NANTUCKET
WINDOWS
BY
Edwina Stanton Babcock
Author of
“Greek Wayfarers,” “The Flying Parliament,” etc.
The Inquirer and Mirror Press
Nantucket Island, Mass.
1924
Copyright, 1924,
Edwina Stanton Babcock
TO ANNIE BARKER FOLGER
By whose fireside an Off-Islander first learned to love the charm and
grace of Nantucket hospitality
Appreciation is expressed to The National Magazine,
the Nantucket Historical Society Bulletin, the
Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, and
other publications, for permission
to reprint some of these verses
CONTENTS
Page
Nantucket Windows 9
Dock Drama 10
Ghost House 11
Song of Scarlet 14
Path Maker (to Maria Mitchell) 15
Prophecy Made Going “Down Along” 16
Coast Yarn 17
Bouncing Bet 19
To the “Nineties” 21
Structures 23
Psychoscience 25
Beacon Lights 26
Wheel 27
Nantucketer in France 29
Fishing on Steamboat Wharf 31
The Wallace Daisy Field 33
Youth and the Old Mill 34
Scissors Grinder 39
Whispers 41
Not the Gift but the Giver 43
The Ball 44
The Town Clock Gives Advice to The Tourist 46
Cup 50
To Abram Quary (The Last Indian on Nantucket) 51
3 A. M. 53
On the Jetty 54
Windrow 55
The Swimmer 56
In the Antique Shop 57
The Cardinal Flower 58
Wild Bird 59
Sabatia Pond 61
The Lost Dryad 62
Pattran 64
Roof Tree 65
Evening at Franklin Valley Farm 66
Vision 69
Lost Beauty 70
The Branch of Strange Berries
(An Old Man tells a Story to some Boys) 71
From a Window 76
Responsible 77
Tree Worship 79
Another Chance 81
Dark Minstrels 83
The People of Today to the Clergy of Today 84
Protagonist 85
Signal Fires 86
Martyr 87
Ballad of the Thorn Tree 88
Balloons on the Beach 89
They Pass 90
On the Beach 91
Saul’s Hills 92
Sea Measure 111
In An Old Burying Ground 112
Christmas Eve on Nantucket 114
Song of the Lightships (A Landlubber’s Chantey) 116
September Noon 118
Main Street by Moonlight 119
Psalm of Imagined Hunger 121
The Moon Canoe 123
Deprecation 124
NANTUCKET WINDOWS
Out on the night they glimmer, Island houses,
Casements of orange lustre on the moors;
Dune-hidden panes where winter sea carouses
Shine on the roads that wind past farmhouse doors.
The Island windows gleam, and all the sorrow
Of human life is lanterned into Dream;
The fishers’ huts are splashed, the grey shacks borrow
Red from the sun and weltered moonlight gleam.
Out on the dark, gold patches on the stable,
Light-stippled wharves; ruby and malachite;
Sharp, slanting roofs with witchlike peak and gable,
Plaqued in warm squares of ruddy window light.
Thin blocks of amber in the misty weather,
Oblongs of white translucence on the down;
Dim, tawny lights beyond pine hidden heather,
Clear coastward lights fringing the steepled town.
The grey owl flaps across the heaving hollow,
The chimneyed house sinks in the commons’ wave;
The cottage lights a hundred starlights follow,
The Island windows shine ... the road is brave!
DOCK DRAMA
Limp in his chair atilt against a shack
An old man broods o’er newspaper and smoke
Where shingle-quilted pent roofs back to back
Checker from grey of ash to black of coke;
Dim squares of window, opal-paned, baroque,
Waver on water, pearling it to deep
Weedwafted droop of shifting shadow cloak
Where swirls of silver imagery sweep.
Slow ribboning to the surface serpent rings
Of mast reflections quiver into grey
Upon the incoming tide that softly brings
One high-peaked sail along the buoyant way
Where questing water tentatively steals
Fingering mossy spiles and undulant keels.
The steam boat dock’s a stage where nightly speak
The actors in some ribald skit of Trade
Here serried barrels screen a jester’s freak
And piles of trunks made pirate ambuscade.
Red lanterns slackly swung and lights of jade
Accent accordions’ pert canzonette;
Or furry trawls along the string piece laid
Trip oil-skinned fisherman’s hulking silhouette.
A massive barge like enigmatic tomb
Toward a sea-scented land of dark drifts down;
Dim on the East the sandy headlands loom
Till dawn rings up green trees and steepled town.
Then like applause in broken scattering sound
The motor boats speed to the clamming ground.
GHOST HOUSE.
I had always felt contented about that ghost,
There in her vine-shrouded house aside of the road;
I knew that the rag-stuffed panes were her special boast,
That she liked the tumble-down chimney of her abode;
She liked that old hat that hung in the tree in the lane,
And the scarecrow leaves that dribbled around in the rain;
The ivy that muffled the sills, a ghost would adore,
And she revelled in cobwebs the twisted staircase wore.
“The dear, mild thing,” I thought, “she’s the only one
In this glittering, piece-work world that can run a home;
No wonder the birds to her leaf-hung windows come,
No wonder the black mole tunnels the garden loam;
And there is revelry under her knotted boards
Where wild kittens hide and the grey squirrels rattle their hoards.”
But some eager, figeting, worldlings came one day,
Moved into the house on a heavenly morning in May;
Of course the ghost could do nothing but move away....
Lord, the cutting and hammering, planing and scrubbing and suds,
Lord, the paint and the polish, the grates and the curtains and duds!
The new-new beds, the cleanness and trimness and all,
I looked for the ghost in the mirror that shone in the hall;
I looked for her round the curve of the varnished stair,
I searched and called for her, wistfully, everywhere....
“And what will you do, dear ghost,” was my whispered cry,
“And where will you live your shadowed revery?
Where do ghosts go when no longer they have a home,
Do they pile their effects in a van and begin to roam?
Shall you take to a haystack or sleep in the church’s dome?”
