naked light;
They gave us rivers where the dream trees brood
And lovers wander all the starry night.

We turned and faced each other and we said:
“The poets pour us wine--they do not give us bread.”

For these are singers of dear vanished things,
The things that once have been but may not be;
We sit with close shut lips; un-minstrelled, we;
No heart to chant to these enamored strings,
No song to chant to medieval lyre
That strikes us songs of Ninevah and Tyre.

Our lutes are tuned to dangerous unwalked ways
Where all is dense and beckoning shapes withdraw;
Where the untrodden path winds in a maze,
And lead to things no Seeker ever saw.
We sing the Mind’s high dream, the imperious will,
That makes no music out of greedy strife
But seizes silver pipes, that sharp and shrill,
Call men to leap and seize on Very Life....
While other singers tell the old dreams o’er,
We rise and take us to the outer door;
Here on the wold, where no wise singer sings,
We feel the great Hand brush across our strings!

THE PEOPLE OF TODAY TO THE CLERGY OF TODAY.

Look now about you, fix your eyes on us,
Leave too-old mystic book and restful chair;
Take up our problems, things we must discuss,
Help us to think, to understand and dare.
Leave old-world Poetry of hallowed crime
And turn you to the hunger of the time.

Laws of the God, report them to the ears
That hear confused and cosmic voices rage;
Laws of the Christ, interpret them to fears
For Christ, new-risen in a Science-Age.
Oh, take the fire your sacred hands should give
And kindle it upon our city height;
Give us a world-strong law of wrong and right;
Teach us, not how to die, but how to live!

The hymns we sing must be the song of spheres,
The prayers we pray be truths of stone and star;
We want no sacrifice of sinner’s tears,
We want to rise above this clay we are.
Our war machines, do they not teach the thing
Your maxims never taught us ...? Ah, we flee
To the Waste Places in our sorrowing....
Show us the power of true divinity!

Look now around you, free your too-white hands;
Comfort these hearts that burn. What must we do?
We have no Paul, no Moses, only you.
Then help us to be honest. From all lands,
Priests! Men! Arise! Acclaim! The new bread give;
The Bread by which we shall not die, but live!

PROTAGONIST.

The fight was unequal, bitter and always new,
I saw how my enemy gained on me and how he drew
My strength, my youth, my soul from my shivering frame;
Yet have I not been beaten--I faced him whenever he came.
When he stabbed I watched how he did it--Poison, I studied the cup,
Flayed me with whips, I girded the bleedings up;
Hunger, imprisonment--all these I wrote in my book;
I have learned all the enemy’s purpose, I know every look.
I have conned every gesture and gotten by heart all his guile,
Yet still comes the fear and the watchfulness under my smile;
For hard as I struggle to outwit his plot to betray me,
He holds that utterest thing that can utterly slay me--
Still do I turn and defy the face of him creeping;
“Now that I know thee, thou Life, thou art locked in my keeping;
Dungeoned, thou Horror, in creative cells of desire,
Ringed in the widening rings of my aspirate fire--
I, your Creator, by steady implacable strife,
Shall give men and women a lovelier thing to call ‘Life.’”

SIGNAL FIRES.

Everywhere we have sought Thee--questioned, wondered,
Everywhere marked Thy beauty and Thine hour;
Now if at last no sacrifice is brought Thee,
Dost Thou believe we doubt Thine awful Power?

Nay, we have loved, have striven, have served, obeyed Thee,
Gloried in beauty of Thine, uttered Thy love;
Given long vigils to attain and mind Thee,
Spent lives in fixing Thee below, above.

Still dost withhold Thee, canst ignore this wonder
Of men who seek Thee in the manner Thou knowest--?
Humble and longing, ignorant, who blunder,
Yet loyal to Thy will and where Thou goest?

We will not cowardly say Thou hast no feeling,
Will not believe Thou hidest back of the years;
Or hast no Word for rapturous revealing--
Art dumb like us; like us, art veiled in tears.

No. We believe; but now we work nor tire
Stirring the embers of the Cosmic Night;
Thou art the Source, we build our answering fire;
God of our Godhood, answer our Beacon Light!

MARTYR.

He waved his jests on spears of hidden grief,
Calmed by his silence all complaint and tears;
Filled hopeless hours with whimsical belief,
And laughed at fears.

He walked his bitter paths alert and bold,
No pity ever turned his steadfast eye;
If dull mouths grinned and goblin stories told,
He cared not why.

