As time drifts by on endless flight,
Drowsing upon our couch we hear
A distant clock sound faint but clear,
And chiming from its lonely tower
Ring out the solemn midnight hour.
That warning stirs the unquiet air
A golden day has flown - but where?
Another burns to greet the dawn
But one day has forever gone -
And pendulum and iron tongue
Their mournful requiem have sung.
Aghast the present moment flies
Midway between eternities,
As, winging on without a stay
Tomorrow flees from yesterday,
And vanished moments that have been
Will never come to us again!
THE GOLDEN ROD
What dazzling shape is this that seems to rise
At the command
Of some magician, till it glorifies
The barren sand?
A stately canopy for some proud elve!
And that rich sheen
The grand creation of the gnomes that delve
Grotesque, unseen,
In caverns dim. There while the forges ring
To blow on blow
Those humble artisans are burnishing
That wondrous glow!
How gorgeously the molten yellow gleams
As they combine
The sand’s bright ore with sunlight’s minted beams
In rare design.
Until the wealth that jade green leaves disguise
And buds enfold!
Wells upward with resplendent ecstasies
In jets of gold!
Fountains that o’er the sterile desert play
Erect and tall
With pendent droplets from their golden spray
That never fall.
Oases of enchantment where the bees
And beetles come,
To mingle with the murmur of the seas
Their drowsy hum.
Such splendor glitters in each regal nod
Of gilded bloom
We pause in doubt; is this the golden rod,
Or seraph’s plume?
A scepter, or perchance a magic wand
For elfin kings?
Our fancy pictures in each jewelled frond
Fantastic things.
And still our wonder grows, and a vague fear
Of regions banned
Steals o’er us--lest our footsteps draw too near
To fairyland!
WILD ROSES
Whence comes that swooning fragrance on the air
That riot of rich color on the hill
Like smouldering embers? red, deep red, and fair
They are, beyond our groping words. We thrill
To inner surgings of unuttered things
When we behold, strewn o’er this alien lea
Exotic bloom that to our spirit sings
In perfume sweet as lifting melody,
Fresh from immortal Eden’s radiant bowers
Where angels coveted our earthly flowers.
Like elfin torches tipped with odorous fire
Raining their ashen petals on the grass,
These flowering censers rouse a wild desire
For beauty yet unseen, in those who pass
This solitary way. O incense sweet!
The bees are drunken with it, the wild bees
And dragon flies that hunt this still retreat
Far from the world of men. Is it for these
That Nature lavishes her perfume rare
To scent this moorland waste and wandering air?
Wild roses, O but they were meant to be
More than the sweet companions of an hour;
Theirs is a loftier role, their destiny
In this sad world, to glorify the power
Of beauty welling up beyond the range
Of mortal view. Strange ecstasies concealed
Aforetime from our blighting frost and change
Aurora’s swinging gates have here revealed;
Such perfect beauty as the seraph knows
Hid in that floral miracle - a rose.
THE COAST GUARD STATION
Stout fortress on the battle line
Of shrieking winds and thunderous surge,
A barbican against the brine,
A challenge to the breakers’ dirge;
Not all the wild Atlantic’s wrath
Can bar your men from life boats frail,
Nor all the fury of the gale
Can swerve them from their destined path!
The churning foam may pelt and freeze,
The stinging sleet cut to the bone,
They venture forth on perilous seas,
They venture forth, unsung, alone.
Like knights of olden time arrayed
In oilskin armor, theirs the role
To battle with the raging shoal
And beard the tempest unafraid!
No martial strains ring in their ears,
No banners blaze their desperate way;
Only a wife or mother peers
From distant sand dunes through the spray.
And yet no crown that fame may give
Can e’re transcend the solemn pride
Of men, whatever may betide,
Who risk their lives that men may live.