Whether she heard me and thought it could not be true,
Or guessed that she might not trust me, the ghost made no ado;
Though the pale grey thing may really have cared that I knew,
At all events, she moved ... and her shadowy store
Of belongings exists for the world no more....
That house by the road, more correct, I think, than most,
Has lost its chief charm.... It no longer has a ghost.
SONG OF SCARLET.
The black-alder berries are thick this year,
(It’s going to be cold);
Their scarlet trinkets, their necklaces bold
Hang on the shivering wind-swept year,
(It’s going to be cold).
Now, the Commons are bare and the leaves whirl around,
(It’s going to be cold);
Like little brown sparrows flicked over the around
(It’s going to be cold);
But the black alder-berries like rubies embeaded
String out on the heath where the milkweed has seeded,
(It’s going to be cold).
Now the wind feels the blind and the roads look severe,
(It’s going to be cold);
And the locust tree’s horned pods rattle and shake,
And the small bony branches grow brittle and break ...
But vitality lingers in reindeer moss,
And near the holm holly the thorn-berries toss,
The bright alder-berries gleam saucy and bold,
Pile up your wood-fires--who cares if it’s cold?
PATHMAKER
(To Maria Mitchell)
In those eyes, dark as pools, the morning star
Must have lain long; on that calm breadth of brow
Must have been set some nobleness of vow
To distance and to space and all things far.
A little narrow street enshrines her now,
But through the world her planet pathways are
Blazed with her name; the constellate gates un-pbar
To those who, following, her star-cairns know.
Woman, who walked with Science to mark the lights
Along dark ways, thy luminous steps are dim;
Rapt on ethereal roads of satellites:
Art gazing still through space beyond the brim
Of sparkling nebula meadows to the nights
Of some New Radiance o’er still farther Rim?
PROPHECY MADE GOING “DOWN ALONG.”
Don’t tell, but I think there’s a miracle today;
The Old North Church is full of Western light,
And the bush near by is afire; very bright
Shine the windows in the tower, for the last half hour
Some starlings have ranged there whistling and calling,
The barometer is falling,
It’s Underground Moon this week, you know;
(Don’t tell anybody I said so,
But I think there’s a miracle today.)
Somewhere on the Island something’s going to happen;
Don’t ask me, I don’t know anything about it.
Whatever I say I’d just as lief shout it,
(But there’s going to be a miracle today!)
If there’s any pass at all a-going your way,
Better say
(There’s going to be a miracle today.)
Don’t tell them who said so--they wouldn’t like it, hey?
(But there’s going to be a miracle today!)
I know it for sure, for I’ve stood for one hour
Watching those starlings in the North Church Tower.
So if you want a gam,
It’s sure I am
That there’s going to be a miracle today.
So that’s the drift,
Though maybe they’ll be miffed--
“He hasn’t got the run of it,” they’ll say,
But--there’s going to be a miracle today!
COAST YARN.
Skies pebbled with stars,
Sea, breathing like a sleeping animal,
Wind nuzzling wet shagginess of moors.
The coarse bright strains of an accordion,
Perversely stretched and shrunken
Against a wall of dark.
Brown faces, high cheekbones,
Polyglot sea-words;
A cold, dark swiftness;
Hardness of diligence
For shrewd, tight-fisted gain.
The Cranberry Pickers dance gravely
In squalid shacks on the moors,
And the greasy bottles pass
From old lips to young;
Rough doorways blurt out light;
White teeth, dark eyes shine.
There is chattering wharf talk
And garbled dock yard French;
Clamdiggers, Scallopers,
Fondle their dirty rolls
Of smoky dollar bills
And stride in booted ease.
Out of the moorland night
She, saucily, slips in,
Thistledown on her hair;
Little, slim, ear-ringed, scarlet-bloused,
Her feet and impertinent breasts four mischievous mongrel words
In a universal language;
Her mouth gleams like berries,
Swamp-light in her eyes--
Someone clasps, someone curses--
Then screams; a knife....
The sea, like an animal panting;
The sands, scared and white,
Broken barrels of cranberries
Strewn like unholy rosaries;
A man, stripped and bleeding,
Thrown overboard at midnight
Where the tide runs strong.
On a small brown neck
A long gold chain
To match new earrings!
BOUNCING BET.
Sauntering narrow lanes
Led by the weather vanes
See beneath narrow panes
Nantucket gardens
Where little fruit trees lean
On old walls grey and green
Dappling ivies screen
Nantucket Gardens.
All that is best and fair
Like old scent lingers there
Shrubs, herbs and ramblers share
The sweet disorders;
Tall tapered holly hocks
Foxglove and purple phlox
Demure mints, frilly stocks
Spike the box borders.
Yet--past the rose hung doors
Called by the tangled moors
Bouncing Bet left them.
On new strange roadways bound
Was the career she found
When she bereft them.
Ragged pink wilful thing--
You had to have your fling
With weeds to roister
You could not breathe the air
Of mignonette, nor care
For sweet peas cloister.
Only, these have a name
Theirs is the garden fame
They are traditioned;
Out on the dusty ways
Bouncing Bet weary strays
Quite ill-conditioned.
Yet I have heard the cry
Go up from passers-by,
Young, therefore tragic
_Escaped_--the little word
To them is not absurd
They know its magic!
Therefore dear Bouncing Bet
You may have honor yet
Yours may be winning
But in your saucy pride
Though you would not abide
Gates, gardens, walls, beside;
Were your beginning.
TO THE NINETIES.
On Sundays when the church bells ring
Their island-towered summoning
I see the Nineties go
Gravely around the narrow cornered way
As they have gone for many a changing day
Steady and slow.
At twilight before window lights are lit
I see them, whitehaired, backward musing, sit
Beside their narrow pane
And then to me who wander through the streets
The new life with their olden living meets
And they are young again.