And with what end?
To end a dream of breath;
Singing his heart out to all withheld Joy,
Walking into the labyrinth of death,
Brave as a boy.

BALLAD OF THE THORN TREE.

Always, I noticed, lovers lay
Beneath a twisted tree
That grew in such a starvéd way
It seemed a mock to me.
But when I questioned them, they’d say
“Oh what is that to thee?
Bright berries grow in lavish way
Upon this bitter tree;
Small scarlet lanterns swinging, they
For lovers such as we.”

Always I noticed lovers dreamed
Beneath that furtive tree,
And so I said not how it seemed
Nor how it looked to me ...
How all along the branches ran
Sharp thorns like stabbing spears,
How when the berries dropped away
The thorns stayed through the years....

Oh, never do I speak of this
To lovers loving free;
The new fruit gleams above their kiss,
The thorns they will not see....

Mayhap after such glowing red
No thorn keeps agony,
But no fond lover ere has said
A thing like this to me.

BALLOONS ON THE BEACH.

Ball on bright ball,
On the sky glowing,
The old dreams recall
Of a child’s knowing;
Eggs laid by a flying bird,
Jellies in globed curd,
Fruits on a strange tree,
By the winds blowing.

Now as each bobbing ball
Tugs at its holder,
I, who these dreams recall,
Feel hardly older....
Drinking enchanted Cup
From Balloons, I rise up,
Swaying on sea and sky,
Color and flight am I!

Appled Balloon Tree,
Arched efflorescence,
Grow shining globes for me,
Of joyous essence;
Until bright bubbles spill
From a cup fancies fill
Brimmed iridescence!

THEY PASS.

Down the long road they go--
Elinor, Mary, Flo--
Hasting toward Something.
Daisies rank high today,
Wild roses spread the way;
Laughing, light words, they say,
Speeding toward ... Something!

Peg, on the other side,
Watches their splendid stride,
Shrinking from Something....
Jennie, with broken tread,
Where a damp sun is shed,
Black shawl around her head,
Staggers from Something!

ON THE BEACH.

She sat in her gleaming robes
With the two hard-shining globes
Of her soul-less eyes, stare-fixed,
And said: “It is mine to know
How far he may come and go;
Mine to make him dance and sing,
His heart and his money fling
Away. He is mine to take,
And play with and bend and break;
The better for him I think.
We are put here to try each other.
Is he strong? He will not sink.”

The other woman pulled
The thin shawl over her head.
“If he is strong?” she murmured
“If he is strong,” you said.
“But are we strong?” It is ours
To spare, to shield, to tend;
It is his to be hurt and broken,
To struggle and to fend.
It is equal, therefore we suffer.
(He suffers most, I think.)
We are put here to help each other.
Are we strong? He will not sink.”

SAUL’S HILLS

1

Long after all the talking people go
On the white boat that rounds the sandy point,
The silenced hollows of the Commons show
A deepening curve; and where the grasses blow,
Dried to October wraith, I see annoint
A hundred lanes and valleys splashed with glints
Of silver moss and tawny tapered mints.

2

And where the moor roads plough the tangled sand
The sky’s blue river floods these merging hills,
Pocomo Head white morning fire spills;
The deep swung ponds with sapphire sweep expand
Walled with red berries of the alder bough;
Stark monkish trees slant on the windblown space,
And gulls dip to the bay or open meadow place.

3

This is a world gone wild with wine of life,
Tossed in bright cups on frost enholied air;
Here Autumn swings the west wind’s winnowing scythe,
Or amber shod strays down the coral flare.
And on the shimmering slopes the swallows blithe
Still turn ecstatic honey-tipped wings
And dart anew on rhythmic balancings.

4

I think that he who walks this undulance
Goes like a child back to some crystal Source,
Rich in adventures of the fields’ romance,
The thistles’ aeroplane, the gold of gorse;
Or buoyant, treading silver lichen crisp
Wing-footed on the elastic sod,
Fares on the milkweed’s fanned ethereal wisp
Past semaphore of broom or goldenrod.

5

For here he finds the ineffable escape,
The clarity, the cleanness and the soul;
Here’s laying on of hands, here things reshape
Into the round equilibrated Whole.
Here all is light and line, this grey fence strings
Its silver loops in limpid meadow lights;
Or drops its bars to infinite wanderings
By glimmering swamps on brake-illumined nights.

