Chapter 4

And yet with all its oriental hue There is a touch of Holland, Of canals 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 dykes in single file, And rice-fields made horizons, otherwhile.

All, all has passed, 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!

Hush! 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-- Hush! 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. The feather would not flutter in her breath; And those who long had watched her slipped away, Too weary then to weep; They could do that next day-- They left her lonely on the bed, Under a long, glistening sheet, in feeble tallow-shine, Rigid from muffled feet to swathèd head.

This in old days before the Turkish cure Had driven out the pox; Next morning, while slave carpenters Were hammering at the oblong box, The sun revived her and she breathed again, Like Lazarus, and in later years grew beautiful, And was the mother of strong men.

These things her father, master of an ancient place, Pondered, and read of men in antique times Who wakened in the charnel from a trance. Often his eyes would rest on her askance, And fear grew on him, and strange dreams he had a-bed, Till waking and asleep he turned his head, Front-back, front-back, from side to side, Looking for Death. At last, one night He heard crisp footfalls in his room, And stared his soul out in the gloom, Peering until he died.

But when they broke the seals upon his will, They found each codicil and long bequest Was held in trust until The heirs should carry out his last request-- To burn his body (naming witnesses); And they, all eagerness to share, Prepared to carry out this strange behest.

A pile of lightwood on the river bank, Neighbors on horseback, and the slaves, With teeth as white as eyeballs, rank on rank, Watched on the pyre the form wrapped in a shroud, Lonely among the lolling tongues of flames-- The smoke streamed, trailing in a saffron cloud, The greedy noise of fire grew loud, Then, "whiff," the shroud burned with a flare: The dead man's eyes looked down Like china moons upon the crowd. They saw him slowly shake his head, The thing denied that it was dead, While from the blacks arose a babblement of prayer. Surely the head must stop-- Not till the fire caved! Then from the very top The loosened poll came with a leap, Bounding three times, it took the river-steep; Down, down the river bank--all they Ran after it like school boys for a ball. God! How the thing could roll! It seemed the devil kicked the leaping poll. At last it stopped at bay, Staring across a tidal flat, Where spider lilies frightened day.

They buried it within a lonesome wood, With trembling hands, beneath a foreign stone. But there were some who said It moved its lips; And when they went away, the earth stirred And they heard it moan. Now it comes leaping down the tunnel roads Where the moss hangs like stalactites, Screaming out curses, snapping at the toads; Negroes who pass there on the moonless nights Behind them hear a sound that stops their breath. The keen wind whistles through its teeth, And the white skull goes bounding by Looking for Death.

H.A.

THE BLOCKADE RUNNER

I

Three years! Since I had seen the city, in the time We waited through the tenseness of the hours, While nerves were zither strings For fate to jar upon: All through that night we counted old St. Michael's chimes Now three o'clock-- The bells spoke as they had on marriage days, With high and silver-happy tongues Yet somehow they had gained an irony, For out across the quiet April bay Grim, new-built forts grinned at old Sumter Through the morning mist-- _One--two--three--four--_ And no sound yet! Then-- Thirty minutes like a life too long; A red flash dirked the night; I thought a voice cried, "DOOM"; That was the gun that killed a million men.

God! How the city woke! With what a rush of wonder in her streets, "_Burr_" of strained voices, earthquakes of feet, Tramping to rolling drums, The crowd swept to the Battery. Roofs were black with gazing folk in knots, Leveling their spyglasses Like phalanx spears, From sea wall to the chimney tops.

Over the rippling harbor came The growling, bull-dog bark of culverins, Red rockets curved and plunged Across the dawn. The world seemed drunk with confidence That day-- Some secret nervousness about the slaves; What they might think or say; But they did neither; The bugles shouted at the Citadel. Hours were punctuated by glad bells, Soon to be hid away, And gales of laughter came from gardens, Where bright tear-dashed eyes must weep farewells The braver lips refused to falter-- Mouths then seemed only made to kiss For men in gray, Who left the ancient houses of proud names, Through magic gates upon that magic day When the lost cause was still-born in its hope.

II

And I had gone-- It seemed no man's work then-- To buy supplies from "good friends" at the North-- Two years at old St. Louis and then down the river, Past winking lights of towns and federal rams, In flat-boats with a precious freight of barrels, Marked for the Yankees; but one night We supped past their last fort And floated down to Vicksburg through the dark. How dull the lanterns glimmered at the quay! But there was welcome, too, Proud, thankful hands, To take the medicine and powder, And unload sorghum barrels That we might change to quinine and to gold, If we could ever get them to Nassau. The column which they printed in the "News" On wall-paper, first made me think That it was worth-while man's work after all.

