The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman/The Carib Sea
THE CARIB SEA
KENNST DU?
Do you know the blue of the Carib Sea
Far out where there's nothing but sky to bound
The gaze to windward, the glance to lee,—
More deep than the bluest spaces be
Betwixt white clouds in heaven's round?
Have you seen the liquid lazuli spread
From edge to edge, so wondrous blue
That your footfall's trust it might almost woo,
Were it smooth and low for one to tread?
So clear and warm, so bright, so dark,
That he who looks on it can but mark
'T is a different tide from the far-away
Perpetual waters, old and gray,
And can but wonder if Mother Earth
Has given a younger ocean birth.
Do you know how surely the trade-wind blows
To west-sou'west, through the whole round year?
How, after the hurricane comes and goes,
For nine fair moons there is naught to fear?
How the brave wind carries the tide before
Its breath, and on to the southwest shore?
How the Caribbean billows roll,
One after the other, and climb forever,—
The yearning waves of a shoreless river
That never, never can reach its goal?
They follow, follow, now and for aye,
One after the other, brother and brother,
And their hollow crests half hide the play
Of light where the sun's red sword thrusts home;
But still in a tangled shining chain
They quiver and fall and rise again,
And far before them the wind-borne spray
Is shaken on from their froth and foam,—
And for leagues beyond, in gray and rose,
The sundown shimmering distance glows!
—So bright, so swift, so glad, the sea
That girts the isles of Caribbee.
Do you know the green of those island shores
By the morning sea-breeze fanned?
(The tide on the reefs that guard them roars—
Then slips by stealth to the sand.)
Have you found the inlet, cut between
Like a rift across the crescent moon,
And anchored off the dull lagoon
Close by forest fringes green,—
Cool and green, save for the lines
Of yellow cocoa-trunks that lean,
Each in its own wind-nurtured way,
And bend their fronds to the wanton vines
Beneath them all astray?
Here is no mangrove warp-and-woof
From which a vapor lifts aloof,
But on the beaches smooth and dry
Red-lipped conch-shells lie—
Even at the edge of that green wall
Where the shore-grape's tendriled runners spread
And purple trumpet-creepers fall,
And the frangipani's clusters shed
Their starry sweets withal.
The silly cactuses writhe around,
Yet cannot choose but in grace to mingle,
This side the twittering waters sound,
On the other opens a low green dingle,
And between your ship and the shore and sky
The frigate-birds like fates appear,
The flapping pelican feeds about,
The tufted cardinals sing and fly.
So fair the shore, one has no fear;
And the sailors, gathered forward, shout
With strange glad voices each to each,—
Though well the harbor's depth they know
And the craven shark that lurks below,—
"Ho! let us over, and strike out
Until we stand upon the beach,
Until that wonderland we reach!"
—So green, so fair, the island lies,
As if 't were adrift from Paradise.
SARGASSO WEED
Out from the seething Stream
To the steadfast trade-wind's courses,
Over the bright vast swirl
Of a tide from evil free,—
Where the ship has a level beam,
And the storm has spent his forces,
And the sky is a hollow pearl
Curved over a sapphire sea.
Here it floats as of old,
Beaded with gold and amber,
Sea-frond buoyed with fruit,
Sere as the yellow oak,
Long since carven and scrolled,
Of some blue-ceiled Gothic chamber
Used to the viol and lute
And the ancient belfry's stroke.
Eddying far and still
In the drift that never ceases,
The dun Sargasso weed
Slips from before our prow,
And its sight makes strong our will,
As of old the Genoese's,
When he stood in his hour of need
On the Santa Maria's bow.
Ay, and the winds at play
Toy with these peopled islands,
Each of itself as well
Naught but a brave New World,
Where the crab and sea-slug stay
In the lochs of its tiny highlands,
And the nautilus moors his shell
With his sail and streamers furled.
Each floats ever and on
As the round green Earth is floating
Out through the sea of space
Bearing our mortal kind,
Parasites soon to be gone,
Whom others be sure are noting,
While to their astral race
We in our turn are blind.
CASTLE ISLAND LIGHT
I
Between the outer Keys,
Where the drear Bahamas be,
Through a crooked pass the vessels sail
To reach the Carib Sea.