KEEPER OF THE LIGHT
Aloft within the beacon tower alone
She trims the lamps that send their luminous beams
Far out into the night. The eerie moan
Of the wild shoal is smothered by the screams
Of winds that make the thrumming walls resound
With deafening din. She listens, mute with dread,
To voices mingling vaguely in the sound
Of the storm maddened waves, and shakes her head.
“Is it the waves?” she mutters. Bent and old
Her fingers tremble so,--but not from cold!
Her husband tosses on his cot below
Burning with fever, often calls her name.
But she must stand his watch though none may know
Of her long vigil. Vestal of a flame
Whose warning beams guide mariners aright
Mid perilous reefs, through all engulfing gloom
Though unclean spirits rage throughout the night
Riding the furious winds in rain and spume,
No matter if she shivers and turns pale,
Her courage, like her light, endures the gale.
But what drives hard like spray against the glass
Hurtling from out the dark? a tiny form
With battered wings, a tern which flees, alas,
Like some lost soul from the pursuing storm
Dashed to the rocks below. “Dear God!” she cries
“Why must my light that points great ships the way
“Be blooded by his piteous sacrifice?
“Life saving beams, who gave them power to slay?
“How hopelessly must good and evil blend
“When harmless birds meet such a cruel end.”
ON CHATHAM BARS
On Chatham bars the surges moan
And sea birds cry;
A gull goes winging stark and lone
Across the sky;
While on the shore, with menace low,
Mutters the seething undertow.
O’er Chatham bars a frighted cloud
Goes driven fast;
The shoals are answering hoarse and loud
The roaring blast,
And joining that wild revelry
Of frenzied winds and raging sea.
Through blinding sands with bended head
The coast guard goes
By Chatham bars, in silent dread
For well he knows,
That surf may leave, on its retreat,
Some ghastly trophy at his feet!
On Easter morn the mourners stand
On Chatham hill,
To chant again His high command,
Of - “Peace be still”
And scatter flowers upon the wave
To drift above some nameless grave.
For Chatham bars are silent now
On Easter Day,
Before that solemn group who bow
Their heads and pray
To Him, the Risen One, Who said,
“Then shall the sea give up its dead.”
THE OLD TIMER’S LAMENT
O where is the Cape that I used to know
In the quaint old days of the long ago?
The weathered house with its friendly smoke
From the looming background of silver oak;
And the huge brick oven that flanked the grate
Where the fireplace yawned like the flaming gate
Of a fairy world to my childish gaze
While the russets sputtered before the blaze--
Was there ever such comfort and homey cheer
As the Cape that my memory holds so dear?
There were braided rugs on the sanded floor
And that queer round cellar--what bounteous store
Of pickle and relish and sweet preserve
Seemed overflowing each ample curve!
What jars of berries and stewed beach plum
And jugs--half hidden--of cherry rum--
And jugs that frothed with potato yeast,
And the dainties saved for Thanksgiving’s feast
I think of them often and sigh--“Heigh-ho”
O where is the Cape that I used to know?
And that open chamber and corded bed
Where I listened to pattering rain overhead.
Rope handled sea chests and leathern trunks
And models of clippers and Chinese junks,
And apples drying in clustered strings
With numberless other wonderful things.
No cave from the storied Arabian Nights
Was filled with more treasures and marvelous sights
Than our storehouse under the eaves could show--
O where is the Cape that I used to know?
And the fragrant gardens that memory links
With the olden days--O those sweet Cape pinks,
And the hollyhocks and the columbine,
And the savory herbs by the ivy vine,
With the fish nets drying along the slope
Mid tangles of buoys and fresh tarred rope--
Yes the modern gardens are trim and neat
But I often think--“Do they smell as sweet
“As those beds where the roses loved to grow?”
O where is the Cape that I used to know?
The captains turned from the seven seas
To end their days in such homes as these;
And the tales they spun for my youthful ear
I have waited a lifetime their like to hear.