6

So suave these moor roads that the grasses blur
Along their misty lines; their curious curves
Unwind through dusks of bay and juniper
Past where the marsh hawk flares or rabbit swerves;
Where pond on mirroring pond among the hills
Is cupped in vital blue; whose magnet draws
Spiked pickerel weed; or starred sabatia thrills
Grass threaded ripples on the sandy shores.

7

So dumb are human hearts to every sound
That Nature has! Strangely attuned--dumb still!
There is no keynote to their most profound,
No language for true passion of their will;
Yet in these valleys on these sun-pooled moors,
Where turf roads wind to fountains of the sky,
I have seen Souls freed by the out-of-doors,
To find out here, their liberate ecstasy.

8

Perhaps these gemmy berries on the slope,
Perhaps these dryads of the circling hedge
Write runes of health and happiness and hope,
Or limn new truth in sand and rippled sedge.
For those who tread these wastes of Autumn’s reach
Find dream and vision on the wind-washed lea;
Thoughts broaden, there is fire in the speech,
Minds stir beyond their wonted sophistry.

9

It is the other Self, the questing Ghost
That walks with us the bayberries’ pungent trail;
Seeing this life an empty thing, at most,
Seeing dreams die and all beliefs grow pale.
Musing on hopes and visions, scattered hosts,
Till here, beside some mossy lichen rail,
The sky seems light with truth and starving minds,
Bathed in new energy of moorland winds!

10

The rosaries here are little mealy plums
Trailing like rubies through the tufted moss,
Here a late bee to evening primrose comes.
The fields’ grey wreathéd smoky censers toss,
Where goldenrod has burned from gold to grey;
And asters smoke on an empurpled way.

11

Turfed roads that curve away to Madaket,
Dim roads that wind the valleys to Gibbs Pond,
Grass roads that dream to Polpis, we have yet
To find your subtle ends, what lies beyond!
You wind to wind the world; the simple ways
Of faith and trust and nobleness and love;
We only guess the towers beyond your haze,
We only glimpse the ends toward which you move!

12

Yet rutted roads, whose mild evasions lie
Seemingly blind or tortuous or dense,
Ye are most human in your subtlety,
Human in all your gentle evidence.
For though you pause and double, turn again
And seem to curve and hesitate, your moods
Are human moods; tired women and worn men
Follow in dream your errant solitudes.

13

They come for shriving by the hedgerow things
Where life, obedient to great moving laws
Brilliantly dies, or in birth scatterings
Writes mystical trail with myriad seeds and spores;
Where the dried weeds with hoary tresses blown
Quiver in brittle faith and stand serene,
Where in a tidal sunshine, every cone
Smells of sea-tree-branch, balsam-broomed and clean.

14

Solitude on the moors and to one’s self--!
The blessing comes in spite of torturings;
In spite of all the gods upon the shelf
And all the false gods of material things.
Here where the thistle sends its wayward floss
Or where the marsh hawk swirls for meadow-food,
Alone on cloistered roads redeem thy loss
Of Spirit, in a bay-bushed solitude!

15

Oh, Spirit of ours, whom we have so betrayed,
As round these swimming hills our footsteps dream,
We see thy fugitive shimmer on the blade
Of every spear of grass; and by the gleam
Of sea light out at Pocomo and glade
Of twisted beech by rambling Polpis farm,
Or by the reedy pool where cattle strayed
Far from the fields stir up the midgy swarm.

16

Where all the rolling hillsides soft combine
On amphitheatres spread to open clefts,
There is hypnotic soothing in the line
Merging and melting in soft grassy wefts.
The brave bright cups that grail the open mead
Pour flower-libation on some tawny stretch;
And lily grails snowy processions lead,
And sweet fern banners guide the banded vetch.

17

And what does Man? He takes a wealth like this
And breaks it on the wheel of his machine.
Tarring it with the foul metropolis.
Caging its wildness and its free desmesne;
Little they know they build but to destroy,
Little they guess what gift they take away;
The heritage of every girl and boy
To roam these stretches of the heath and bay.

18

The exquisite clear candors of these moors
Seem to their eyes as sad as empty doom;
Their trivial gaze turns from the barren shores
And blurs along the ragged hills of broom.
They pant, they say, for human nature’s food,
Yes--but they have not walked with happy Solitude!

19

Grey rain slow drifting over summer hill,
Over corn fields and through the meadow rifts,
With falling curtain calms the water till
Under its scorcery the landscape drifts;
The loomed mirage goes sailing to the sky,
The deep lines darken on the distant moors,
A placid silence lifts in mystery,
And headlands purple down to light-struck shores.