'T is the Windward Passage, long and dread,
From bleak San Salvador;
(Three thousand miles the wave must roll
Ere it wash the Afric shore).
Here are the coral reefs
That hold their booty fast;
The sea-fan blooms in groves beneath,
And sharks go lolling past.
Hither and yon the sand-bars lie
Where the prickly bush has grown,
And where the rude sponge-fisher dwells
In his wattled hut, alone.
Southward, amid the strait,
Is the Castle Island Light;
Of all that bound the ocean round
It has the loneliest site.
II
'Twixt earth and heaven the waves are driven
Sorely upon its flank;
The light streams out for sea-leagues seven
To the Great Bahama Bank.
A girded tower, a furlong scant
Of whitened sand and rock,
And one sole being the waters seeing,
Where the gull and gannet flock.
He is the warder of the pass
That mariners must find;
His beard drifts down like the ashen moss
Which hangs in the southern wind.
The old man hoar stands on the shore
And bodes the withering gale,
Or wonders whence from the distant world
Will come the next dim sail.
From the Northern Main, from England,
From France, the craft go by;
Yet sometimes one will stay her course
That must his wants supply.
III
In a Christmas storm the "Claribel" struck
At night, on the Pelican Shoal,
But the keeper's wife heard not the guns
And the bell's imploring toll.
She died ere the gale went down,
Wept by her daughters three—
Sun-flecked, yet fair, with their English hair,
Nymphs of the wind and sea.
With sail and oar some island shore
At will their skiffs might gain,
But they never had known the kiss of man,
Nor had looked on the peopled main,
Nor heard of the old man Atlas,
Who holds the unknown seas,
And the golden fruit that is guarded well
By the young Hesperides.
IV
Who steers by Castle Island Light
May hear the seamen tell
How one, the mate, alone was saved
From the wreck of the "Claribel;"
And how for months he tarried
With the keeper on the isle,
And for each of the blue-eyed daughters
Had ever a word or a smile.
Between the two that loved him
He lightly made his choice,
And betimes a chance ship took them off
From the father's sight and voice.
The second her trouble could not bear,—
So wild her thoughts had grown
That she fled with a lurking smuggler's crew,
But whither was never known.
Then the keeper aged like Lear,
Left with one faithful child;
But 't was ill to see a maid so young
Who never sang or smiled.
'T is sad to bide with an old, old man,
And between the wave and sky
To watch all day the sea-fowl play,
While lone ships hasten by.
V
There came, anon, the white full moon
That rules the middle year,
Before whose sheen the lesser stars
Grow pale and disappear.
It glistened down on a lighthouse tower,
A beach on either hand,
And the features wan of a gray old man
Digging a grave in the sand.
CHRISTOPHE
(CAPE HAYTIEN)
"King Henri is King Stephen's peer,
His breeches cost him but a crown!"
So from the old world came the jeer
Of them who hunted Toussaint down:
But what was this grim slave that swept
The shambles, then to greatness leapt?
Their counterfeit in bronze, a thing
To mock,—or every inch a king?
On San-Souci's defiant wall
His people saw, against the sky,
Christophe,—a shape the height of Saul,—
A chief who brooked no rivals nigh.
Right well he aped the antique state;
His birth was mean, his heart was great;
No azure filled his veins,—instead,
The Afric torrent, hot and red.
He built far up the mountain-side
A royal keep, and walled it round
With towers the palm-tops could not hide;
The ramparts toward ocean frowned;
Beneath, within the rock-hewn hold,
He heaped a monarch's store of gold;
He made his nobles in a breath;
He held the power of life and death;
And here through torrid years he ruled
The Haitian horde, a despot king,—
Mocked Europe's pomp,—her minions schooled
In trade and war and parleying,—
Yet reared his dusky heirs in vain:
To end the drama, Fate grew fain,
Uprose a rebel tide, and flowed
Close to the threshold where he strode.
"And now the Black must exit make,
A craven at the last," they say:
Not so,—Christophe his leave will take
The long unwonted Roman way.
"Ho! Ho!" cried he, "the day is done,
And I go down with the setting sun!"
A pistol-shot,—no sign of fear,—
So died Christophe without a peer.