But they sleep where the mournful willows bend
O’er that silent city where voyages end;
Though their memory lingers in many a page
Of log books crumbling with salt and age,
And many a rare old curio--
O where is the Cape that I used to know?
But time flows on like the ceaseless tide
And cabins clutter the country side
Like nesting gulls. Where the horse, hock deep,
Once plodded the sands the autos sweep
Before my eyes in a dizzy blur
Of mad confusion and noise and stir.
For peace and quiet have never a place
In this modern world with its feverish pace
With its movie glare and its radio--
O where is the Cape that I used to know?
REVERY
Sweet angel of the backward look
And trailing wings,
We wander by Time’s restless brook
Of transient things
That from some far off, unseen nook
Forever springs.
Old Time may lay aside his glass
For just a day,
Let not the jewelled moments pass
But bid them stay,
The while we stretch upon the grass
In revery.
[Illustration]
THE OLD HULK
Moored to the decaying piling
Of a ruined wharf, and whiling
Endless hours away in dreams of days gone by,
Lies a battered hulk, dismasted,
Broken backed and tempest blasted,
Like a dolphin fast aground and left to die.
Deck awash and planking slanted
Like a broken lily planted
In the mud, where every tide the eddies swirl,
Years have gone since last it floated
And the sea growths all unnoted,
Underneath its rotting timbers twine and curl.
Often when my footsteps tended
To that lonely shore that ended
All its voyagings there sounded in my ear,
What the shrilling sea birds uttered
And the voiceless current muttered
Solemn messages it meant for me to hear;
“Far off seas no more beguile me
“But their memories reconcile me
“To the shelter of this silver mirrored cove
“Where my outline seems engraven
“Like an etching. Safe in haven
“I am home at last, and nevermore shall rove.”
THE MODERNISTS
Bam, wham!
Clangor of cymbals and shriek of a fife,
That stabs like a knife.
Zam, slam!
Bang on the tambourine, beat on the drums,
Symphony comes!
Greet her with tom-toms while savages dance,
Let any discord the riot enhance,
Down with all melody, harmony, poise,
Give us more noise!
Tonal inebriates, drunken with sound,
Pound, brothers, pound!
Furiously, frenziedly, round and around
Whirls the mad medley of ear splitting notes,
Like the yelling of demons with flame blackened throats.
Music is stricken, is dying, ’tis said,
Over her head,
Set all the boiler works off on a spree!
Jazz and more jazz in a mad jamboree,
Music is dead!
But still in the morning the song sparrow sings
And blithely she wings,
And from her gay throat a sweet melody springs,
Old as the Pyramids, new as the dawn,
Music will live when this madness has gone.
Blah, blurb!
Pronoun and verb.
For poetry give us a barbaric yawp
Slop, Stop!
The stuff that some long haired Bohemian raves
Would make Keats and Tennyson turn in their graves
Miscalled free verse,
And trash that is worse.
Nothing too banal or trite or absurd,
Such is the artistic triumph preferred,
To melodies sung
When old Homer was young.
Out with the rhyming brook, limpid and pure,
Open a sewer!
Let the nymph Poesy cover her face,
Downcast and blushing at such a disgrace.
Garbage of words and cesspool of thought
Columns and pages of rubbish and rot,
Only a blot!
This is not Poesy spawned in the mire,
High on Olympus she still sounds her lyre
With the immortals. Her rapt, vibrant fire
Blasts like a flame
All the abortions brought forth in her name.
Smear, daub!
Plaster on canvas an unsightly gob
Yellow and scarlet and purple and pink,
Looks like a mess that has spilled in the sink.
But call it a sunset o’er Harlem, in truth
Or a beautiful woman enamoured with youth.
Just a name, any name that you think of will do,
And if you insert a poor outline or two,
Be sure that you violate all the known rules.
The masters were fools!
For painting is only a sleep walker’s trance.
Walpurgis is with us so on with the dance!
