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IN OLD NEW ENGLAND

155

THE NORTH SHORE

I
SEPTEMBER ON CAPE ANN

The partridge-berry flecks with flame the way
That leads to ferny hollows where the bee
Drones on the aster. Far away the sea
Points its deep sapphire with a gleam of grey.
Here from this height where, clustered sweet, the bay
Clumps a green couch,—the haw and barberry
Beading her hair, sad Summer, seemingly,
Has fallen asleep, unmindful of the day.
The chipmunk barks upon the old stone wall;
And in the shadows, like a shadow, stirs
The woodchuck where the boneset's blossom creams.—
Was that a phœbe with its pensive call?
A sighing wind that shook the drowsy firs?—
Or only Summer waking from her dreams?
156

II
IN AN ANNISQUAM GARDEN

Old phantoms haunt it of the long ago;
Old ghosts of old-time lovers and of dreams:
Within the quiet sunlight there, meseems,
I see them walking where those lilies blow.
The hardy phlox sways to some garment's flow;
The salvia there with sudden scarlet streams,
Caught from some ribbon of some throat that gleams,
Petunia-fair, in flounce and furbelow.
I seem to hear their whispers in each wind
That wanders mid the flowers.—There they stand!
Among the shadows of that apple-tree!—
They are not dead, whom still it keeps in mind,
This garden, planted by some lovely hand
That keeps it fragrant with its memory.
157

III
THE ELEMENTS

I saw the spirit of the pines that spoke
With spirits of the ocean and the storm:
Against the tumult rose its tattered form,
Wild rain and darkness round it like a cloak.
Fearful it stood, limbed like some twisted oak,
Gesticulating with one giant arm,
Raised as in protest of the night's alarm,
Defiant still of some impending stroke.
Below it, awful in its majesty,
The spirit of the deep, with rushing locks,
Raved: and above it, lightning-clad and shod,
Thundered the tempest.—Thus they stood, the three;
Terror around them; while, upon the rocks,
Destruction danced, mocking at man and God.
158

IV
NIGHT AND STORM AT GLOUCESTER

I heard the wind last night that cried and wept
Like some old skipper's ghost outside my door;
And on the roof the rain that tramped and tore
Like feet of seamen on a deck storm-swept.
Against the pane the Night with shudderings crept,
And crouched there wailing; moaning ever more
Its tale of terror; of the wrath on shore,
The rage at sea, bidding all wake who slept.
And then I heard a voice as old as Time;
The calling of the mother of the world,
Ocean, who thundered on her granite crags,
Foaming with fury, meditating crime.—
And then, far off, wild minute guns; and, hurled
Through roaring surf, the rush of sails in rags.
159

V
THE VOICE OF OCEAN

A cry went through the darkness; and the moon,
Hurrying through storm, gazed with a ghastly face,
Then cloaked herself in scud: the merman race
Of surges ceased; and then th' Æolian croon
Of the wild siren, Wind, within the shrouds
Sunk to a sigh. The ocean in that place
Seemed listening; haunted, for a moment's space,
By something dread that cried against the clouds.
Mystery and night; and with them fog and rain:
And then that cry again—as if the deep
Uttered its loneliness in one dark word:
Her horror of herself; her Titan pain;
Her monsters; and the dead that she must keep,
Has kept, alone, for centuries, unheard.
160

VI
WAVES

I saw the daughters of the ocean dance
With wind and tide, and heard them on the rocks:
White hands they waved me, tossing sunlit locks,
Green as the light an emerald holds in trance.
Their music bound me as with necromance
Of mermaid beauty, that for ever mocks,
And lured me as destruction lures wild flocks
Of light-led gulls and storm-tossed cormorants.
Nearer my feet they crept: I felt their lips:
Their hands of foam that caught at me, to press,
As once they pressed Leander: and, straightway,
I saw the monster-ending of their hips;
The cruelty hid in their soft caress;
The siren-passion ever more to slay.
161

VII
A BIT OF COAST

One tree, storm-twisted, like an evil hag,
The sea-wind in its hair, beside a path
Waves frantic arms, as if in wild-witch wrath
At all the world. Gigantic, grey as slag,
Great boulders shoulder through the hills, or crag
The coast with danger, monster-like, that lifts
Huge granite, round which wheel the gulls and swifts,
And at whose base the rotting sea-weeds drag.
Inward the hills are wooded; valley-cleft;
Tangled with berries; vistaed dark with pines;
At whose far end,—as 'twere within a frame,—
Some trail of water that the ocean left
Gleams like a painting where one white sail shines,
Lit with the sunset's poppy-coloured flame.
162