20

Then open farm a sterner grandeur takes,
The church dome glitters on fantastic North,
The wild ducks’ chain expansion suddenly breaks,
And many a wedge-shaped line of geese fares forth;
Fateful the moorland looks and tawny drear,
Then the clouds lift and all the Island’s clear.

21

_O Truth, that moves upon the water’s face!
O Truth, that cleaves the fire and cloud to be!
Help me with single eye thy form to trace,
In every form of flower and web and tree;
Help me to find thee in the cores of waves,
In every face that dreams into my ken;
Help me to see thee in the man that braves
The condemnation of his fellow men!_

_O shining Truth, sweeping across these fields,
Calm on the water’s surface, or in storm,
Help me to find thee in the harvest yields,
In cloistered rooms and in the market’s swarm!
Help me to find thee in the name of Sin,
The immortal shape of Woe that walks alone;
Help me to hear thy subtle lesson in
The negative, the dirge, the monotone!_

_Help me to know thee in the sturdy Mind
That holds its vision straight across the dark,
That dares to blaze a trail for all mankind
Yet wins no high serene nor earthly mark!
Help me to find thee behind solemn doors
Where men declare for finer, nobler codes;
Help me to find thee on the rainy moors,
And on the wanderings of these rutted roads!_

22

The days are warm all Indian Summer through,
Placid and mild with dreaming full content;
Beach plums and grapes glimmer with frosty dew,
Rabbits career from hunter provident;
Mellow and hazy blurs the moorland scene,
Placid and still on dreamy tides of noon;
The fishing fleet comes silver laden in,
And over haystacks floats the harvest moon.

23

Horizoned moon, so round and thin and strange,
Great mellow bowl of gold September brew,
Diaphanous rolling over rolling range
Of solemn hills that part to let thee through.
Thou last great Toy of Summer, yellow boon,
All honey filled, lambent with creamy light,
Hardly a gazer of us but will croon
Some childish nonsense to thy disk tonight!

24

Upon a night of stars, the grave old Mill
Spreads out its fans upon a scudding sky;
The crescent harbor’s ebony is still,
Studded with plangent lights trailed silvery.
Here is true self, once more with hand on lip,
Trying to read the night’s deep graven lines,
Watching the shadow of some late come ship,
Or muffling darkness of the blotted pines.

25

The summer streets are filled with flickering swarms,
The village band is playing and the wheels
Of farmer wagons clatter past the farms....
Bright headlights of black bulking automobiles
Flit back of Monomoy, where Indians, now
Pressing the clover with accustomed heels,
Would find great modern monsters on their track
Beside their wigwam or beyond their shack.

26

But as the music filters through the town,
And honey-suckle breathes around the doors,
One finds the lane as secret as the shores;
No modern engine treads its sweetness down,
No smart prospector makes this isle his own,
For pattern of the cheap and opportune--
Not ’neath this honey-suckle and this moon!

27

Back of the town where all the houses turn
Their mild grey fronts to winds that buffet strong,
The cobbled streets in patterns quaint and stern,
Lead to four trees spread on the sky like song;
Looking at these I paused the other day,
Wondering that beauty so bestript, forlorn,
Should strike a chord that takes processional way,
Crashed on the skies in branches gaunt and worn.

28

Twisted and starved these bitter trees that blow
Upon the Western sky like choral song,
Flinging strange rapture on the after glow;
Still radiant? Do these dead trees belong
To some tree-part of us, where bent and maimed
Green branches wither? Hampered twigs grow wrong ...?
Hush! On the screen of the bright Western sky
The crippled trees again burst into song.

29

Modest these little houses of the town,
Staring with sober windows over the lea,
Scattered are peaks and gables toward the down,
Trailing slow march from seaport to the sea.
Charmed thing to hear one’s foot-fall sound along
Some moonlit, bricked, hedged street, whose panneled doors
Gleam with bright knockers, where the oblivioned stone
Was trodden once by Quaker ancestors.

