 | Poems of Paul Hamilton Hayne |  |
THE ISLAND IN THE SOUTH.
The ship went down at noonday in a calm,When not a zephyr broke the crystal sea.
We two escaped alone: we reached an isle
Whereon the water settled languidly
In a long swell of music; luminous skies
O'erarched the place, and lazy, broad lagoons
Swept inland, with the boughs of plantain trees
Trailing cool shadows through the dense repose;
All round about us floated gentle airs,
And odors that crept upward to the sense
Like delicate pressures of voluptuous thought.
I, with a long bound, leapt upon the shore
Shouting, but she, pavilioned in dark locks,
Sobbed out thanksgiving; 'twixt the world and us,
Distance that seemed Eternity outrolled
Its terrible barriers; on the waste a Fate
Stood up, and stretching its blank hands abroad
Muttered of desolation. Did we weep,
And groaning cast our foreheads in the dust?
So it had been, but in each other's eyes
Smiled a new world, dearer than that which rose
Beneath the lost stars of the faded West.
That very morn the white-stoled priest of God
Had blessed us with the church's choicest prayers,
And these did gird us like a sapphire wall
When the floods threatened, and the ghastly doom
Moaned itself impotent; free we were to love
To the full scope of passion; a few suns,
And in the deep recesses of the woods
We built ourselves a cabin; the dim spot
Was fortressed by the tropic's giant growths,
Luxuriant Titans of a hundred years;
And the vines, laced and interlaced between,
Drooped with a flowery largess many-hued.
8
That glimmered in and out among the leaves,
Like magical dreams embodied, wooed the winds
To gentlest motion of benignant wings;
And the sun veiled his radiance, and the stars
Peered through the shadowy stillness with a light
So spiritual, the forest seemed to wane
In tremulous lines waved down the silvery aisles.
There lived, there loved we, as none else have lived
And loved, I think, since the primeval blight
Rained down its discords, and death clinched the curse.
No shallow mockeries of a worn-out age,
Effete and helpless, bound young passion round
With the cold fetters of detested forms:
Civilization was not there to set
Its specious seal of custom on our hearts,
Prisoning the bolder virtues; we might dare
To act, speak, think, as the true nature moved,
Untutored and majestic; our souls grew
To the stature of the spirit, that looks down
From the unpolluted regnancy of heavens
That hold no curses; the glad universe
Showered rare benedictions on our path;
Matter was merged in poesy: the winds
From the serene Pacific, the quick gales
From mountainous ridges in the uppermost air,
The eternal chorus of far seas serene,
The harmony of forests, the small voice
That trembles from the happy rivulet's breast,
All touched us with that sweet philosophy,
Which, if we woo the visible world aright,
Blesses experience with new gates of sense
Where through we gain Elysium.
So the years
Were winged and odorous with a thousand joys,
Of which the poor slave to the hollow law
We term society, hath had no dream;
Our love was comprehensive, full, divine,
Rounding the perfect orbit wherein life
Should gravitate to God, even as the spheres
Roll to the central fire; love mastered life
As maelstroms suck still waters, love the one
Electric current through act, reason, will,
Throbbing like inspiration; no vain touch
Of weak, fantastic passion, no thin glow
Of morbid longing, fluttering feebly up
From shallow brains, stirred to a dubious flame,
And tortured with false throes of sentiment—
(That bastard whimperer to the deity, Love—
As a changeling to the Titans)—no red heat
Of base desire, fusing the delicate thought
To chaos; but a steadfast, genial sun,
A luminous glory, gentle as intense,
Making our fate a heaven of warmth, light, rest,
Whose very clouds were halos, and whose storms
Were tempered into music. Thus time stole
On muffled wings through the still air of bliss,
Gathering our ripened hopes, and sowing seeds
Of joy to come. My innocent bud had flowered
To beauty—oh! such beauty as these lips,
Touched though they were with fire, might not profane
With shackles of mean utterance. Oh, God! God!
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The passionate presence in my shielding arms
To this poor phantom of a broken brain,
Mocking my woe with shadows? On a night
When the still sea was calmest, the bright stars
Most bright, and a warm breathing on the wind
Spoke of perpetual summer, a strange voice
I scarce could hear, said: “It is evening time,”
And a wan hand my eyes were blind to note
Beckoned her far away.
The awful grief
Closed round me like an ocean. I was mad,
And raved my memory from me. When again
The world dawned, as a dreary landscape dawns
Grotesquely through the sluggish mists of March,
I walked once more in a great capital's streets,
A savage 'midst the civilized, a man—
Shattered and wrecked, I grant you,—still a man
Amongst the puppets that usurp the name
And act the fraud so basely, that the Fiend
Wearies to death the echoes of his hell
In laughter at them. I am with you still,
Emasculate denizens of the stifling mart,
Where heaven's free winds are throttled in the fumes
Of furnaces, and the insulted sun
Glooms through the crowding vapors at midday,
Like a God, re-collecting to himself
His immortality; where nerveless limbs
Bear nerveless bodies to their separate dens
Of torture, and lean, wide-eyed revellers
Foster the hungering worm that never dies,
And fan the lurid fire unquenchable;
Where stealthy avarice lurks in wait to sack
The widow's house; and license of low minds,
Loaded with prurient knowledge, and no hearts
(Self-worship having killed them), make the world
A Pandemonium. I am with you still;
But the hours creep on to a more fortunate time;
A vessel swells her broad sails in the bay,
And the breeze bloweth seaward; I will seek
My island in the southern waves again;
A thousand memories urge me, tones that slept
Waken to invitation; I can feel
The Hesperian beauty of that realm of peace
Flushing my brain and fancy; but through all
The ruddy vision glides a tender shade,
And pauses with mute meaning by a grave.
| Poems of Paul Hamilton Hayne | |