For the forms that great Phidias carved out of stone
Misshapen monstrosities, muscle and bone
Now simper and leer,
At vapid admirers who openly jeer
At beauty of tinting or outline or form
And foment a storm,
Of sickly approval at each newest fright
That clutters our galleries, angers our sight.
For art is a blight!
O that some genius great hearted and sane
Would banish such trash of a disordered brain!
For beauty will ever be noble and fine
And speaking through music or color or line
Her voice is divine!
WHEN THE LOCUSTS ARE IN BLOOM
When the locusts are in bloom
Every bud - a riven tomb
Yields a spirit form, emerging pure as snow,
Dancing lightly on the breeze
Like the foam on fairy seas,
Swinging like enchanted censers to and fro.
And the moonbeams, white and chaste,
Through the branches interlaced,
How they seem to drip into each ivory cup,
Where anon, the summer heats
Mingle all those honeyed sweets
That the bee, with nectar drunken, loves to sup.
Wondrous pendants set with gems
Clinging to the swaying stems
How each chalice overflows into the stream
Of the scented hours that glide
Down a timeless, golden tide
To the islands where the lotus eaters dream.
So we idly float along
On the bluebird’s lilting song
To a region where the blossoms never die.
For through all the cloying hours
In the thralldom of the flowers
Fancy roams in far off cloudlands of the sky.
THE HARVEST OF THE SEA
It is harvest time in the teeming sea
And the surges labor tirelessly
Like toil bent reapers with sickles of foam
They garner the harvest and carry it home,
Till the beaches throb to the rhythmic beat
As they strew it in windrows at our feet.
Slender strands like a whip lash, tear
At the cowering sands - ’tis the Dead-Man’s Hair
And the rockweed bulges with bulbous lumps
All yellow and brown, with the jagged stumps
Of kelp stalks wrenched by the undertow
From sunken glens where the sea things grow.
Eel grass rolled by the waves at play
In fresh cut swaths like the new mown hay;
Lettuce that glints with a fragile sheen:
And Irish moss with its mottled green
And cream and purple and pink and brown
From the matted gulfs where sailors drown!
Algae dyed like a fresh blown rose
Red is their telltale hue that glows
On the white sands edging the brooding sea.
A network of delicate imagery
Like the thin fine lines of an etching traced
That the blundering surges have not erased.
Harvest from tide tilled fields that bloom
Deep down where the sunlight fades in gloom.
Gardens of sinister mystery
Under the waves of the heaving sea.
Gardens the living may never know
Where dead men drift in the ebb and flow!
Jungles where fishes and creatures strange
Through the lush profusion may freely range.
Not for the living but for the dead
Are those fields submerged that we may not tread,
But their harvest is scattered within our reach
By the wild waves mourning along the beach.
BEACH GRASS
Tremulous as elfin lances
Are the thin shafts of the beach grass,
Blades and tufted points that quiver
Eerily to winds of midnight;
Magic strings on lyres enchanted,
Strings that strum a lilting cadence
Played upon by fairy fingers.
Beach grass blades that whirl and struggle
In the clutch of boisterous breezes.
Needle tips that mark strange circles
In the cowering sands beneath them,
Tracings of a fairy stylus,
Runic etchings vague and ghostlike.
Tenuous roots, like bamboo jointed
Delving, burrowing neath the surface
Of the rough hewn sand dunes moulded
By great Nature’s groping fingers;
(Waves and tempests are her fingers)
With their living network binding
Crumbling sands that melt and vanish -
In a woven web of fibre.
Threading with tenacious purpose
Mantles lovely and protective,
Till the battered landscape brightens
Smiles through scars and cruel gashes
Smiles in glossy, rippling beach grass
Undulating in the breezes
Like a field of ripened barley.
Beach grass, desperate, clinging, gripping
Braving wrath of winter tempests,
Scourged by sands that sting like nettles,
Blinding clouds that lash and smother,
Wet with driven spume and frosted,
With the salt and oft half buried,
As the tortured dunes roll landward,
Uncouth monsters, struggling, straining
By the rage of Neptune driven
Stumbling, sprawling, lurching onward.