30

_The minstered Vast of immemorial sea,
Blue vaults and green that cave the Island tides
Choruses solemn dark immensity
To that Moon priest that with its law abides;
The hoodéd waves march on cathedral dunes,
Flagelant spring the breakers on the rips,
And the encircling shore is writ with runes
Of voyaging souls and questing sails and ships._

_Yea, all around Cathedral Vast of sea
Blue vaults and green that cave the island’s tides
Curled toppling Uncials of Eternity
Illumining the beaches’ glistening sides;
New consecrate the sand’s communion shell
With every moonlight chrism and sunrise swell._

_Clean Island, cloistered ways unspoiled by man,
The thorn trees cloaked like prophets, and the reeds
Organ with murmurings of furtive Pan;
The spirits’ intense strange music, lost from creeds,
Lost far from love--lost in all modern places;
Lost from the reading by all human faces,
Isolate--dumb; but if one wanders here,
Vocal and strong, immaculate and clear._

_For now one figure left of all the gods
Goes singing down the thistle-lighted way;
One figure wanders through these island moods
Back from the town and back of all the bay.
And where the goldenrods their censers sway
Against a brake or by a grey swamp wood,
Over the moor steals happy Solitude._

31

The corn is stacked, the pumpkins’ on the roof,
Globule on grey their ponderous green and gold,
The laughing gull wantons its wild reproof,
The water’s blue is strangely laced with cold;
Vermilion berries coral the black-hedged pond,
Around the shore the chilly foam-patch quivers,
The sweet fern shrivels up its copper frond,
The owl flaps heavily, the farmland shivers.

32

These are the roads the island farmers took,
Slow-following flocks that tinkled towards the town,
And stopped to crop the clover or to look
With hornéd stare across the purple down.
These are the roads the shearers of the sheep
In high-swung wagons rode; these winding trails
Moccasins knew, where now the children keep
To Shimmo Shore with huckleberry pails.

33

What is the thing that on these commons gives
Me back to Me? What is this thing that heals
The cities’ wounds, that shows to me where lives
The Being of Me? What scorcery reveals
My hidden Native, blind, unnamed, unsung,
Wrapped in its passionate ardors like a shape
Of chambered chrysalid Soul--close woofed, high swung,
Waiting for sun and rain and winged escape?

34

There are wild days out on the winter heath,
Wild days asmoke in mystery and flame;
The black ducks break their columns into wreath,
The gaunt trees cringe away in windblown shame;
The moody skies press to the barren earth,
Sullen the sea hangs foam around the shore;
There is a look of starving and of dearth
Along the shivering roads across the moor.

35

Then, as if space awed of its yawning breach
Desired rhythms to sound some message home,
Crash in great clouds, dark waves of earthy speech,
The farmlands’ seaweed pile and stubbled loam.
There is cloud-writing on the scrolled West,
The church’s dome swells symboled on the sky;
Austere the landscape, yet so clear expressed,
It looms to awe and brooding majesty!

36

And then on Headland or on barren dune,
The wild light leaps, born of the naked sea;
The North cliffs are cathedral; there is rune
And choral in the surf’s antiphony.
The laborer, who slowly takes his way
Back to the hamlet in the early night,
Sees the old village set in convent grey,
And candled shrines of votive window light.

37

There are great days in Autumn, when the world
Turns to blue fire and all the hills are red;
One hears the fishing gulls’ wild screaming skirled
Up to the wingéd comrades overhead.
The Sound is flecked with scudding green and white,
And beaches stretch away to golden glow,
Till stars hang garlanded along the night,
And constellations swing liquid and low.

38

And foggy days, when wrapped in trailing pause,
The trees, like ships, sail pearly seas bemused
With melting sails and ropes of rainy gauze
Making for harbor, tenuous, confused,
Anchored in subtle inlets, phantom cruised;
Where voyagers land unchallenged, unperused,
With silver myrrh to sanctify the homes,
And cloudy swirls to hallow forth the domes.

39

These ships bring stores by which my heart is fed,
The voyagers of this filmy vapor flight
Lay balm on gashes where the soul has bled,
Wrapping its wounds in meshes of soft light.
And I am soothed of grief, who take a white
Communion under calm of dripping trees,
Walking uncandled avenues of rainy night
With veiléd forms to nebulous mysteries.

40

Charmed thing to drift along the narrow lanes
Where some dear door flies open to the rap,
To sit behind windows of whaling days;
A lantern in the hall, a chair mayhap
Some geniused Folger used, to read a log
Stamped with inked whales, kept blue from boyhood cruise;
The Swift that wound the yarn, peat from the bog--
The horn the Town Crier used to cry the news.

41

Charmed thing to catch a sea-word full of spice,
To eat of beach plum jelly by the fire,
To see rag rugs hooked like a sailor’s splice,
To watch the peats’ blue flicker on the fire;
To see the rafters carved in sailor-ways,
Paintings of canvased ships crossing the bars,
When daring whalers went uncharted ways,
And laid their course by youth’s adventurous stars.