LA SOURCE
(PORT-AU-PRINCE)
A haunt the mountain roadside near,
Wherefrom the cliff that rose behind
Kept back, through all the tropic year,
The sundrouth and the whirling wind;
These here could never entrance find;
Perpetual summer balm it knew;
And skyward, thick-set boughs entwined
Their coil, where birds made sweet ado,
And heaven through glossy leaves was deepest blue.
Twin relics of some forest grim,
The last of their primeval race
Left scatheless, knit them limb with limb
Above the reaches of that place;
Time's hand against their high embrace
For seeming centuries had striven,
But yet they grappled face to face,
Still from their olden guard undriven
Though at their feet the cliff itself was riven.
And from the rift a stream outflowed,
The fountain of that cloven grot,—
La Source! Along the downward road
It speeded, pitying the lot
Of dwellers in each hot-roofed spot
Which fiery noonday held in rule,—
Yet at the start neglected not
To broaden into one deep pool
Beneath those trees its staunchless waters cool.
Near the green edge of this recess
We made our halt, and marvelled, more
Than at its sudden loveliness,
To find reborn that life of yore
When ocean to Nausicaa bore
The wanderer from Calypso strayed,—
For here swart dames, and beldames hoar,
With many a round-limbed supple maid,
Plashed in the pool and eyed us unafraid.
The simple, shameless washers there,
Dusk children of the Haitian sun,
Bent to the work their bodies, bare
And brown, nor thought our gaze to shun,—
Save that an elfish withered one,
Scolding the white-toothed girls, set free
Her tongue, and bade them now have done
With saucy pranks, nor wanton be
Before us stranger folk from over sea.
But on the sward one rose full length
From her sole covering, and stood
Defiant in the beauteous strength
Of nature unabashed: a nude
And wilding slip of womanhood.
Now for the master-hand, that shaped
The Indian Hunter in his wood,
To mould that lissome form undraped
Ere from its grace the sure young lines escaped!
Straight as the aloe's crested shoot
That blooms a golden month and dies,
She stayed an instant, with one foot
On tiptoe, poising statue-wise,
And stared, and mocked us with her eyes,—
While rippling to her hip's firm swell
The mestee hair, that so outvies
Europe's soft mesh, and holds right well
The Afric sheen, in one dark torrent fell.
Fi, Angélique! we heard them scream,—
What, could that child, in twice her years,
Change to their like from this fair dream!
Fi donc!—But she, as one who hears
And cares not, at her leisure nears
The pool, and toward her mates at play
Plunges,—and laughter filled our ears
As from La Source we turned away
And rode again into the glare of day.
TO L. H. S.
Love, these vagrant songs may woo you
Once again from winter's ruth,—
Once more quicken memories failing
Of those days when we went sailing,
Eager as when first I knew you,
Sailing after my lost youth.
My lost youth, for in my sight you
Had yourself forborne to change
Since that age when we, together,
Made such mock of wind and weather,
Sought alone what might delight you,—
Ah, how sweet, how far, how strange!
Yet, though scarcely else anear you
Than Tithonus to Aurore,
I am still by Time requited,
Still can vaunt, as when we plighted,
Sight to see you, ear to hear you,
Voice to sing you, if no more.
And in thought I yet behold you
Nearing the enchanted zone,—
(With delight of life the stronger
As we sailed, each blue league longer,
Toward the shore of which I told you,
And the stars myself had known),—
Wondering at the hue beneath you
Of the restless shining waves,
Asking of the palm and coral,—
Of the white cascades—the floral
Ridges waiting long to wreathe you
With the blooms our Norseland craves.
Winds enow since then have kissed you,
On their way to bless or blight;
Little may these songs recover
Of that dream-life swiftly over,—
Nay, but Love, a moment list you,
Since none else can set them right.
More and ever more, the while you
Sailed where every distance gleams,
Passed all sorrow, died all anger,
In the clime of love and languor,
Till we reached the mist-hung isle you
Called the haunted Isle of Dreams.
JAMAICA
I know an island which the sun
Stays in his course to shine upon,
As if it were for this green isle
Alone he kept his fondest smile.