VIII
AUTUMN AT ANNISQUAM

The bitter-sweet and red-haw in her hands,
And in her hair pale berries of the bay,
She haunts the coves and every Cape Ann way,
The Indian, Autumn, wandered from her bands.
Beside the sea, upon a rock, she stands,
And looks across the foam, and straight the grey
Takes on a sunset tone, and all the day
Murmurs with music of forgotten lands.
Now in the woods, knee-deep among the ferns,
She walks and smiles and listens to the pines,
The sweetheart pines, that kiss and kiss again,
Whispering their love: and now she frowns and turns—
And in the west the fog in ragged lines
Rears the wild wigwams of the tribes of rain.
163

IX
STORM SABBAT

Against the pane the darkness, wet and cold,
Pressed a wild face and raised a ragged arm
Of cloud, clothed on with thunder and alarm
And terrible with elemental gold.
Above the fisher's hut, beyond the wold,
The wind, a Salem witch, rushed shrieking harm,
And swept her mad broom over every farm
To devil-revels in some forest old.
Hell and its hags, it seemed, held court again
On every rock, trailing a tattered gown
Of surf, and whirling, screaming, to the sea
Elf-locks, fantastic, of dishevelled rain;
While in their midst death hobbled up and down
Monstrous and black, with diabolic glee.
164

X
THE AURORA

Night and the sea, and heaven overhead
Cloudless and vast, as 'twere of hollowed spar,
Wherein the facets gleamed of many a star,
And the half-moon a crystal radiance shed.
Then suddenly, with burning banners spread,
In pale celestial armour, as for war,
Into the heaven, flaming from afar,
The Northern Lights their phalanxed splendours led.
Night, for the moment, seemed to catch her breath,
And earth gazed, silent with astonishment,
As spear on spear the auroral armies came;
As when, triumphant over hell and death,
The victor angels thronged God's firmament
With sword on sword and burning oriflamme.
165

XI
OGTOWN

Far as the eye can see the land is grey,
And desolation sits among the stones
Looking on ruin who, from rocks like bones,
Stares with a dead face at the dying day.
Mounds, where the barberry and bay hold sway,
Show where homes rose once; where the village crones
Gossiped, and man, with many sighs and groans,
Laboured and loved and went its daily way.
Only the crow now, like a hag returned,
Croaks on the common that its hoarse voice mocks.
Meseems that here the sorrow of the earth
Has lost herself, and, with the past concerned,
Sits with the ghosts of dreams that haunt these rocks,
And old despairs to which man's soul gave birth.
166

XII
AN ABANDONED QUARRY

The barberry burns, the rose-hip crimsons warm,
And haw and sumach hedge the hill with fire,
Down which the road winds, worn of hoof and tire,
Only the blueberry-picker plods now from the farm.
Here once the quarry-driver, brown of arm,
Wielded the whip when, deep in mud and mire,
The axle strained, and earned his daily hire,
Labouring bareheaded in both sun and storm.
Wild-cherry now and blackberry and bay
Usurp the place: the wild-rose, undisturbed,
Riots, where once the workman earned his wage,
Whose old hands rest now, like this granite grey,
These rocks, whose stubborn will whilom he curbed,
Hard as the toil that was his heritage.
167

XIII
A POOL AMONG THE ROCKS

I know a pool, whose crystalline repose
Sleeps under walls of granite, whence the pine
Leans looking at its image, line for line
Repeated with the sumach and wild-rose
That redden on the rocks; where, at day's close,
The sunset dreams, and lights incarnadine
Dark waters and the place seems brimmed with wine,
A giant cup that splendour overflows.
Night, in her livery of stars and moon,
Stoops to its mirror, gazing steadily;
And, saddened by her beauty, drops one tear,
A falling star; while round it sighs the rune
Of winds, conspirators that sweep from sea,
Whispering of things that fill the heart with fear.
168

XIV
HIGH ON A HILL

There is a place among the Cape Ann hills
That looks from fir-dark summits on the sea,
Whose surging sapphire changes constantly
Beneath deep heavens, Morning windowsills
With golden calm, or sunset citadels
With storm, whose towers the winds' confederacy
And bandit thunder hold in rebel fee,
Swooping upon the fisher's sail that swells.
A place, where Sorrow ceases to complain,
And life's old Cares put all their burdens by,
And Weariness forgets itself in rest.
Would that all life were like it; might obtain
Its pure repose, its outlook, strong and high,
That sees, beyond, far Islands of the Blest.
Annisquam, Mass., September, 1908.
169

