Part 10 (1/2)

So De Soto left them dying, Heedless of their human crying; Here he turned them loose to die Underneath a foreign sky; But they lived on thicket dross, On the leaves and Spanish moss-- And I wonder, and I wonder, When I hear the startled thunder Of their hoofs die down the reaches Of these Carolina beaches.

H.A.

[12] See the note at the back of the book.

BACK RIVER

”MEDWAY PLANTATION”

Back River! What a name For yesterdays come back again today, Reborn to be tomorrows still the same-- A landgrave built it when the English came; Then men made houses well With cunning hands.

And service wore a nearer, feudal guise-- Witness the stone where ”Rose, A faithful servant,” lies.

_Parna.s.sus_ stretches east, beyond that The plantation once called _Ararat_; But they have gone, Forgotten as an ancient drinking song; And the old houses, dull and roofless, Gape, with their doorways Like a dumb mouth toothless, With snake-engendering rooms that wall in fear, Silent, down forest roadways loved by deer.

Sometimes at nights These skeletons of houses flash with lights, And shadow-hors.e.m.e.n ride, Chasing wraith-deer With eery cry of hounds And shuddering cheer; While the moon makes her rounds, Glimmering through windows dead As the dead eyes in a dead man's head; And there is heard a misty horn-- Down in the woods, Among the moss-draped solitudes, The voodoo rooster crows, While owls hoot on forlorn.

But _Back River_ wears a different face; It has not changed;-- Time seems to love the place; Though all about it he has ranged, Here he has not Touched with his wand of rot-- Something of its immortal live-oak sap suffuses Its st.u.r.dy men and houses and transfuses Change into state.

The sunny hours wait at strange behest.

Here restless Time himself has come to rest.

The golden ivory of primeval light Dwells in its Spanish moss, Falling in living cascades from the trees, And who goes there in summer hears the bees Booming among the Pride of India trees, Dull grumbling tones, A deaf man dreams, Like far-off rumbling sound of boulder-stones Washed down by headlong streams.

This is Time's temple; Here he sleepy lies, Watching the buzzards circle in the skies, While shrubs slough off the pod, Making a carpet delicate Of petals strewn upon the sod, Fit for the silver slippers of the moon Upon the streets of Nod.

I saw him once asleep Down by the dark ponds Where alligators creep.

He had been fis.h.i.+ng with a willow withe, And by him lay his hourgla.s.s and scythe, Resting upon the gra.s.s; They lay there in the sun, And through the gla.s.s the sands had ceased to run.

H.A.

DUSK

They tell me she is beautiful, my City, That she is colorful and quaint, alone Among the cities. But I, I who have known Her tenderness, her courage, and her pity, Have felt her forces mould me, mind and bone, Life after life, up from her first beginning.

How can I think of her in wood and stone!

To others she has given of her beauty, Her gardens, and her dim, old, faded ways, Her laughter, and her happy, drifting hours, Glad, spendthrift April, squandering her flowers, The sharp, still wonder of her Autumn days; Her chimes that s.h.i.+mmer from St. Michael's steeple Across the deep maturity of June, Like sunlight slanting over open water Under a high, blue, listless afternoon.

But when the dusk is deep upon the harbor, She finds _me_ where her rivers meet and speak, And while the constellations ride the silence High overhead, her cheek is on _my_ cheek.

I know her in the thrill behind the dark When sleep brims all her silent thoroughfares.

She is the glamor in the quiet park That kindles simple things like gra.s.s and trees.

Wistful and wanton as her sea-born airs, Bringer of dim, rich, age-old memories.