Long his rays delaying flood
Its remotest solitude,
Mountain, dell, and palmy wood,
And the coral sands around
That hear the blue sea's chiming sound.
It is a watered island, one
The upland rains pour down upon.
Oft the westward-floating cloud
To some purple crest is bowed,
While the tangled vapors seek
To escape from peak and peak,
Yield themselves, and break, or glide
Through deep forests undescried,
Mourning their lost pathway wide.
In this land of woods and streams
Ceaseless Summer paints her dreams:
White, bewildered torrents fall,
Dazzled by her morning beams,
With an outcry musical
From the ridges, plainward all;
Mists of pearl, arising there,
Mark their courses in the air,
Sunlit, magically fair.
Here the pilgrim may behold
How the bended cocoa waves
When at eve and morn a breeze
Blows to and from the Carib seas,
How the lush banana leaves
From their braided trunk unfold;
How the mango wears its gold,
And the sceptred aloe's bloom
Glorifies it for the tomb.
When the day has ended quite,
Splendor fills the drooping skies;
All is beauty, naught is night.
Then the Crosses twain arise,
Southward far, above the deep,
And the moon their light outvies.
Hark! the wakened lute and song
That to this fond clime belong,—
All is music, naught is sleep.
Isle of plenty, isle of love!
In the low, encircling plain
Laboring Afric, loaded wain,
Bearing sweets and spices, move;
On the happy heights above
Love his seat has chosen well,
Dreamful ease and silence dwell,
Life is all entranced, and time
Passes like a tinkling rhyme.
Ah, on those cool heights to dwell
Yielded to the island's spell!
There from some low-whispering mouth
To learn the secret of the South,
Or to watch dark eyes that close
When their sleep the noondays bring,
(List, the palm leaves murmuring!)
And the wind that comes and goes
Smells of every flower that blows.
Or from ocean to descry
Green plantations sloping nigh,
Starry peaks, of beryl hewn,
Whose strong footholds hidden lie
Furlong deep beneath the sea!
Long the mariners wistfully
Landward gaze, and say aright,
"Under sun or under moon
Earth has no more beauteous sight!"
CREOLE LOVER'S SONG
Night wind, whispering wind,
Wind of the Carib sea!
The palms and the still lagoon
Long for thy coming soon;
But first my lady find:
Hasten, nor look behind!
To-night Love's herald be.
The feathery bamboo moves,
The dewy plantains weep;
From the jasmine thickets bear
The scents that are swooning there,
And steal from the orange groves
The breath of a thousand loves
To waft her ere she sleep.
And the lone bird's tender song
That rings from the ceiba tree,
The firefly's light, and the glow
Of the moonlit waters low,—
All things that to night belong
And can do my love no wrong
Bear her this hour for me.
Speed thee, wind of the deep,
For the cyclone comes in wrath!
The distant forests moan;
Thou hast but an hour thine own,—
An hour thy tryst to keep,
Ere the hounds of tempest leap
And follow upon thy path.
Whisperer, tarry a space!
She waits for thee in the night;
She leans from the casement there
With the star-blooms in her hair,
And a shadow falls like lace
From the fern-tree over her face,
And over her mantle white.
Spirit of air and fire,
To-night my herald be!
Tell her I love her well,
And all that I bid thee, tell,
And fold her ever the nigher
With the strength of my soul's desire,
Wind of the Carib sea!
THE ROSE AND THE JASMINE
Now dies the rippling murmur of the strings
That followed long, half-striving to retake,
The burden of the lover's ended song.
Silence! but we who listened linger yet,
Two of the soul's near portals still unclosed—
Sight and the sense of odor. At our feet,
Beneath the open jalousies, is spread
A copse of leaf and bloom, a knotted wild
Of foliage and purple flowering vines,
With here a dagger-plant to pierce them through,
And there a lone papaya lifting high
Its golden-gourded cresset. Night's high noon
Is luminous; that swooning silvery hour
When the concentrate spirit of the South
Grows visible—so rare, and yet so filled
With tremulous pulsation that it seems
All light and fragrance and ethereal dew.
Two vases—carved from some dark, precious wood,
The red-grained heart of olden trees that cling
To yonder mountain—in the moonlight cast
Their scrolls' deep shadows on the glassy floor.