42

Along the street in early morning’s glow,
Down to their boats the Portuguese fishers go;
And through the cobbled alleys bootéd feet
Drown the gruff voice as sailors comrades meet.
Then shawled forms slip down to the baker’s shop,
The Spanish bell rings in the tower top,
The placid tradesmen wait the lifted latch,
And quahog diggers launch for the clamming patch.

43

But village stir and village matters keep
Free Masonry too subtle and too deep
For strangers’ smattering tongue and half-taught eye
That sees them through a garbled mystery.
What shall be known of souls that live and love,
Marry and bear, know joy and agony,
Under blue circle of an Island sky
Within the silver ring of sounding sea?

44

Their quiet dreams take root in resolute ways,
Their poetry is blown to spurts of flame;
From their grim grandeur of forgotten days
Comes many a high and sober-minded name.
Their character persists where many a door
Opened its narrow pride to let them roam,
Their feet stand firm on an unshaken floor,
Roofed by great roof-trees of New England home.

45

So to the memory their great names come
What time they reckoned life and grasped its fact,
Their splendid hours when their spirits’ dumb,
Unworded promise became conscious act;
The Islanders, Nantucketers, their theme
Endures in a worth that cannot fail,
Across the country their progressive dream
Steadily marks the Great New England Trail.

46

For even now in times of want and war,
In times of apathy and greed and fear,
The challenges to spirit skyward soar,
The core of stalwart things is hidden here;
The white shoals lift like new creative shore,
The Sound’s salt breath comes like a stirrup cup,
Till every wanderer takes his burden up.

47

So, with it all remote, tranquil, unchanged,
Untouched in depths of solitude and peace,
The Island fades away, the shoals are ranged,
Backward in sliding rank the bluffs decrease;
Backward they slide, the glittering Sound spreads wide.
Now is no road to Island paths but foam,
A long, long water-path twixt us and home.

48

Yet when we sit in silence at the board
And shapen silver glitters on the white
Damask, bubbled with flower and glass and scored
With sensuous patterns of the candle light,
One smiles and speaks of ’Sconset Lighthouse flare,
Of sails like wings tapered upon the Sound,
Of tossing cross-rip by the bell buoy, where
The schooners get their ranges outward bound.

49

There falls a silence until someone tells
An old wife’s tale; another speaks of bay,
Another one of canterbury bells,
And someone else of meadows stacked with hay.
The kindling smile goes round, the voices muse,
The light is kind that travels from eye to eye,
And many lonely Island trampings fuse;
Along rut roads go many a memory.

50

With eyes alight we say: “When shall I go
Where the blue chicory twinkles toward the town,
Or Bouncing Bet bathes in a rosy snow,
Or where the night wafts scent across the down;
When shall I breathe the breath of inshore spins,
And see the darkling fern of water-flaws,
And catch the drive of myriad mackerel fins
Where the furred trawler floats its netted jaws!”

51

In spite of foppish talk and city form,
We take the lane and loiter on the crest,
Speaking in terms of Island sun and storm;
The marlins’ tarry smell, the breakers’ breast,
Until across the light and baffling word
There steals the old sea-wind, and with a thrill
The stagnant pools of city minds are stirred,
Incoming tides the vapid channels fill.

52

But we (who know) speak in no idle way,
We hold no rendezvous, nor name an hour;
We make no promise when to go or stay,
We do not plan to gather fruit or flower;
We only tell the Image deep within
Our struggling beings: “Beyond all abodes
And all the challenging, whether we lose or win,
Spirit, we two shall take the Island roads!”

SEA-MEASURE.

All night long the even roll of sea
Rhythmic and slow
On silence to whose inner mystery
No man may go.

Socrates, Plato, Christ must all have heard
Walking the lonely beach
Listening for that hidden inner word
That they might teach.

All lonely men the centuries send down
To master human things
Must have been strengthened by this monotone
To evener ponderings.

Quietly feeling what we feel tonight
That there is hidden bond
Between our Deepselves and some infinite
Deepness beyond.

IN AN OLD BURYING GROUND.

This is strange heraldry
The graveyard paints
For him who best perceives
Its curious feints.
Under its leaning stones
Sailors and parson men
Titles and beggarmen
Maidens and crones,
Mingle their bones.

They laugh at dreams we weave
Of equality
Under the sun
Yet here it’s done!
Under the frail grass-spear
All these are equal here
None lie alone.

Greek name and Bible name
Pagan and prude;
Under the grass
Not any class.
Fine old aristocrat--
Right near his trimkept plat
The cobbler’s lass!