And always, by the great hearth’s roaring fire
Or in the spring-lit street, or by the door
I hear their sober speech, with them live o’er
Old days, see the stiff backs that bow
Under the life so hard upon them now;
Yet frugal, busy, gathering up the Past
For memories that serve them to the last
Binding their faggots slow
Of what they know.
If e’er the turbulent world can settle down to live
If e’er we learn to suffer and forgive
To work hard with few pleasures and great faiths
We shall invoke these tottering, smiling wraiths
And we shall smile and whisper softly “true
It was the Old, who knew.”
Note. One year when summer residents returned to Nantucket they
were informed that there had been “a great falling off among the
nineties” that winter; and it was noted that much vivacity and
charm had gone from the island social gatherings.
STRUCTURES.
They have taken the old houses,
Lovingly they have taken them;
Bound up their wounds, bandaged their aching sides,
Made them soft friendships of pretty paint
And kindnesses of mortar....
They’ve made little paths this way
And little paths that way
And cosseted and crooned and coaxed and cared,
Till the old houses, the very old houses,
Stand up quite proudly with a dear and ancient pride.
All day long--all day long they meditate,
In spite of all the pretty paints;
In spite of all their mended ceilings, do they meditate
On the old houses, the very old houses
That they were when they died.
And so I suppose with the old ideas,
Rickety old ideas,
Heart-broken shapes that stand in field and sky;
Cleverly we re-paint them,
Cleverly decorate and give them quite new hinges,
And open them up and brick them in and hold them,
All that is good in them, away from ruin....
Yet, all year long the old ideas are walking,
All year long the old ideas are talking,
Talking through our every act and glance,
In spite of all our efforts to be new and useful,
In spite of all our efforts, we go acting
By the rickety old ideas,
The shapeless, bulged ideas,
The mildewed, damp ideas
That have died.
PSYCHOSCIENCE.
He, who is far from home, knows when the snow
Gives way before the sunny urge of Spring,
When the first ecstasies of bluebirds go
Through blossomed loops and boughs bee-murmuring,
When brier roses starrily compose
Upon the scented spray--he, homesick, knows.
He, that is far from love, knows when the face
That knew his face is raised to summer stars;
He, like that other, hungers in his place,
And, like that other, grips his prison bars--
And when that upturned face can no more smile,
He knows; and whispers comfort, mile on mile.
He, who feels far from God, knows when the Word
Comes light upon a golden-shadowed hill;
On his dim path the radiance has stirred,
Deep in a dream he shrines his knowledge; still
Keeping his thorny ways, intent he goes,
Knowing the Hidden that infinitely knows!
BEACON LIGHTS.
When I am cowardly, sick of the fight,
Dumb for the right word, nerveless for deeds that dare,
Blaze up in my heart, square little Brant Point Light;
Light me a broad path starred with a burnished flare!
If I am tossing on a sea of doubt,
And have no harbor, no fair shore to know,
Sankaty, like an angel, spread your great wings out,
Headland and coastward light, give me your glow!
If I am lost and waves go over me,
Tossing, engulfing hollows o’er my head;
Thou, Great Point Light, will surely cover me,
And by thy strong white clue I shall be led!
When I am caught in foam of treacherous beach,
And all the darkness presses like a wall,
Blaze, Island lights, beyond the Island reach;
Beacon me to the Utmost Light of all!
WHEEL.
The growing’s finished. Down the garden ways
The Gardener comes, slow-trundling his barrow.
He brings a load of curious loamy mulch,
Brings tools that cut and stab the earth,
That lop the boughs from off full-blooded trees.
Under the falling leaves the Gardener stands,
Unshocked to see the tulip and the rose,
Red haw, brown seed-pod, lily staff and leaf--
All lying dead, extinguished, passionless.
The Gardener smiles to see the adventurous bee
Lying cold-killed under a broken stalk;
Smiles on a battered moth with frosted wing.
He spreads black clods of compost on the beds,
Sifts ashes all around the roots of trees,
Lops off, cuts back, prunes, digs away and kills.
Knowing how, out of the ruin and wreck,
Pure glowing things will come; new winged forms,
Trees that shall say new things to listening souls.
O Unseen Gardener of the World-tree, boughs
Ripe with strange star-fruit dropping in the fields
Of vast Space-gardens--give, Thou, me to learn
In simple ways, how, after this life’s dream
I may accept new growth, even to loss
Of this life-consciousness--to help Thy plan!
Become, for Thee, a dried-up flower cup,
A butterfly unwingéd, broken-plumed,
Even a blinded, helpless, light-killed moth--
So that I nourish forth new growing things
In the star branchéd garden of deep Time!
Grant that this brain, that dares to dream of Thee,
As Father, Friend--taught of the sentient flowers,
Shall dream--dream on to some far endless end!
NANTUCKETER IN FRANCE.
They would take the hill next day--the order, he knew,
And the kind of hell the “taking” would be, he had seen;
So he spent the night awake and the hours flew,
As he pondered on the sort of man he had been,
And wondered what dying and doing it bravely would mean.
“_The Eighty-second’s coming along tonight!_”
He remembered then. There were men in that regiment knew
His Island home. Men that were going to fight
For the moors he loved and the pines where arbutus grew.
Well--he thought he would like to pass them a word or two.
He thought he would like to see them, to talk of the hill
By Polpis Harbor, the grey little farm roofs slant;
Of the way the sunset flared through the fans of the Mill,
And the rolling moorland hiding the plover and brant,
And the scallopers sailing their boats through Autumnal chill.
He thought he would like to talk of the gilded dome
Of the Unitarian Church, of the cobbled square;
And speak with others sea-faring names of home,
Wondering, “Do they hear of the fighting there
Where Sankaty Light stands guard with its solemn flare?”
So he stood all night, on those dark hours of the earth,
Calling to men slogging by to heroic ends,
[A]Shouting: “_Nantucket_,” little grey town of his birth;
Palely he stood there, anxious as one who sends
S. O. S. scanning the night for friends.
“_Nantucket!_” he hailed--but the river of men rolled by,
Every eye set grim towards its Mecca of bloody drench;
No answering Island voice took up his cry
But his own soul answered. He went back to his trench
Resolving how a Nantucket man would die!