A proud exotic Rose, brought from the North,
Is set within the one; the other bears
A double Jasmine for its counter-charm.
Here on their thrones, in equal high estate,
The rivals bloom; and both have drunk the dew,
Tending their beauty in the midnight air,
Until their sovereign odors meet and blend,
As voices blend that whisper melody,
Now each distinct, now mingled both in one:
JASMINE
I, like a star, against the woven gloom
Of tresses on Dolores' brow shall rest.
ROSE
And I one happy, happy night shall bloom
Twined in the border of her silken vest.
JASMINE
Throughout our isle the guardian winds deprive
Of all their sweets a hundred common flowers,
To feed my heart with fragrance! Lone they live,
And drop their petals far from trellised bowers.
ROSE
Within the garden-plot whence I was borne
No rifled sisterhood became less fine;
My wealth made not the violet forlorn,
And near me climbed the fearless eglantine.
JASMINE
Who feels my breath recalls the orange court,
The terraced walks that jut upon the sea,
The water in the moonlit bay amort,
The midnight given to longing and to me.
ROSE
Who scents my blossoms dreams of bordered meads
Deep down the hollow of some vale far north,
Where Cuthbert with the fair-haired Hilda pleads,
And overhead the stars of June come forth.
JASMINE
Me with full hands enamored Manuel
Gathers for dark-browed Inez at his side,
And both to love are quickened by my spell,
And chide the day that doth their joys divide.
ROSE
Nay, but all climes, all tender sunlit lands
From whose high places spring the palm or pine,
Desire my gifts to grace the wedded bands,
And every home for me has placed a shrine.
JASMINE
Fold up thy heart, proud virgin, ay, and blush
With all the crimson tremors thou canst vaunt!
My yearning waves of passion onward rush,
And long the lover's wistful memory haunt.
ROSE
Pale temptress, the night's revel be thine own,
Till love shall pall and rapture have its fill!
The morn's fresh light still finds me on a throne
Where care is not, nor blissful pains that kill.
JASMINE
Sweet, sweet my breath, oh, sweet beyond compare!
ROSE
Rare, rare the splendors of my regal crown!
BOTH
Choose which thou wilt, bold lover, yet beware
Lest to a luckless choice thou bendest down!
FERN-LAND
I
Hither, where a woven roof
Keeps the prying sun aloof
From wonderland,
From the fairies underland,—
Hither, where strange grasses grow
With their curling rootlets set
'Twixt the black roots serpentine,
Laurel roots that twist and twine
Toward the cloven path below
Of some cloud-born rivulet,—
This way enter
Fern-Land, and from rim to centre
All its secrets shall be thine.
II
Here within the covert see
Fern-Land's mimic forestry;
Royal tree-ferns
Canopy the nestling wee ferns
That with every pointed frond
Lend their lords a duteous ear;
Golden ferns a sunshine make—
Fleck their beauty on the brake;
In their moonlight close beyond
Silver ferns like sprites appear.
Here beholden,
Purple, silver, green and golden,
Mingle for their own sweet sake.
III
Day's sure horologe of flowers
Marks in turn the honeyed hours;
Blossoms dangle,
Lithe lianas twist and tangle;
Here on the lagetta tree
Laboring elves at starlight weave
Filmy bride-veils of its spray,
Shot with the cocuya's ray,—
For in fairy-land we be!
Look, and you shall well believe
Oberon reigneth,
And Titania disdaineth,
Still, to yield her lord his way.
IV
Here, unseen by grosser light,
Fairy-land, at noon of night
Holidaying,
Sallies forth in fine arraying;
Elfin, sylphide, fay and gnome
On the dew-tipped ferns disport,
In the festooned creepers swing,
Their light plumage fluttering.
Fern-Land is their ancient home,
Here the monarch holds his court,
Puck abideth;
Here the Queen her changeling hideth,
Ariel doth merrily sing.
V
Here, when Dian shuns the sky,
Swift the winged watchmen fly,—
Flash their torches
In and out mimosa porches
Till the first pale glint of morn:
Then the little people change
Casque and doublet, robe and sash,
In the twinkling of a lash,
For the magic mantles worn
Warily where mortals range,
And beside us
Now unseen, with glee deride us,
Laugh to scorn our trespass rash.
