A GREYPORT LEGEND
(1797)
They ran through the streets of the seaport town, They peered from the decks of the ships that lay;
The cold sea-fog that came whitening down Was never as cold or white as they.
"Ho, Starbuck and Pinckney and Tenterden!
Run for your shallops, gather your men, Scatter your boats on the lower bay."
Good cause for fear! In the thick mid-day The hulk that lay by the rotting pier, Filled with the children in happy play, Parted its moorings and drifted clear, Drifted clear beyond reach or call,--Thirteen children they were in all,--All adrift in the lower bay!
Said a hard-faced skipper, "God help us all!
She will not float till the turning tide!"
Said his wife, "My darling will hear MY call, Whether in sea or heaven she bide;"
And she lifted a quavering voice and high, Wild and strange as a sea-bird's cry, Till they shuddered and wondered at her side.
The fog drove down on each laboring crew, Veiled each from each and the sky and shore:
There was not a sound but the breath they drew, And the lap of water and creak of oar;
And they felt the breath of the downs, fresh blown O'er leagues of clover and cold gray stone, But not from the lips that had gone before.
They came no more. But they tell the tale That, when fogs are thick on the harbor reef, The mackerel fishers shorten sail--For the signal they know will bring relief;
For the voices of children, still at play In a phantom hulk that drifts alway Through channels whose waters never fail.
It is but a foolish shipman's tale, A theme for a poet's idle page;
But still, when the mists of Doubt prevail, And we lie becalmed by the shores of Age, We hear from the misty troubled shore The voice of the children gone before, Drawing the soul to its anchorage.
A NEWPORT ROMANCE
They say that she died of a broken heart (I tell the tale as 'twas told to me);
But her spirit lives, and her soul is part Of this sad old house by the sea.
Her lover was fickle and fine and French:
It was nearly a hundred years ago When he sailed away from her arms--poor wench!--With the Admiral Rochambeau.
I marvel much what periwigged phrase Won the heart of this sentimental Quaker, At what gold-laced speech of those modish days She listened--the mischief take her!
But she kept the posies of mignonette That he gave; and ever as their bloom failed And faded (though with her tears still wet)
Her youth with their own exhaled.
Till one night, when the sea-fog wrapped a shroud Round spar and spire and tarn and tree, Her soul went up on that lifted cloud From this sad old house by the sea.
And ever since then, when the clock strikes two, She walks unbidden from room to room, And the air is filled that she passes through With a subtle, sad perfume.
The delicate odor of mignonette, The ghost of a dead-and-gone bouquet, Is all that tells of her story; yet Could she think of a sweeter way?
I sit in the sad old house to-night,--Myself a ghost from a farther sea;
And I trust that this Quaker woman might, In courtesy, visit me.
For the laugh is fled from porch and lawn, And the bugle died from the fort on the hill, And the twitter of girls on the stairs is gone, And the grand piano is still.
Somewhere in the darkness a clock strikes two:
And there is no sound in the sad old house, But the long veranda dripping with dew, And in the wainscot a mouse.
The light of my study-lamp streams out From the library door, but has gone astray In the depths of the darkened hall. Small doubt But the Quakeress knows the way.
Was it the trick of a sense o'erwrought With outward watching and inward fret?
But I swear that the air just now was fraught With the odor of mignonette!
I open the window, and seem almost--So still lies the ocean--to hear the beat Of its Great Gulf artery off the coast, And to bask in its tropic heat.
In my neighbor's windows the gas-lights flare, As the dancers swing in a waltz of Strauss;
And I wonder now could I fit that air To the song of this sad old house.
And no odor of mignonette there is, But the breath of morn on the dewy lawn;
And mayhap from causes as slight as this The quaint old legend is born.
But the soul of that subtle, sad perfume, As the spiced embalmings, they say, outlast The mummy laid in his rocky tomb, Awakens my buried past.
And I think of the passion that shook my youth, Of its aimless loves and its idle pains, And am thankful now for the certain truth That only the sweet remains.
And I hear no rustle of stiff brocade, And I see no face at my library door;
For now that the ghosts of my heart are laid, She is viewless for evermore.
But whether she came as a faint perfume, Or whether a spirit in stole of white, I feel, as I pass from the darkened room, She has been with my soul to-night!
SAN FRANCISCO
(FROM THE SEA)
Serene, indifferent of Fate, Thou sittest at the Western Gate;
Upon thy height, so lately won, Still slant the banners of the sun;
Thou seest the white seas strike their tents, O Warder of two continents!
And, scornful of the peace that flies Thy angry winds and sullen skies, Thou drawest all things, small, or great, To thee, beside the Western Gate.
O lion's whelp, that hidest fast In jungle growth of spire and mast!
I know thy cunning and thy greed, Thy hard high lust and willful deed, And all thy glory loves to tell Of specious gifts material.
Drop down, O Fleecy Fog, and hide Her skeptic sneer and all her pride!
Wrap her, O Fog, in gown and hood Of her Franciscan Brotherhood.
Hide me her faults, her sin and blame;
With thy gray mantle cloak her shame!
So shall she, cowled, sit and pray Till morning bears her sins away.
Then rise, O Fleecy Fog, and raise The glory of her coming days;
Be as the cloud that flecks the seas Above her smoky argosies;
When forms familiar shall give place To stranger speech and newer face;
When all her throes and anxious fears Lie hushed in the repose of years;
When Art shall raise and Culture lift The sensual joys and meaner thrift, And all fulfilled the vision we Who watch and wait shall never see;
Who, in the morning of her race, Toiled fair or meanly in our place, But, yielding to the common lot, Lie unrecorded and forgot.