[A] A true incident.
FISHING ON STEAMBOAT WHARF.
High all our prisons,
We can no more out;
Words meant to free us,
Compass us about;
And a sigh means a laugh
And a hymn a battle shout.
But here silence mellows
Starved being into life;
With these dreamy fellows--
Rod, reel and jack-knife--
Even the caught fish are blithe.
Green water laps the spiles,
The silence is golden;
Every little whiles
I am beholden
To a sea captain
Of a time olden.
He puts on the bait
Of quahog, that gets me
A bright little flipper,
Or a plaice fish nets me;
That I’ll haul in a whale
He occasionally bets me.
Silence and fishing,
Sun, understanding;
Fun to see off-islanders
Tack in and miss their landing.
Quiet winks exchanged
While tobacco you’re handing.
No boasting here,
No meanness with minnows;
Commonwealth of Bait
Debts only finn-owes;
And a great quiet kindness
And much color blindness.
Maybe it comes from
Looking down so deep,
Where much is hidden
And much lies asleep;
With your eyes on the line,
Given you to keep.
Quiet pipes lit,
Quiet eyes reflective,
Rips a silver fish
From out the perspective;
To go fishing on the wharf
Is my one great Objective!
THE WALLACE DAISY FIELD.
Slim pointed pickets guard the summer dream,
Glimpsing behind their lichen-scrolléd bars;
Young shapes of white that in ethereal stream
Toss starry incense to the summer stars.
Ranked slender acolytes in harbor lane,
Communion bear to many a churchless breast;
Processional in falling summer rain,
Recessional to gold and Gothic West.
Only a daisy field--yet one man’s care
Enshrines it in immaculate gated reach;
Inviolate flowers veil them mistily there,
Spreading like moonlight to the moonlit beach ...
Where the white patens disk the tabled green
Is read the sacred Word of sea and skies;
Chapelled within this occult daisy screen
Is Sacrament for beauty-loving eyes.
YOUTH AND THE OLD MILL.
YOUTH
Old Mill, grind me corn
For my house by the thorn,
For I’m with the old folk,
Where the pigs in the poke
And the cows in the barn
And the peat’s on the stone
And the latchstring out-thrown....
Old Mill, grind me corn
For the winter morn.
OLD MILL
No grain can I grind thee, Modern Child,
My sails are tattered,
My grind stones scattered;
My cranks are riddled
With rust defiled ...
But I’ll turn you a dream,
A Grey-Town dream,
At which many have smiled
And been beguiled.
YOUTH
Turn me a dream then, doughty Mill,
Flaring there on your windy hill
With your rickety arms spread on the sky;
Black crows from the cornfields passing you by,
Near the burying-ground where the Quakers sleep,
And the sailors home from the ranging deep
Turn me a dream, you strange old Mill,
Keeping your watch on the windy hill.
OLD MILL
Shall I turn you a dream of the Town Crier calling
His news ’gainst the tempest bawling?
Shall I turn you a dream of Three Vikings sailing
The rim of a low lying island hailing ...?
Turn you a dream of a Smuggler grim
And the underground path for his mates and him?
Of Three forms walking a midnight road
To a lonely farmhouse where one light showed
And a paper signed with a white quill pen
That helped bring freedom to slave-born men?
Of a man who made a telescope
And lassoed the stars with a mental rope--
Of the woman who worked in a cottage small,
Whose name in science leads them all?
Of a knight who came and built a school?
Of a woman who broke a cast iron rule?
Of the Quaker forms and the gentle ways
That ruled all war out of the ways?
Of the Indians, watching the sun go down?
Of the whalers and gold seekers of renown?
YOUTH
Nay, Old Mill, I laugh in your face;
Turn me no dream of a Quaker past,
Turn me no dream of the tranquil ways,
Turn me a dream for my own tense days,
Turn me a dream for my cherishing--
A dream for believing;
A dream for my strength!
OLD MILL
Shall I turn you a dream for your loneliness?
A dream of the star-scattered faces about you,
And the plans and pleasures and pains that flout you?
Shall I tell of the voices that you must hear
Before some one Voice calls you clear?
(But whatever it be--for joy and sadness
Or triumph, defeat, or grief or gladness--
That I cannot know,
Said the Old Mill very low.)
YOUTH
Nay, Old Mill, if you know the voices
That make for a bold life’s chance and choices,
Turn me that dream!
OLD MILL
Only the sound of one voice, you shall hear,
A Voice that has known your soul forever;
A Voice that has called you and kept you wherever
You failed or won in your high endeavor--
The Voice of your Dream!
YOUTH
O Mill, give me no mystery;
I know the way of human history--
Turn me true dreams!
OLD MILL
Only the dream of Beauty, I know,
The long sky paved with the afterglow;
The moonlaced bog and the shimmering seas,
The floating mist through moorland trees;
The quiet color of twilight dunes,
The night heron croaking its ebb-tide runes;
The black-walled sky and the star-strung vines,
The pooling spread of the Island pines.
And the Sea’s voice borne on the salt mist breath,
Where the chained arbutus wandereth....
The strange glad swerve of the moorland road
And the great black shoulder of the wood....
(Only these things I know,
Said the Old Mill very low.)
YOUTH
Then Old Mill, since no dream you grind me
A dream of my own I will surely find me!
But as Youth weaves and catches the threads
Of a hundred human joys and dreads,
Youth sees the Old Mill standing there,
High on the hill with the West aflare ...
And dark as it looms on the sky, it seems
The Old Mill steadily turns out dreams--.
“All’s well,” grinds the grave Old Mill;
“All’s well,” grinds the brave Old Mill;
“If your eyes and your heart hold loveliness,
And your mind and your soul know faithfulness,
And your eyes and your hands know steadiness....