VI
Then the gnomes, that change to newts,
Lurk about the tree-fern's roots;
Their commander
Is the frog-mouthed salamander
Who will marshal in the sun
Red-backed lizards from the vines,
Eft and newt from bog and spring,—
Many a crested, horny thing
Sharp-eyed, fearsome,—and that one
With the loathly spotted lines!
Mortal heedeth
Him, whose breath of poison speedeth
Them that chafe the elfin king.
VII
Moths above, that feed on dew,
Flit their wings of gold and blue,—
Fancy guesses
These must be the court-princesses:
Others are in durance pent,
Changed to orchids for their tricks,—
Wantons they, who must remain
All day long in beauteous pain
Till stern Oberon relent,
Pardon grant, and seal affix.
Each repineth
Thus until the monarch dineth
And, content, doth loose her chain.
VIII
Would you had the fine, fine ear
The dragonfly's recall to hear,—
Tiny words
Of the vibrant hummingbirds
That, where bloom convolvuli,
Round the dew-cups whir and hover,
Thrusting each, hour after hour,
His keen bill to heart o' the flower,
As some mounted knight may ply
His long lance, an eager lover,
Through deep sedges,
And athrough the coppice edges,
Fain to reach his lady's bower.
IX
Whilst the emerald lancers poise
In the soft air without noise,
Brake and mould
Hoard their marvels manifold.
There the armored beetles creep,
Shrouding in unseemly fear
Each his shield of chrysoprase
Lest its gleam himself betrays
For our kind to seize and keep
Prisoned in a damsel's ear.
Each one stealeth
Dumbly, and his dull way feeleth
Until starlight shall appear.
X
Step you soft, be mute and wary
Lest you wake the lords of Faery!
Motion rude
Fits not with their solitude:
Else the spider will resent
And the beetle nip you well,
Bête-rouge in your neck will furrow,
Garapata dig his burrow:—
Dread the wasp's swift punishment
And the chegoe's vengeance fell:
Well-defended,
Fairies sleep till day hath ended,—
Leave we Fern-Land and its spell.
MORGAN
Oh, what a set of Vagabundos,
Sons of Neptune, sons of Mars,
Raked from todos otros mundos,
Lascars, Gascons, Portsmouth tars,
Prison mate and dock-yard fellow,
Blades to Meg and Molly dear,
Off to capture Porto Bello
Sailed with Morgan the Buccaneer!
Out they voyaged from Port Royal
(Fathoms deep its ruins be,
Pier and convent, fortress loyal,
Sunk beneath the gaping sea);
On the Spaniard's beach they landed,
Dead to pity, void of fear,—
Round their blood-red flag embanded,
Led by Morgan the Buccaneer.
Dawn till dusk they stormed the castle,
Beat the gates and gratings down;
Then, with ruthless rout and wassail,
Night and day they sacked the town,
Staved the bins its cellars boasted,
Port and Lisbon, tier on tier,
Quaffed to heart's content, and toasted
Harry Morgan the Buccaneer:
Stripped the church and monastery,
Racked the prior for his gold,
With the traders' wives made merry,
Lipped the young and mocked the old,
Diced for hapless señoritas
(Sire and brother bound anear),—
Juanas, Lolas, Manuelitas,
Cursing Morgan the Buccaneer.
Lust and rapine, flame and slaughter,
Forayed with the Welshman grim:
"Take my pesos, spare my daughter!"
"Ha! ha!" roared that devil's limb,
"These shall jingle in our pouches,
She with us shall find good cheer."
"Lash the graybeard till he crouches!"
Shouted Morgan the Buccaneer.
Out again through reef and breaker,
While the Spaniard moaned his fate,
Back they voyaged to Jamaica,
Flush with doubloons, coins of eight,
Crosses wrung from Popish varlets,
Jewels torn from arm and ear,—
Jesu! how the Jews and harlots
Welcomed Morgan the Buccaneer!
CAPTAIN FRANCISCA
Off Maracaibo's wall
The squadron lay:
The dykes are carried all
With storm and shout!
Le Basque and Lolonnois
On land their crews deploy,
Through all that ruthless day
The Spaniards rout.
