Part 8 (1/2)

MIDDLETON GARDEN

This is a garden where the Son of Heaven Well might walk, With all his dragon-broidered mandarins, To the plucked sound of tenor instruments, With peac.o.c.ks, kites, and little red balloons, Mirrored with incense and rice-paper lights, And old bronze lanterns on the full moon nights, Upon the lacquered, porcelain-pink lagoons.

If cardinals in sun-blood robes were here To kiss the ring of gorgeous Borgia popes; Or bold de Gama's loot from Malabar: Topaz and ruby, chrysolite and beryl, The golden idol with a thousand hands, And ropes of pearl; They would seem lesser than these flowers are, Whose masculine magnificence makes riches pale.

And yet with all its oriental hue There is a touch of Holland, Of ca.n.a.ls at Loo, Where Orange William planned a boxwood maze.

The house has Flemish curves upon its eaves; Its doorways yearn for buckle-shoed young bloods, Smoking clay pipes, with lace a-droop from sleeves-- Moonlight on terraces is like a story told By sleepy link-boys 'round old sedan chairs In days when tulip bulbs were gold.

The faint, crisp rustle of magnolia leaves Rasps with the crackling scratch of old brocade, The low bird-voices ripple like the laugh Of Watteau beauties coiffured, with pomade; Here ribboned dandies offered scented snuffs To other ghosts, beneath the giant trees-- Was that a flash of rose-flamingo stuffs-- Azaleas?--was a sneeze blown down the breeze?

This terrace is a stage set by the years, Fit for the pageants of the centuries; That fire-scarred ruin marks an act of tears-- Charm is more winsome coped with tragedies.

Here flaunted tilted hats and crinolines, Small parasols, hoopskirts, and bombazines, When turbaned slaves walked d.y.k.es in single file, And rice-fields made horizons, otherwhile.

All, all has pa.s.sed, but change, Gnawed by the rat-like teeth of avid years, The masters, through the door, to mysteries Beyond blind panels 'mid the moss-scarved trees, Uncanny gates, where negroes faintly bold, At high noon in the tide of summer heat, Stand in the draught of tomb-air deathly cold That flows like glacial water 'round their feet.

H.A.

THE GOOSE CREEK VOICE

This is the low-doored house among funereal trees, Where one May dusk they brought Louise, With music slow, And sobbing low, The old slaves crooning eerily.

She died asleep and weeping wearily.

She had a poppy-strange disease; A beauty that was more than carnal, How durst they leave her in the charnel?

She might be sleeping eerily!

Hus.h.!.+ They have locked her in the tomb, Among the silences and wilting bloom; Life's melody of voices drifts away-- Mistaken!

Was it an owlet in the thorns that moaned?

The churchyard moonlight turns ash-gray-- Hus.h.!.+ Pale Louise!

The dead must not awaken.

Something a twittering cry is uttering.

Is that a bird there on her breast, Lost in the fragrant gloom, Wakening to morning twilight in the tomb?

No bird--it is her folded hands a-fluttering!

I think I should have died to see her rise Among the withered wreaths And spider-cluttered palls Of her dead uncles' funerals, While streams of horror fed the blue lakes of her eyes.

I known I would have died to see her rise.

_Over the fields a voice calls from the tomb,_ _Pleading and pleading drearily,_ _But all the slaves have fled_ _And left her talking to her coffined dead,_ _And whimpering eerily._ _The young birds die_ _To see old hands thrust from the window-slit,_ _Clutching the light in handfuls of despair;_ _Stark fear has stroked the color from her hair,_ _While from the window comes_ _The babbled whisper of her prayer._ _Night is like spiders in her mouth;_ _By day they spin a film across her eyes._ _Now night; now day--_ _The birds come back;_ _It is another year:_ _The withering voice they fear_ _Has nothing more to say._

But yet once more Her kinsmen came With nodding plume and pall And music slow, And, sobbing low, They fluttered back the door, and lo!-- She leaned against the slit-window Her web-like, bony hands against the wall, And all about her, like a summer cloud Rippled her leprous hair, One bleached and shuddering shroud.

H.A.

THE LEAPING POLL

At early morning when the earth grows cold, When river mists creep up, And those asleep are nearest death, She died.