But the beach grass, fragile, yielding
Like a seine whose mesh entangles,
Binds their heaving bulks together -
In a fibrous web of rootlets;
Gripping fiercely for each foothold
Yielding grudgingly and battling
Till the storm winds howl in fury,
And the baffled ocean smothers
Futile wrath in foam and roaring,
Till the lowly beach grass triumphs;
Holds in magic chains the forces
Of ungovernable chaos.
Beach grass drawing life and nurture
From the sterile sands, a living
Energy from out the desert.
Hardy warrior, silent tamer
Of primeval urgings rampant,
Barrier to the clamorous ocean,
Staunch preserver of the landscape,
Not content with curbing surges
Or restraining restless sand dunes,
How you bless that sterile desert
With your wild and pensive beauty;
Cover o’er its savage harshness
With the mantle of your verdure
Till your patient, steadfast purpose
Glorifies the vanquished sea shore.
THE SWAMP HERON
“Quawk”, comes that harshly guttural note
In the night stillness, hear it? “Quawk”.
A hoarse “good hunting” from the throat
Of a night heron, feathered gawk,
Ungainly, droll, the awkward child
And threadbare outcast of the wild.
’Tis not his custom to intrude
Where others are, while on his way
To his beloved solitude
Nor has he overmuch to say;
His only greeting is a squawk
But filled with cheer, a friendly “Quawk”.
Thanks, humble neighbor of the moors
For such philosophy is rare;
Though neither grace nor charm are yours
You envy no one, nor compare
Their lissome poise - your stilt like walk!
Their lilting song - your throaty “Quawk”.
He knows, illfavored bird of night
The finest feathers in the dark
Are little worth, nor pleasing flight
Nor beauty’s form with none to mark;
Contented but to nightly stalk
His supper like a wise old quawk.
THE THROES OF CREATION
Crash and a smother of foam
Drowned in a booming roar!
That is the way the surge comes home
Pounding along the shore.
Hiss and a seething tongue
Laps at the crumbling sand!
That is the way the sea has wrung
Room from the grudging land.
Rasp of the undertow
As its white tongue flays the beach,
Flensing the pebbles to and fro
Into its treacherous reach.
Ever the sob and moan
Of the tortured ledges rings
Grinding to dust and welding to stone
Ever the hammer swings.
Never a solid ground
Nor a fixed and steadfast place;
Shoals new risen and islands drowned
Sculpture the landscape’s face.
Thus were the corners laid
For the continents and the seas;
That is the way the world was made
Out of such conflicts as these.
Up from the ocean’s bed;
Into the ocean cast
Surging through infinite ages ahead
Out of an infinite past.
[Illustration:
The Methodist Meeting House at South Truro was known to many old
timers as Hog’s Back Church. The following verses were written
while it was still standing, though long deserted and neglected.
But to those who knew and admired it, as I did, it deserves
something more than the simple granite slab that marks its site.
For it remains a lasting memory of a former era on old Cape Cod.]
HOG’S BACK CHURCH
Foursquare it stands!
A stalwart witness year by year
To courage steadfast but austere.
The toilworn hands
That shaped its beams and laid its floors
Are folded now. The toilers lie
In marble dotted rows nearby
Though some found graves on distant shores
And some were lost at sea!
This fickle, carefree world might heed
Those iron men of Pilgrim breed,
Though rude their lives and stern their bent
They built a during monument
To strict integrity.
Foursquare it stands!
And gazes out o’er Pamet Bay
Once whitened by the sails that lay
Where now are choking sands.
The weathered houses prim and square
That marked the hillsides everywhere
Have disappeared,
But that old church in stately pride
Still dominates the countryside;
Is still revered.
Foursquare it stands!