They sack the captured town
Ere set of sun;
Their blood-red pennons crown
The convent tower:
Then Du Plessis, the bold,
Cries: "Take my share of gold!
For me this pretty one,
This cloister flower!"
Dice, drink, and song, the while
They seek anew
The filibusters' isle,
Tortuga's port.
Swift was the craft that bore
Francisca from her shore;
Red-handed were its crew
And grim their sport.
Unbraided fell her hair,
A tropic cloud;
Seven days, with sob and prayer,
She mourned the dead;
Like rain her tears fell;
But Du Plessis right well
By saint and relic vowed
As on they sped.
Ere past the Mer du Nord
She smiled apace;
Her dark eyes evermore
Sought his alone.
Hot wooed the Chevalier;
His outlaw-priest was near:
Forsworn were home and race,
She was his own.
Now cruel Lolonnois
And fierce Le Basque
Unlade with wolfish joy
The cargazon;
Land all their ribald braves,
Captives and naked slaves,
With many a bale and cask,
By rapine won;
Armor and altar-plate
Brought over sea:
Pesos, a countless weight,
The horde divide—
To each an equal share,
Else blades are in the air!
Cries Du Plessis: "For me,
My ship, and bride!"
They sailed the Mer du Nord,
The Carib Sea,
Whose galleons fled before
The Frenchman's crew;
But, in one deadly fight,
A swivel aimed aright
Brought down young Du Plessis,
Shot through and through.
Wild heart of France, in pride
And ruin bred!
Against a heart he died,
As brave, as free.
Sternly she bade his men
First sink the prize, and then
Name one that in his stead
Their chief should be.
Each red-shirt laid his hand
Upon the Cross,
Swearing, at her command,
Vengeance to wreak;
To scour the blue sea there
And seek the Spaniards' lair,
From Gracias à Dios
To Porto Rique.
His corse the deep she gave,
Her life to hate;
Upon the land and wave
Brought sudden fear:
No bearded Capitan,
Since first their woes began
(The orphaned niñas prate),
Cost them so dear!
From Maracaibo's Bay
Anon put out
A frigate to waylay
This ranger dark.
It crossed the Mer du Nord,
And, off San Salvador,
Stayed, with defiance stout,
Francisca's barque.
They grappled stern and prow
Till the guns kissed!
Girt like her rovers, now
She bids them board:
The first her blade had shorn
Was her own brother born.
Blindly she smote, nor wist
Whose life-stream poured.
Yet, as he fell, one ball
His sure aim sped.
Her lips the battle-call
Essay in vain.
Then deathful stroke on stroke,
Curses and powder-smoke,
And blood like water shed
Above the twain!
No quarter give or take!
The decks are gore;
Fresh gaps the Spaniards make,
Charging anew:
"Death to the buccaneer!
No more our fleet shall fear,
That sails the Mer du Nord,
This corsair crew!"
—On thy lone strand was made,
San Salvador,
One grave where two were laid
For bane or boon!
The last of all their race,
To each an equal place.
Guards well that sombre shore
The still lagoon.
PANAMA
Two towers the old Cathedral lifts
Above the sea-walled town,—
The wild pine bristles from their rifts,
The runners dangle down;
In either turret, staves in hand,
All day the mongrel ringers stand
And sound, far over bay and land,
The Bells of Panama.
Loudly the cracked bells, overhead,
Of San Francisco ding,
With Santa Ana, La Merced,
Felípe, answering;
Banged all at once, and four times four,
Morn, noon, and night, the more and more
Clatter and clang with huge uproar
The Bells of Panama.
From out their roosts the bellmen see
The red-tiled roofs below,—
The Plaza folk that lazily
To mass and cockpit go,—
Then pound afresh, with clamor fell,
Each ancient, broken, thrice-blest bell,
Till thrice our mouths have cursed as well
The Bells of Panama.
The Cordillera guards the main
As when Pedrarias bore
The cross, the castled flag of Spain,
To the Pacific shore;
The tide still ebbs a league from quay,
The buzzards scour the emptied Bay:
"There's a heretic to singe to-day,—
Come out! Come out!"—still strive to say
The Bells of Panama.