GIPSIES

I

There's a scent of pungent wood smoke in the chill October air,
And a jack-o'-lantern glare, a wild and dusky glare,—
'Tis the brush that burns and smoulders in the woods and by the ways,
The old New England ways,
When Autumn plants her gipsy tents and camps with all her days,
Along the shore, among the hills, beside the sounding sea,
And fills the land with haze of dreams and fires of mystery.
170

II

There's a sound of crickets crooning, and an owlet's quavering tune,
And a rim of frosty moon, a will-o'-wisp of moon,
And a camp-fire in a hollow of the ocean-haunted hills,
The old New England hills,
When Autumn keeps her tryst with Earth and cures his soul of ills:
And day and night he sits with her and hearkens to her dreams,
While, like a ghost, her camp-fire's smoke trails over woods and streams.
171

III

A frantic rush of faded leaves; a whirl of wind and rain;—
And she is gone again; has struck her tents again.
As Dawn comes up with cold grey eyes that chill to ice the land,
The old New England land,
Her tents are gone and she is gone and gone her gipsy band,
And but a patteran of leaves to point her wandering way,
And ashes of a fire she lit, it seems, but yesterday.
172

WITH THE WIND

'Twas when the wind was blowing from the billow-breaking sea,
The grey and stormy sea, I heard her calling me,
And in the woods and on the ways where leaves were whirling down,
And weeds were rustling brown,
I caught a glimpse of face and feet, a glimmer of her gown.
And there between the forest and a strip of wandering sea,
Of dark and dreaming sea, I heard her laugh at me;
173

And, oh! her voice was bugle-wild as are the wind and rain,
And drew my heart again
With all the lures of all the past and joy more keen than pain.
Upon a fir-dark hilltop by the sunset-jewelled sea,
The old and wrinkled sea, she shook her hair at me,
And I caught a misty shimmer of her frosty gown and veil,
And her hand waved rosy pale,
And my heart was fain to follow her upon the old-time trail.
Within a ferny hollow by the mermaid-calling sea,
The far and foaming sea, she turned her face to me:
174

Again I saw her beauty; and again she held me fast,
As she'd held me in the past,
And let her wild heart beat to mine as beats the autumn blast.
Beside a rib of wreckage by the tempest-haunted sea,
The sad and severing sea, she bade good-bye to me:
Oh, paler than the foam her face, and wilder than the night,
When not a star gives light,
And rain and wind and winter sweep like harpies from the height.
Oh, she who joined her gipsy joy to sorrow of the sea,
The gaunt and ghostly sea, will come again to me:
175

When Autumn leads the wild-fowl home and lights, like wandering gleams,
The camp-fires of her dreams,
Again my heart shall hear her call upon the gale that streams.
176

WOOD MYTHS

Sylvan, they say, and nymph are gone;
And yet I saw the two last night,
When overhead the moon sailed white,
And through the mists, her light made wan,
Each bush and tree doffed its disguise,
And stood revealed to mortal eyes.
The hollow, rimmed with rocks and trees,
And massed with ferns and matted vines,
Seemed an arena mid the pines,
A theatre of mysteries,
Where oread and satyr met,
And all the myths that men forget.
177

The rain and frost had carved the rocks
With faces that were wild and strange,
Which Protean fancy seemed to change
Each moment in the granite blocks,
That seemed slow dreaming into form
The gods grotesque of wind and storm.
Then suddenly Diana stood,
Slim as a shaft of moonlight, there,
Immortalizing earth and air
With perfect beauty: through the wood
Her maidens went as brightness goes
Athwart a cloud at evening's close.
And then I saw a faun push through
The thorny berry; at his lip
Twinkled a pipe that seemed to drip
Dim sounds of crickets and of dew,
Things that, in strange reality,
Seemed born of his frail melody.
178

And then I saw the naiad rise
From out her rock; a form of spar,
In which her heart shone like a star,
And like the moon her hair and eyes;
She smiled, and at each smile, it seemed,
Some wildflower into being gleamed.
And then the dryad from her beech
Came, silver white as is its bark;
And slender through the dreaming dark
I saw her go: a whispering speech
Was hers from whose soft murmured words
Is made the language of the birds.
Then satyrs and the centaurs passed:
And then old Pan himself; and there,
Flying before him, all her hair
About her like a mist, the last
Wild nymph I saw; and as she went
The woods as with a wind were bent.
179

And in the hush, like some slow rose
That knows not yet that it is born,
A premonition of the morn
Bloomed; and from out its far repose,
Borne over ocean, through the wood,
A sighing swept the solitude.
Then nothing more.—But I had seen
That Pan still lives and all his train,
Whatever men say: they remain—
The unseen forces; they that mean
Nature; its awe and majesty,
That symbolize mythology.
180

