Poems (Spofford)/Inside Plum Island
INSIDE PLUM ISLAND.
We floated in the idle breeze, With all our sails a-shiver;The shining tide came softly through, And filled Plum Island River.
The shining tide stole softly up Across the wide green splendor,Creek swelling creek till all in one The marshes made surrender.
And clear the flood of silver swung Between the brimming edges,And now the depths were dark, and now The boat slid o'er the sedges.
And here a yellow sand spit foamed Amid the great sea meadows,And here the sleeping waters gloomed Lucid in emerald shadows.
While, in their friendly multitude Encamped along our quarter,The host of hay-cocks seemed to float With doubles in the water.
Around the sunny distance rose A blue and hazy highland,And winding down our winding way The sand hills of Plum Island—
The windy dunes that hid the sea For many a dreary acre,And muffled all its thundering fall Along the wild South Breaker.
We crept by Oldtown's marshy mouth, By reedy Rowley drifted,But far away the Ipswich bar Its white caps tossed and shifted.
Sometimes we heard a bittern boom, Sometimes a piping: plover,Sometimes there came the lonesome cry Of white gulls flying over.
Sometimes, a sudden fount of light, A sturgeon splashed, and fleetingBehind the sheltering thatch we heard Oars in the rowlocks beating.
But all the rest was silence, save The rippling in the rushes,The gentle gale that struck the sail In fitful swells and gushes.
Silence and summer and the sun, Waking a wizard legion,Wove as we went their ancient spells In this enchanted region.
No spectral care could part the veil Of mist and sunbeams shredded,That everywhere behind us closed The labyrinth we threaded.
Beneath our keel the great sky arched Its liquid light and azure;We swung between two heavens, ensphered Within their charmed embrasure.
Deep in that watery firmament, With flickering lustres splendid,Poised in his perfect flight, we saw The painted hawk suspended.
And there, the while the boat-side leaned, With youth and laughter laden,We saw the red fin of the perch, We saw the swift menhaden.
Outside, the hollow sea might cry, The wailing wind give warning,No whisper saddened us, shut in With sunshine and the morning.
Oh, far, far off the weary world With all its tumult waited,Forever here with drooping sails Would we have hung belated!
Yet when the flaw came ruffling down, And round us curled .and sallied,We skimmed, with bubbles on our track, As glad as when we dallied.
Broadly the bare brown Hundreds rose, The herds their hollows keeping,And clouds of wings about our mast From Swallowbanks were sweeping.
While evermore the Bluff before Grew greenly on our vision,Lifting beneath its waving boughs Its grassy slopes Elysian.
There, all day long, the summer sea Creams murmuring up the shingle;There, all day long, the airs of earth With airs of heaven mingle.
Singing we went our happy way, Singing old songs, nor notedAnother voice that with us sang, As wing and wing we floated.
Till hushed, we listened, while the air With music still was beating,Voice answering tuneful voice, again The words we sang repeating.
A flight of fluting echoes, sent With elfin carol o'er us—More blithe than bird-song in the prime Rang out the sea-blown chorus.
Behind those dunes the storms had heaped In all fantastic fashion,Who syllabled our songs in strains Remote from human passion?
What tones were those that caught our own, Filtered through light and distance,And tossed them gayly to and fro- With such a sweet insistence?
What shoal of sea-sprites, to the sun Along the margin flocking,Dripping with salt dews from the deeps, Made this melodious mocking?
We laughed—a hundred voices rose In airiest fairiest laughter;We sang—a hundred voices quired And sang the whole song after.
One standing eager in the prow Blew out his bugle cheerly,And far and wide their horns replied More silverly and clearly.
And falling down the falling tide, Slow and more slowly going,Flown far, flown far, flown faint and fine, We heard their horns still blowing.
Then, with the last delicious note To other skies alluring,Down ran the sails; beneath the Bluff The boat lay at her mooring.
Came they, these subtile powers, to tell The poet, at their revels,How blest to live delightful days Among these meadow levels?
Blest as to lead his lonely thought Above horizons vaster,Close to the stars, transfigured on The awful heights of Shasta!
Dreaming, he loitered still, we thought, Within his dream's bright portals;We trifled with the hour, but he Had been with the immortals!
In vain, at night, we sought that sound— Stars over us and underThrough all that watery wilderness Building a word of wonder;
Or groping, when the light-house spark Its witch-dance kept before us,Or when the unseen moon distilled Her deathly glamour o'er us;
Or when, the twin lamps of their towers Emerald and ruby gleaming,Across the shadowy Merrimack The channel lights came streaming,—
In vain our lingering halloo, Our roundelay untiring,No silver cry chimed far or nigh Of all that silver quiring.
Oh, never since that magic morn Those strains the boatman follows,Or piping from the sandy hills, Or bubbling from the hollows!
Yet long as summer breezes blow, Waves murmur, rushes quiver,Those warbling echoes everywhere Will haunt Plum Island River!