You shall walk straight over the rim of the years
To the Vivid Land of all conquered fears;
With your heart set true and your eyes set straight,
You will grind good dreams from the grist of fate.”
(But that’s all I know,
Said the Old Mill very low.)
SCISSORS GRINDER.
“’Twas long ago” they said
Of the country whence I came,
“Greece is a dream that is dead,
Athens only a name!”
Yet on this April day
As I go through the towns,
I see soft Thessaly
On these New England downs.
I see the lilied plains
Where the white cranes droop their bills;
And the moving cattle trains
Winding into the hills;
While the farmer drums his bees,
And the donkey shakes his bells
Under the olive trees
Where the Bay of Corinth swells,
To great blue-silver gate
Where the sea-bound temples wait,
And the Eleusinian way
Mistily winds the bay.
On Knossos’ shady knolls
I see the columned tiers;
And the cool Ionic scrolls
Throb to Olympian cheers.
I see a gravelled stream
Winding Olympian reeds;
Again the Scythian dream
Its wagoned people leads.
The river-god drifts on,
Raising a poppied head;
A pipe sounds halcyon--
Nothing of Greece is dead ...!
But I, who walk the towns
To sharpen knives at the gate,
Feel sharper knives in the frown
Of this New World’s estimate!
WHISPERS.
What was it the wind said,
Blowing from the Orient
To the Cross on the hill,
And the fans of the Mill?
What was it the wind said,
Blowing at twilight,
To New England?
The wind that blew from the East
Blew dreamily,
A low song and strange song had the sea.
The Islanders sought each other’s eyes,
And young men dreamed enterprise;
Then sails put from the shores,
And wives stood alone at the doors;
For the old world, the strange world, called
To New England!
White sails stole out
On the silver sound,
They ran into storms
Outward bound;
They could not stay home
And they would not turn back,
For the Old World,
The dim world,
Called to New England!
Now, in the old house
Where the chimneys stretch wide,
Young wives talk by the fireside;
On the walls there is Delft,
And the lacquered trays,
Jades, teak and teapots,
Fans of gallant days;
China, tortoise and pearl,
Ivory carved like lace;
Chuddah, Cashmere, Sandal,
In some secret place....
And what say the young wives,
The frank young wives,
To the stranger’s face?
“No one guessed how they knew,
Nor what the wind said,
And the sailors are gone
And the merchants are dead;
But the toppling summer sea,
And the pale blue winter world,
Came often and oft again,
And the years like sails furled.
Men died on the ships
And were buried at sea,
Men languished on wild coasts,
Lost in mystery....”
“No one knows what was said
Nor what answered again,
When the wind blew a strange way,
The wind blew a new way,
For Nantucket men,
And the Old World called to New England!”
NOT THE GIFT BUT THE GIVER.
Suppose that o’er the blue thin circling line
Where low clouds sleep, some figure-head should shine;
White swelling sails spread out on fan-streaked skies,
And a new vessel in the west should rise.
Suppose this vessel, from untraveled zones,
Through savage suns and fierce Eurocyldons
Should bring me deeply buried in its hold
A mystic gift of jewels and blazing gold.
And, having safely brought the precious thing,
Should spread its sail, augment each shining wing,
And calmly, like a night-bird through the stars,
Speed on again, crossing the distant bars;
Then through the mists go out before my eyes,
Leaving me standing there beside the prize.
I, left on lonely shores, would ever mourn
The messenger that sailed beyond the bourne;
I, left on lonely shores, would only pray
To see again the ship that sailed away.
I, searching the horizon’s purple round,
Would follow ships, hither and thither bound,
Longing for this--to see the dim prow lift,
That brought to me my longing with my gift.
And so with thee, who broughtest me thy truth
Ablaze with jewels, alight with mystic signs,
Then vanished. Lo! with what utter ruth,
The sorrow of my gift my soul divines.
Holding with yearning talismans of thee,
Who hath passed on beyond the touch of me.
THE BALL.
How do we see our world--
Formless? Vague?
A rude sphere hurled through space?
A green kaleidoscope of trees,
And the flash of seas?
And life and movement in every place?
I see my world with color wet;
With the golden sap
Pushing the green to the ardent sky.
I see the ripeness, the warmth of fruits,
Round to the sun, plumed melody,
The clasp and the subtleties of roots;
I see gods walk on the morning hills,
Up the dappled brooks and the secret lanes
And vistas leading to ferny haunts,
Where the vivid crimson cardinal flaunts
In calm of tree-pillared fanes.
I see my world star-fretted, caught
In the web of enchained eternities--
With the age-old moon on her stair, cloud wrought,
Climbing the night-sky’s precipice;
I see the silver wheel of tides,
The night spell hid in the forest breast,
The gold splashed dawn that gravely glides
Over grey mountain crest.
O World, whirling out with the sun,
And holding us, everyone,
When the golden skies twilighted lean
To the purple hills--What have they seen,
Who were born, still blind, in a web of days,
To thy lessons written in simple ways?
Dull streets choked with dusty forms?
Crowds and houses and groups and swarms
Who strive, and lose, and are gone again?
A world of sordid women and men?
A crowd of petty and dull and mean?
Not a flower face nor a splash of green--
Unless--O world, they have seen it all--
The miracle of thy Wonder-Ball!
THE TOWN CLOCK GIVES ADVICE TO THE TOURIST.
If you walk on Main Street,
Turn your fancy loose,
Out of lace and lacquer
You may pick and choose;
Poetry of race and clan,
Demure maid and solemn man,
All the lore is stored away
In these houses brick and grey.
Puritan and worldly wise
Trod these stones that meet your eyes;
Hoary old aristocrats,
Old chairs, parrots, lace and cats;
Old umbrellas, ivory canes,
Whale and ship for weather vanes;
Soldiers’ Monument and bank,
Shops and studios in rank;
New sails spread or old sails furled....
Main Street’s where you meet the World!
If you turn in Salem Street,
Better have a care;
The Law is on your left
And the red jail is there.