Also I notice near
Sun shining full and clear
Violets as blue.
The man who used to swear
Sleeping quite calmly there
Where Quakers do.

Dreamer and prig and crank;
Humble and full of swank
Level they rank
To us they all seem just
Handfuls of human dust
Even and blank.

And this I’ve come to hold
One may be quite an old
Aristocrat;
But when one comes to die
Things are Democracy
And that is that!

CHRISTMAS EVE ON NANTUCKET.

For half an hour tonight we wander
Through the streets,
And see the Christmas trees against the lighted pane;
And catch child voices raised in glee and hear
Street singers chanting carols loud and free
Then a bell tone, and then the far-off sea.

We turn a corner and we pass a house
Whence strains of music come,
“Minuit Chrétians--” They will be singing that in Paris tonight!
From a side gate a scarlet figure booted, slips with bells
Jingling; some amateur Santa Claus late for festival.

Here a bright voiced smiling woman hurries along
To the dim lighted church, bearing a hemlock wreath
Made by her hands.
Upon white panelled doors hang other wreaths
Woven from ground pine near Wannacomet Pond.
And scarlet berries blaze
In window boxes bare of summer flowers
But now made Holiday.

Another narrow street, and here the candles shine
Ranging along the pane in a white row,
Lovely immaculates of memory.
And in another window a small figure
A dainty mandarin poised in Chinoise grace
Beneath some mistletoe!
And in one window more an old white head
Is bent over some early coming gift
Brought by the letter carrier
From children far away.
Late! Yet a few steps further, where the narrow lane
Turns to the moors. There in December skies
Tender with Christmas memories of years on years,
Hangs in its winter white, The Evening Star!

SONG OF THE LIGHTSHIPS.

(Landlubber’s Chantey.)

When the wolves of wind press hard
On the wild seas snarling pack,
And the waves bite the shore
And the shore bites back;
When the night’s like a cave
Full of black things howling
And the hurricanes rave
With the whistle buoy yowling.

There’s a rusty trusty boat that never makes a port,
There’s a scrubby bold boat that never finds a lee,
The blunt little lightship,
The iron clad lightship,
The weather-wise lightship,
Anchored out at sea!

When the storms signal’s set,
Great Point stuck with masts,
And the range lights blur
Through the wicked black blasts
When the extra anchors drag
And the bell buoy clangs
And the jetty rocks swirl
Under tide rips fangs.

There’s one little boat that never makes a port
There’s one tidy ship that never seeks a lee
The blunt little lightship
The staunch, able lightship
The game, snubby lightship
Anchored out at sea.

When the night’s very still
And the moon rides high,
There’s one strange craft
Gives a hail and stands by.
Though the forms on her decks
Have a look of the dead
Still they warn of a wreck
Or a shoal dead ahead.

_It’s the winter-lost Lightship that never found a lee
It’s the tide-driven Lightship that never made a port
It’s the silent-crewed Lightship, the speechless brave Lightship
The ice-covered Lightship
Sunk at sea._

Now when home fires blaze
And the storm is shut out,
And the wind and its ways
Are sea-yarned about;
When the good glass is lifted
In the good pipe smoke
And the good talk has drifted
From the well worn joke....

Toast the one little boat that never makes port!
Sing of the craft that never hunts a lee--
Drink to the lightships, the lonely crews of lightships
The lunging, plunging lightships
Anchored out at sea!

SEPTEMBER NOON.

Upon the warm brick walls the patterns come,
Dim moving likenesses of pensive leaves;
The swallows twitter round the ivied eaves
Late bees in perilous petunias hum;
On the moors, amber grape and bloomy plum,
But here in trim back-yards the apple’s face
Twinkling with dahlias in some latticed place.

The stranger’s foot has gone and all the world
Has settled down to Island ways of peace,
Where the clouds mid-summer caravans cease
Soundlessness on the hills is silver-furled!
Now all faint scents and spice of full increase!
The scarlet pepper pendant on its bush
And late corn leaning on the farmland hush.

Slow wagons trundle with the sea-grass haul,
The crickets, palaced in the golden rod
Begin their strumming; the horse-chestnuts fall
And morning glories on the trellis nod;
Marigold’s velvet turns to pungent pod.
A sea of azure girds the shores around;
The tawny silence mellows till the deep
Steamboat whistle’s sombre-throated sound
Wakens the isle from Indian Summer’s sleep
Then all is bustle and the city’s stir
Once more has come upon the Islander.

MAIN STREET BY MOONLIGHT.