MARTINIQUE IDYL
Love, the winds long to lure you to their home,
To tempt you on beneath the northern arch!
There, in the swift, bright summer, you and I
May loiter where the elms' deep shadows lie;
There, by our household fire, bid Yule-tide come,
And winter's cold, and every gust of March.
Stay, O stay with me here, and chasten
Your heart still longing to wander more!
Ever the restless winds are winging,
But the white-plumed egrets, skyward-springing,
Over our blue sea hover, and hasten
To light anew on their own dear shore.
The lips grow tired of honey, the cloyed ear
Of music, and of light the eyelids tire.
I weary of the sky's eternal balm,
The ceaseless droop and rustle of the palm;
Only your whisper, love, constrains me here
From that brave clime I would you might desire.
Cold, ah, cold is the sky, and leaden,
There where earth rounds off to the pole!
Still by kisses the moments number,—
Here are sweetness, and rest, and slumber,
All to lighten and naught to deaden
The heart's low murmur, the captured soul.
Dear, I would have you yearn, amid these sweets,
For the clear breeze that blows from waters gray,—
For some fresh, northern hill-top, overgrown
With bush and bloom and brake to you unknown;
There, while the hidden thrush his song repeats,
The rose shall tinge your cheek the livelong day.
Stay in the clime where living is loving
And the lips make music unaware;
Where copses thrill with the wood-doves' cooing,
And astral moths on the flight are wooing;
While the light colibris poise unmoving,—
Winged Loves that mate in the trembling air.
Nay, love itself will languish in the days
When Summer never doffs his burning helm.
No lasting links to bind the soul are wrought
Where passion takes no deeper cast from thought;
Ah! lend your ear a moment to the lays
Our poets sing you of a trustier realm!
Under the cocoa-fronds that flutter,
Here, where the lush white trumpet-flower
And the curled lianas roof us over,
So that no evil thing discover
The sighs we mingle, the words we utter,—
Here, oh here, let us make our bower!
Love is not perfect, sweet, that like a dream
Flows on without a forecast or a pain;
Some burden must betide to make it strong,
Some toil, to make its briefest bliss seem long,—
Ay, longer than the crossing of a stream
Mist-haunted, lit by moons that surely wane.
Here, for a round of moons unbroken,
A spell that holds shall your loss requite;
The fleet, sweet moments shall pass unreckoned
And all to our constant love be second,
And the fragrant lily shall be our token,
That folds itself on the waves at night.
Yonder, or here, and whether summer's star
Burn overhead, or rains of autumn fall!
Or snows of winter in the frozen North?
Love, never doubt it!
Take me with you forth!
And oh, forget not in that land afar,
I am your summer,—you, my life, my all!
ASTRA CAELI
Over the Carib Sea to-night
The stars hang low and near
From the inexplicable dome,—
Nearer, more close to sight,
Than from the skies which bound the stern gray sea
That girts our northern home.
Aftward the sister Crosses be,
And yonder to the lee
One burning cresset glows—a sphere
With light beyond a new moon's rays,
As if some world of vanished souls shone clear
And straight before our gaze.
Were now his spirit bright,—
Not veiled, nor dumb,—
My brother's, with the smile of years ago,
Hither to glide far down that path of light,
And lift a hand, and say aright,—
"Thou too shalt know
The orb from which I come!"
—Were thus 'twixt star and wave
His voice to reach me on the night-wind's breath,
I would not lightly leave thee, Dear,
Nor them who with thee here
Make of Life's best for me the choice and sum,—
But yet might not bemoan me, as the slave
Condemned, who hears the call to death;
For that strange heralding
Even of itself would answer all,—would prove
Life but a voyage such as this, and bring
To our adventuring
Its gage of the immortal boon,
Promise of after joy and toil and love;
And I would yield me, as the bird takes wing
Knowing its mate must follow sure and soon.
Ay,—but the trackless spirit
Comes not, nor is there utterance or sign
Of all we would divine
Vouchsafed from the unanswering dome:
No presence east or west,—
Only the stars—the restless wondering sea
Bearing us back, from foam-tipped crest to crest,
Toward the one small part ourselves inherit
Of this lone darkling world—and call our home.