They don’t burn witches
But you’d better beware!
If you walk on Whale Street,
Roll some in your gait;
Make believe that caravels
For your coming wait;
Square-rigged and clipper-built,
Wind jammer and schooner,
Will bear you off on cruises
If not later, sooner!
On North Water Street
Salt creeps into speech;
Looking down the little lanes
You will see the beach.
All along North Water Street,
Please to make a note,
All that’s worth saying
Is said about a boat.
If you walk on Milk Street,
Keep your wits about you;
Don’t let any saucy star
On Vestal Street scout you.
Curtsey to the Old Mill,
Snatch a rose from arbor;
Milk Street’s a nice street
To come in harbor.
If you walk through Pleasant Street,
You are sure to see
Many brilliant knockers
Shine reflectingly;
Gardens full of spicy bloom,
And real ladies taking tea.
If you go through Orange Street,
You will have a glance
At Japanese poetry
And English romance;
You’ll smell paint, hear some radio,
And see among the wise
A scholar with a Christian’s face,
And two great grey eyes.
If you walk through Centre Street,
You will surely meet
A true, true, woman
With voice and manner sweet;
And there the windows fairly talk,
And the fences are so neat.
If you walk through Lily Street
The sunset’s at the end
Honeysuckle claims you
Like an old friend;
And quaintly blocked upon the skies
Old houses on “Gull Island” rise.
If you walk through Quince Street,
Never stand and stare,
Hollyhocks will ask you
To go otherwhere;
Apples growing you may see,
Raspberry and pear tree;
Wisdom and a pretty wit
If you know where to look for it.
If you walk through Joy Street,
Take a little heed
To keep a fairly sober air,
Dignity you’ll need;
There’s something about Joy Street
Goes to the head indeed.
And when you are in Gay Street
Choose a sober pace,
Clematis along the fence,
Shakes its stars like lace;
And twinkling little cups of flowers
Toss in a sheltered place.
If you look for money,
There’s New Dollar Lane,
And Mill Street, another street
With a pirate pointing vane;
Consulting maps and other code
You’ll find the Thousand Dollar Road!
And last of all, wherever you walk,
Stagger through Stone Alley,
Slip along the cobbled stone,
Slide methodically;
Honeysuckle may evade,
Birds shilly-shally,
But a good place to meet a maid
Is in Stone Alley.
How e’er you walk in any street,
Wear a pleasant smile
As if you hoped to meet a dream
Before the next mile--
And you may find that dream
Waiting by a stile!
CUP.
I walked among them with my cup of blue;
It was aflame sometimes, and sometimes trembled
With sweet of all the exquisite things I knew.
Yet was I feared to tell the draught, dissembled,
My wish to have these strangers taste the brew
That to my lip all sky and sun resembled.
I walked among them, holding up my grail;
Holding it steady, bidding to the drinking.
It was the best I knew; luminous, pale,
Changeful and fiery in its bubbled winking;
I watched its vital depth grow warm and sunny,
Ethereal-bitter--sometimes sweet as honey.
I walked among them with my cup of blue;
They laughed and turned to chatter at my rapture.
“What cup is this,” they asked, “of simple brew?
What un-sure Wine, what grail of dullard’s capture?
This is no drink to slake our fevered dryness;
This mead for us would hold but acid wryness.”
I walk among them with my azure bowl,
To fete and market-place and to the threshing;
Today there is no feast, there is no soul
But craves the cup I bring, nor its refreshing,
And yet in vain I raise my flashing beaker
And pledge my toast--to Truth and the Truth Seeker!
TO ABRAM QUARY
(The Last Indian on Nantucket)
When the long shadows fell across the wind,
And the dense sheep moved grayly on the moor,
How was it with you, Island Amerind,
Sitting dream-bound beside your Shimmo door?
Did tides that curved the ripples to that shore
Remind you that somewhere the Source must be
That sent you, outward ripple of a race half spent--
Bewildered son of hidden continent?
Dark, dying Indian, with grave hand bowed
In untaught dreaming of dark ancestry,
Saw’st coast and vineyard and the stalwart crowd
Of young red men embarking on the sea?
Or up great rivers in some land of rain,
In swift canoes chasing the brilliant feather,
Or dancing God-thoughts in the harvest weather?
All gone? No trail? No scrolléd birch barks sign
To hand the tale from father down to son?
What meaning was in totems’ reptiled line?
What old taboo in crest and trophy won?
What mightiest Chieftain led the hunting bout
Or what dark Sachem fathered all the swarms
Of circled fire lights’ solemn squatting forms?
Maybe the Outward Trail was marked with stars
That shone of old in ancient weather book;
Perhaps old campfires lit old forest scars,
Or in the sky where some Great Spirit shook
A mighty spear: perhaps thy brothers stayed
To welcome thee, when stern and unafraid
Thy moccasined feet fared those mysterious trails
That Aqueous Time like clear brook water veils.
3 A. M.
He came and sat with me, that One
Whom we so fear. And as I looked
Closer upon him, lo! I felt
Myself unfearing. “Death,” I asked,
“Why is it that no man hath read,
Nor understood thee?” Then he gazed
With that dark glory of his eyes,
Answering: “If men could know
How I yearn toward them; if they saw
The things that I would show them; Yea,
Could trust, accept, come to me kind,
Like little children! It were well!
’Twere well, indeed, if this could be.
“I am afraid of Life,” said Death, and smiled at me.
ON THE JETTY.
Still the old rage, O Sea?
Blue lightnings buried under snowy shock
Of white foam-bodies dying on the rock;
Such sobbing passion to be still more free--
Still the old yearning ... Sea?
Still the old secret ... Sky?
Cloud galleons sailing for some coast of Dream,
And robber winds a-gallop for the gleam
Of Western gold where purple banners fly--
Still the old questing ... Sky?
Still the old bondage ... Heart?
Slave to a beauty that defeats the mind;
Enchained, whose bondage even yet may find
True words, the whole glad wonder to impart
Meaning of Sea and Sky and Thee ... O Heart!