The dust upon the pulpit lies
Whence lurid texts and prophecies
Were hurled like burning brands.
No more the silent walls are stirred
By thunders of Jehovah’s wrath
That seekers for the “Narrow Path”
Once, trembling, heard;
They reverenced an awful Name
And glimpsed the pit of quenchless flame
In God’s own word.
Foursquare it stands on hallowed ground
And from its lonely windswept height
A landmark like a beacon light
Its spire is seen for leagues around.
Though times may change, and changing creeds
Are modified to modern needs
Still staunch and true,
Memorial of a former age
It keeps the priceless heritage
From olden time to new.
The plaster from the ceiling falls
On creaking floors, and in the dead
Of night there sounds the ghostly tread
Of phantom footsteps. But the walls
Still battle with the winter gale
That roars about the ancient spire,
Nor all its torrents can avail
To drown that spark of living fire -
The spirit of that temple set
On crowning heights, lest men forget!
Foursquare it stands!
The bell, long silent, seems to ring
And to the world its message fling;
“I yield alone to God’s commands.
“Though all about may change, not I.
“True to my settled destiny
“I still remain.
“Though constancy be but a wraith
“Steadfastly I have kept the faith
“And shall maintain
“That faith, unfaltering, down the years
“Through all the shoals of doubts and fears,
“A lighthouse on that shoreless sea
“That broadens to Eternity”.
There, like the Sphinx the old church broods
Among its deepening solitudes.
In simple grandeur let it stand
For years unborn, to bless the land,
And when its timeworn tower has gone
Still may its memory linger on.
* * * * *
_Struck by lightning in a thunder storm
on the night of March 21, 1940 and
totally destroyed._
BEYOND THE POINT
A ridge of sand dunes barricades the rim
Of the horizon like a gilded bar
To roving sight; a lonely point, the brim
Of earth against the moaning surge. Afar
My glances wander, wistfull, ill at ease
From longing to explore those far off seas.
The murmuring tide creeps up before my feet
And leaves a shell or two, a broken spray
Of strange sea growth; then to some chill retreat
In ocean’s depths it slowly ebbs away.
How blithely thought can trail the screaming terns
Beyond the boundaries that the eye discerns!
On the horizon looms that point beside
The pathless main, a prison door to me;
For I would follow on that restless tide
To lands remote beyond a shoreless sea;
Through shimmering haze how like a magic wand
That dune ridged finger beckons me beyond!
The rolling hills enclose me and the sky
Bends overhead, but these are different things;
Somehow they do not seem to press so nigh
As that wind fretted wall of sand that rings
My little world about, and intervenes
To shut my vision from enchanted scenes.
And though in happier days I sailed those seas
Around the globe upon the buoyant trades
To Ceylon, Singapore and Celebes,
Beheld their fanes and trod their tropic glades
Those voyages leave me still unsatisfied
In this lone cottage where I now abide.
Beyond the point what vistas of romance
Of golden kingdoms still their wealth unfold:
Though fettered by the bonds of circumstance
My failing vision and my limbs grown old
Among the embers of my memories
One lingering flame, adventure, never dies.
THE WINDS OF TIME
O the winds of time sweep the lonely years
Like withered leaves down the path of night,
And their notes, like a dirge, sound in our ears
As our eyes are strained for a glimpse of light.
And our sad heart utters a voiceless prayer -
Whence do ye come - ye bitter winds,
Where do ye go - O where?
Through the swarming suns where the Zodiac’s blaze
Fades out in the awful deeps of space,
As you hurry us on your unknown ways,
Shall our feet leave never a trace?
Rushed from the light to the silent dark,
Tell us, tell us, O mocking winds
Is there a voice - O hark!
And the wondrous things we planned to do
In those far off days when our hearts were young.
But the task was long and the hours were few
And the songs we dreamed of are still unsung.
Will our hopes fade out when the light is gone?
Whisper, whisper, O pitiless winds,
Is there another dawn?