The old church clock strikes one, and down the row
Of ancient houses where the moonlight floods,
The black tree branches move like wands that throw
A net of woven loopings flecked with buds.
The night is still, a silver quiet now
Transforms the plain old homes whose ancient mood
Returns; through panelled doorways come and go
Figures soft shod, in prim calash and hood;
Here by a lilac bush the little gate
Supports two figures of sweetheart and beau
Here by a hedge two others hesitate
Then join the shadowy thronging too and fro.

Do you believe that in those rooms upstair
The newer generation dreams again
Back to the lives of all these women and men
Setting them free to haunt the pavements here?
That youngsters sleeping see sails homeward fare,
Ships laden with treasure and salt romance;
The Quakers’ broad brim; Puritans askance?
That such bold dreaming sets these spirits free
On this deserted street in moonlit beam
“Coming alive,” though coming soberly
And looking on us as figures in =their= dream?

Hush, with what proud simplicity these figures move
And live again austerities of grace
Who used their lives so guardedly--this glove
The homespun petticoat! this barbe of lace!
Boots and prunellas on the brick path pace;
Fair tinted skin, clear eye and honored name
Come through the panelled doors or garden place.
The scholars’ reserve, the solid merchants’ fame
The Friends, the Captains, blooded knight and dame,
Who to old English gentry backward trace.

So through the cobbled streets they silently press
On very gentle errands of their own
And make no plea, and no proud tale confess
Nor look aghast at their once simple town
Yet do they smile, permitting us to guess
That they prefer their own to our renown....

Was that the clock just struck ... the street is clear
The moon rides high, there are no figures here....
Someone stopped dreaming in this street, my dear!

PSALM OF IMAGINED HUNGER.

If I were starving in Nantucket I would first
Go down to the beach and dig for quahaugs;
Or some scallops.
Or drop overboard a neat little lobster car,
Or row to a place where there are wild oysters;
Then I would hang around the docks at five o’clock
When the fishermen come in,
And perhaps get an extra plaicefish
Or some shark or black fish,
(Though I shouldn’t like to eat horseshoe crab or squid)
That failing, I would go out on the moors and snare a pheasant;
I would catch a rabbit and though I wouldn’t know
how to cook it, an owl.
To eat crow, I have heard is not judicious--but how
about marsh-hawk?
If it were August I would get Irish moss out of the sea,
And flavor it with cranberries.
I would then go crabbing near Our Island Home;
If it were July I should live in the blueberry patches
And find black berries, (you know where!)
And get strawberries in the old cemetery.
I would go mushrooming (very prudently) in fields near Thorn Lots.
I would go beach plumming (very early) on the State Road
I would get in touch with grape vines near Wauwinet
And with hazel nuts near ’Sconset
And dig for swamp root out near Madaket.
Elder berry would be a last resort!
I would hang over the fences of a certain yard in Hussey Street
To see if grapes and pears would come to me.
Or I would interrupt tea-parties on Pleasant Street
Boldly walking in and asking for apples.
Of course I would weed the potato patch of anyone that asked me to
For two potatoes.
I would help with the melons and do what I could
for corn and pumpkins;
Peaches and cherries I would pluck on shares
But if all these things failed I would go to a little house,
Where they always know what I mean
And ask for food!

THE MOON-CANOE.

Where evening tides creep dark and blue,
I launch my little moon-canoe.

I leave the planet harbor light,
And lay my course along the Night.

I paddle down the Milky Way
Where phospher sky weeds gleam and spray,

And pluck what starry branches grow
Along its winding overflow.

I swing my shallop out mid dream
Where tides of summer evening stream;

And carried on this sound so wide,
Still on and on and on I glide,

Harking, along the Western bar
The bell buoy of a swinging star.

My meteor anchor will, I ween,
Hold in this dark of depth unseen;

The dew, my silver lead and line
Doth sound me shallows of star shine;

And now and then I reef the veil
Of fog that serves me for a sail.

When, bold, I make the Western lee,
Old pilot shadows signal me;

And tacking windward come a fleet
Of clouds, with ghostly spar and sheet.

I follow them and disembark,
And moor my boat beyond the Dark.

DEPRECATION.

While mending nets I made the songs I knew,
Hummed them for sake of humming, not for singing;
But as I crooned, the bell-buoy crooned them too,
The blacksmith had them on his anvil ringing,
And the gulls carried them on clearcut winging....

Yet, if their ragged form the world regrets,
Do you explain.... “But, she was mending nets!”