WINDROW.
Old figures in a lane,
Toward the grey church going;
Vines tapping on a pane,
Strong wind blowing.
Old comers by a lane,
Heads bowed and hoary;
Stiff knees and tapping cane,
Wind knows the story.
Old patterns in a lane,
Toward the grey church going;
Follow through veils of rain,
Brown leaves blowing.
Old blooming through the lane,
Pods, grey and brittle;
Wind ... bring all back again--
Young, gay, little!
THE SWIMMER.
Tonight the ocean calls,
The stars respond, wide-scattered through the skies;
Swift through the cool of curling wave he hies,
Who swims far out, nor sees the shore receding--
Only his strength, his long bold measures heeding.
Proud in his power, strong,
From hateful touch of hands that haunt him, free
He plunges forward through dark wastes of sea,
Passionate in the careless joy of roaming
Through billowed gulfs, forgetful of his homing.
Tranced in the summer night,
Lying far out on the high-breasted deep,
He dreams alone. Lo! In illumined sleep,
White Naiads gleam in dim sea-groves and hollows,
Under the tide-drawn heaving path he follows.
Until the stars slip down,
And to far shores the pale night drifts away;
Then he turns back to meet the break of day,
Through the broad surges in blind rapture leaping,
Until he feels the sand and the foam creeping.
IN THE ANTIQUE SHOP.
All day the silver-headed craftsman bends
Over the broken chain, the gemless rings,
The voiceless clock, the fragile fan, and mends
With delicate fingers rare broken things.
I gaze on him, on gems and glimmering gold,
See light restoring touches, magic skill;
Till to my heart come strange imaginings
Of ruined lives I know, shattered and still.
O Craftsman! Here is mettle, dull and old;
Look on these broken lives. Can’st thou remold?
Can’st thou, with color, love designs refill--
Bring beauty out of sorrow’s patternings?
THE CARDINAL FLOWER.
Wrapped in his crimson gown and cowl,
Beside her slender form he stood;
There by the grassy brook they strayed,
And sun-rise thrush and moonlight owl
Knew that she listened while he wooed.
So blue her eyes, so golden fell
The sunny hair about her face;
She stepped with delicate sweet pride
Along the grasses, close beside
The brook’s cool lily-shadowed place.
“It was a shame that they should go
Thus side by side, at last to part,”
Earth said: “Mine all this color now,
Her soft blue eyes, gold hair and brow,
The red blood in his ardent heart.”
Men say, “They died.” They passed away;
I am not sure what trail they took.
But where the grasses bend and sway,
Red Cardinal flower burns its way--
Forget-me-nots grow in the brook.
WILD BIRD.
I said I had tamed them all and caged them,
The myriad birds of my dream;
Called them by docile names and paged them,
With law and precept I engaged them,
And I sat with my tame birds all around me--
Sat where you others came and found me.
See, here is Ardor--his wings are clipped;
And here is Truth (with spotted breast);
Imagination, preening her plumes;
Adventure, stolid, in golden barred rooms--
My myriad birds, my wild birds of no name,
“All tame (like yours) I said--all tame now,
Tame....”
And I sat with you, friends, and was suffered of you:
“The Bird-Fancier has tamed her birds--no fears.”
And I sat with you, listening through my tears.
For there was one wild bird (one I left wild, to see
That there ever had been with me such as he)--
One wild bird, clean as the sky--and free....
There come cries sometimes--black ducks, grey gulls,
Plover, wild swan, sickle billed curlews;
There are long dotted streamers across the sky
Of freedom and quest that cannot die....
There come songs....
And I sit and smile, with my tame birds preening,
From my window leaning....
Then he flies by the casement....
A stir of wings--a shape on the stars;
My head lifted, my heart on fire....
“My soul on your wings--Wild Bird!”
SABATIA POND.
Where the soft circle of Sabatia stars
The water grasses in a sprinkled arc;
And golden ripples break on sandy bars,
And thin blue sails of dragon flies embark--
I think each year, how many sunsets weep;
That day must die; and tinted tears must fall
There where pond ripples to white clethra creep,
And where the margin’s sweet with honey-ball.
I think that where those sky-tears placid lay,
That golden evening stars have also lain;
Reflected on the rosy surface, they
Have dreamed a dream, and wandered on again.
So, where the sunset clouds in sorrow crept,
Now rosy shapes through water grasses trail;
And on that bed where gypsy starlight slept,
Is left a rose-colored star-patterned veil.
THE LOST DRYAD.
I am a lost dryad,
Wandering tranced in the lovely blossoming wood,
Following paths where the shy bright berries wait,
Entering glades where the birds have secrets and nests....
I am a lost dryad!
One came who woke me and bade me come forth,
Gladly I stepped from the tree and put out my hand;
Gladly, like children, we hurried forth to the sun,
But our play was only begun ere a bitter Will had hushed it--
I am a lost dryad!
I cannot go back to the Tree--the bark is mended and closed,
I cannot remain in the wood for the flowers are dumb and reproachful;
The birds are afraid to have my eyes on their nests,
The brooks have closed their waters like windows that gleam....
I am a lost dryad!
And so I wander in smiling pride of my state,
Purer than woodland things that will have none of my pureness;
Wiser than human things that do not reck of my wisdom;
Lost in the dream of a thing that was dimly shown me,
Bewildered, though calm, broken and proud like a princess--
I am a lost dryad!
Ye who listen in the trees, O, never come forth
Unless ye have spells to bind the Intruder unto thee.
Unless ye have spells to hold the Enchantment forever,
Stay in your tree prisons--there at least there are weavings
And pleasant sense as of home and things familiar.
I go wandering forever, alien and speechless,
Chance that broke the bark of the tree is formless and vanished;
Now the healed heart of my home no longer opens--
I am a lost dryad!
PATTRAN.
Does the Moon love best
When the trees write fortunes on the West?