BY THE ANNISQUAM

A far bell tinkles in the hollow,
And heart and soul are fain to follow:
Gone is the rose and gone the swallow:
Autumn is here.
The wild geese draw at dusk their harrow
Above the 'Squam the ebb leaves narrow:
The sea-winds chill you to the marrow:
Sad goes the year.
Among the woods the crows are calling:
The acorns and the leaves are falling:
At sea the fishing-boats are trawling:
Autumn is here.
181

The jay among the rocks is screaming,
And every way with crimson streaming:
Far up the shore the foam is creaming:
Sleep fills the Year.
The chipmunk on the stones is barking;
The red leaf every path is marking,
Where hills lean to the ocean harking:
Autumn is here.
The fields are starry with the aster,
Where Beauty dreams and dim Disaster
Draws near through mists that gather faster:
Farewell, sweet Year.
Beside the coves driftwood is burning,
And far at sea white sails are turning:
Each day seems filled with deeper yearning:
Autumn is here.
182

‘Good-bye! good-bye!” the Summer's saying:
“Brief was my day as songs of Maying:
The time is come for psalms and praying:
Good-bye, sweet Year.”
Brown bend the ferns by rock and boulder;
The shore seems greyer; ocean older:
The days are misty; nights are colder:
Autumn is here.
The cricket in the grass is crying,
And sad winds in the old woods sighing;
They seem to say, “Sweet Summer's dying:
Weep for the Year.
“She's wreathed her hair with bay and berry,
And o'er dark pools, the wild-fowl ferry,
Leans dreaming 'neath the wilding cherry:
Autumn is here.
183

“Good-bye! good-bye to Summer's gladness:
To all her beauty, mirth and madness:
Come sit with us and dream in sadness:
So ends the Year.”
184

GAMMER GAFFER

(A BALLAD OF GLOUCESTER)

I

One night when trees were tumbled down,
And wild winds shook at sea the sail,
Old Gammer Gaffer, lean and brown,
Chuckled and whistled on her nail;
Then seized her broom and, mounting it,
Flew up the chimney with her cat;
All Dogtown bayed to see her flit,
The screech-owl shrieked, and, lightning-lit,
About her head flew black the bat.

II

Her crow-like body, humped and black,
Seemed part and portion of her broom;
The black cat, crouched upon her back,
Lit with its yellow eyes the gloom.
185

Towards Gloucester Town she took her flight,
And night grew wilder as she went;
The wind blew out the fisher's light,
And tore his sails in tatters white,
And strewed them through the firmament.

III

Old shutters clapped and windows rapped,
And shingles shook as if in pain;
Her besom on each old door slapped
And flapped as, cloaked and conical-capped,
Whisked by old Gammer Gaffer's train.

IV

To window-panes, where candle-light
Showed some good wife who sat alone,
She pressed her sharp face, skinny white,
And knocked with knuckled hands of bone:
186

Then croaked and mumbled, like the draught
That grumbles in the chimney-flue;
Or on the gables danced and laughed,
Her old cloak flapping as if daft,
While round her face her wild hair blew.

V

Old gutters dripped and dead leaves skipped,
And wildly struck the village clock,
As off a shutter here she ripped,
Old Gammer! or like madness whipped
Around and 'round some weather-cock.

VI

Then at one door she shook the latch,
And to a cranny set her chin
And croaked: “Hey! here's an egg to hatch.
Eh? Goodie Brown, come, take it in.—
187

I've news for ye! Good news! he! he!—
Your old man—he's gone down at sea.—
There's something, eh?—to hearten ye!—
Hey! what man now shall wear his shoes?”

VII

And, chuckling to herself, again
Around the house she rode her broom;
Then mounted to the weather-vane
And whirled and maundered to the gloom:
“Aye! weep, ye women! weep and wail!
'Twas I who wrought your good men's weird!
'Twas I who raised the Gloucester gale!
'Twas I who tattered shroud and sail,
And seized and drowned them, by my beard!”
188

VIII

Old sign-boards squeaked and gables creaked,
And crazy gates closed with a bang,
As, parrot-beaked and lanthorn-cheeked,
Old Gammer round the belfry shrieked
And made its cracked old bell go clang.

IX

So round and round the old Cape Town
She whirled and whined as whines the wind;
Now this way blew her rag of gown,
Now that way, through the blackness blind.
And as she went she crowed and croaked
And crooned some snatch of devil's verse,
While now and then her cat she stroked;
And, in a wink, all capped and cloaked,
Flew back to Dogtown with a curse.
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