When the webs are done,
All the milkweed spun,
And when brown roads up to the blue sky run?
Does the Moon love best
When the budding creeps from the sunny South
Where the crocus leaps,
And the robin cheeps,
And the earth is a-blossom with rain-wet mouth?
Does the Moon love best
The wild winds driving out of the North?
The hazel rod,
And the brown seed-pod,
And the Autumn censers swinging forth?
Oh! the Gypsy Moon,
Wandering ways so silverly!
Hers is the love of cricket-shoon,
And wigwam corn,
And the smell of morn,
And October grasses on vagrom dune!
ROOF-TREE.
Far from the highway stands the empty home,
With unhinged door and warped and shrunken stair;
Over its walls the chilly shadows roam,
Rank to its lintels huddled ivies come;
Past its blind face the startled swallows fare.
Wrapped in its memories, it stands aloof,
Strange to itself, patient in wind and rain;
No tender hearth-breath curls around its roof,
No voice within welcomes or calls reproof;
No child’s face peers behind the cobwebbed pane.
Let us not wonder why--we shame it more
With echoing voice and stir. Let us depart,
Turning in pity from the hapless door,
Closing the dumb gate in awed silence, for
This is the dead hope of a human heart.
EVENING AT FRANKLIN VALLEY FARM. 1918.
The lantern throws a wavering shadow round
The umber aisles; the cows in stanchions rowed
Turn their soft gaze, their curving horns surround
The fragrant tossing of their rustling food;
Their limpid eyes, their breathing, slow, profound,
Seem on some great unworded Theme to brood--
Some evenness of sky and solitude,
Or placid pool or hill with maples crowned.
From stall to stall the horses’ darkling eyes
And upflung heads connote our interlude;
And scenting nostrils whicker their surprise
At human forms that on this peace intrude;
The shadows smell of milk, and straw, and rude
Farm implements accent the lantern-patch;
Ringed globules tremble on the bundled thatch,
Leaping to dusky beam and rafter wood.
Past horned head and ponderous chestnut flank,
The fitful light-dance swings along the floor,
And wanders to the star-specked aqueous blank
Made by the sliding open of the door;
A snowy feather, where the pigeons soar,
Wavers adown, and odors keen and rank
Filter through darkness of a Minster-grey
Where filmy cobwebs swim along the hay.
Perhaps these beasts of burden wait once more
For Wise Men, and a Shining all around,
To see Redemption by the Manger door,
Illumined faces on the rushy ground;
Perhaps they draw their slow breath, tranced and bound,
Instinctly taught that they new forms shall wear,
Who shall some day be swift, no burdens bear,
And have their tongues made eloquent in sound.
But, if the hallowed shining does not come,
And they look through the dark with unchanged stare,
And if those great grave mouths stay always dumb,
’Twill not be ignorance but some truth they share;
Who have no doubts, no clamorings and no fears,
But faithful to the clumsy guise they wear,
Walk patient down their plodding driven years.
While we in princedoms of our God’s own form,
Wistfully pause in their oblivioned light,
Longing to stay with uncouth beasts tonight;
For that their calm would keep our spirits warm
And soothe us back to the glad human norm.
Would gladly share with them their sacred things,
Their freedom from our restless questionings,
So we won quietude from stress and storm.
Mingling our vigil with their Burden-Speech,
Their revery.
We would take of that wisdom they can teach,
Learn how this comes to be ...
That brooding in the silent darkness here,
Slaves of a labor lasting all the year,
They, and not we,
Become the Masters of Tranquility!
VISION.
I saw the Search-light, like a seraph, fly
Over the water’s moved mysterious face,
Bridging the harbor, pushing darkness by,
Pouring its flood upon a far-off place.
I thought--no gleam can travel where they wait,
No human light throws silver on their shore;
Their crystal Sea’s unmargined like the great
Love which they know, and rest in evermore.
I thought--no light can show the flowers they bear,
Their heaven-looks, the tender things they say;
No light reveals the raiment that they wear,
Nor all the bliss of their unwearied Day.
And yet, who knows? So long have yearning men
Turned to those borders searching, wistful, gaze;
What stainless light may flash upon our ken,
What glorious faces smile at our amaze?
Dim reaches wait, untrodden shores exist,
The sea of Death completes the solemn scheme;
But comes the light to sweep away the mist,
And comes the heart to rightly read the Dream.
* * * * *
I see the Search-light in the years to come,
Moving anew on borders strange and far;
I see new coast lines set with lights of home,
Men’s faces turned toward a near-burning Star.
LOST BEAUTY.
Because my fathers did, I seek my bed
While winter night over my dreaming head
Opens its gorgeous book of trees and stars
Upon a world that sleeps. The Eastern bars
Are crossed by ships, all constellation shaped,
That sail the winter hills where snowy trees are draped.
So I, whose muscles and whose blood are bound
To this faint-hearted scheme of life, do pray
Those that come after me, that they shall found
Some life that does not sever night and day;
So when God’s fleet sweeps up the midnight skies,
His starry ships will hail unsleeping eyes.
THE BRANCH OF STRANGE BERRIES.
(An Old Man Tells a Story to Some Boys.)
Black tunnels grooved the sea
Into caves of night;
And the furrowed walls of foam
Were jagged chrysolite.
No star stayed to chart the way--
We shuddered, lurching on boiling spray
In piteous plight of swinging stay
And black sails torn to flapping rags,
Blowing in knots and bellying bags.
I could not sleep; I walked with the salt
Caking in rifts on my face,
And I heard my men up in the bows
Cursing our dreary case.
They ground their bitter words in their jaws
As we reeled in the furred seas’ tigress paws.
Paladin came with his eyes of omen,
His loose mouth hanging dry:
“Senor,” he said, “We men leave women--”
He turned and sneered at the sky--
“Maybe your love is the love of the ghost
That shrieks your name from a rock-cursed coast,
But we know there’s no land like the land thou dreamest--
No land like thy boyish fancy deemest....