Then, out across the miles of leaguered states, Through pine-barrens where frowsy men in gray Lay with their wounded in the haggard camps-- A glimpse of old times in Atlanta Like a last febrile glow in well-loved eyes. Now rolling in flat cars, trundling to the sea, Back of the bull-head, wood-devouring engines. At last by night to Charleston Just before the iron ring closed-- Ours was the last freight train of the war, Before the anaconda squeezed; But I had won (perhaps) if we could get Those precious barrels to England or Nassau.

How changed my city was-- The grass grew in her streets, And there were blackened ruins raw with fire; A few old darkies crept along her ways; The busy thunder of the drays was gone; And ruin spoke with statue lips. Only a glimmering candle lurked in landward windows, Dim through shimmering shutter chinks-- Silence--silence was over all--no bells-- St. Michael's were in hiding, And St. Philip's spoke another voice, And rung a blatant dirge to bluecoats, far [11]In old Virginia, with Lee's batteries. The miles of cotton rotted on the wharfs, And the _Swamp Angel_ belled with distant shocks Like earthquake jars; There was heat-lightning in the sky That God had never made, From our sea-island batteries; And once a shell fell somewhere in the town With a despairing scream that hope was dead.

Such were the streets-- And it was starving time in houses Where fat generosity once ran amuck, No fires in inns, no cheerful bark of hounds, Or stroke of social hoofs upon the stones. And the long docks bit the black water Like old loosened fangs that held the sea In one last grinning jaw-clamp of despair.

I knew those docks When at the hour of noon A molten clangor shivered cheerful air And thousand ship-bells rang-- And now--only a drifting buoy-bell rung The knell of hope with its emphatic tongue, Cut loose by the blockaders To wander down the harbor in despair.

III

Close in the shadow of a warehouse lay The blockade-runner with her smokestacks gray, Back-raking like her masts, and up her hatches Came voices, and the furnace-light in patches Beat on the sails, and there alone was life-- The stevedores sang muffled snatches, and a strife Of bales and barrels streamed down her yawning hold; Cotton more valuable than money, And barrels of the St. Louis sorghum and molasses, Honey to lure the bees of English gold.

Three days she lay, this arrow-pointed boat, With a light gold necklace, beaded at her throat, Something there was about her like a stoat That lies in wait to make a silent rush, And there was something in her like a thrush, For she had paddle-wheels, each like a wing. She had a long hornet stern that seemed to hold a sting.

Sometimes her paddles slowly turned, For they kept steam up, waiting for a gale. It seemed as if the slim boat chafed and yearned To go hell-tearing under steam and sail. The oily water churned And made a _slap-slap_ to the paddles' stroke; And a high painted canvas screen cut off The blue haze of the lightwood smoke.

On the third evening, just at sunset, came A scud of driving cloud; the lightning's flame; The sun glared from a vicious, misty socket, And in the moaning twilight curved a rocket While a blue flame blurred and frayed At Castle Pinckney; thus we knew the storm Had shifted the blockade.

IV

Out from the docks we shot Into the screaming night; We steered by lightning's light; The paddles beat a mad tattoo; The gridded walking-beam Pumped up, pumped down, Against the misty gleam; Faster and faster jets the stand-pipes' steam. And the white water whirls Astern in phosphorescent whorls-- It swirls And then leads backward green with light Of streaming foam across the velvet night.

By the last lightning flare, That must be Sumter, bare Against a torn cloud like a rag; But now the wind begins to flag, And as it fails the engines lag; Then comes a low hail from the mast "Avast"-- Again the engines slow-- Then stop-- And we were drifting like a log As silent as a drowned corpse In the sea-set tide, Muffled in dripping fog.

No word from all the ship-- She seemed asleep-- Only the cluck of water and the feel Of grim Atlantic rollers at the keel, Nuzzling two fathoms deep; They made her heel. The porpoise played about our copper lip. It seemed as if they were The only living things in all that blur, And we-- The only ship upon an ancient sea.

When suddenly a laugh broke through the spell; It was so near Our pulses lapsed a heart-beat, Struck with fear. The curtains of the fog were blown apart; Stark in the sallow moonlight's metal day, The white decks of a Yankee frigate lay. I saw the glint of moonlight on her bell; She was not twenty fathoms length away. A man's face leaped out in the cherry glow Of match flame in the hands he cupped About the pipe whose curling wreaths he supped. "Clang!" like a fireman's gong Our engine signals rang; The paddles thrashed into a frothy song; Five ship's lengths we had forged along Before their bugles sang.

We had ten long lengths on them Before their ship began to swerve. The rabid screw was frothing at her stern; But I could feel the verve Of our blithe timbers tremble; every nerve Of our good race-horse ship For open water seemed to yearn.

That was a Titan's race; The answering rockets snaked it down the coast, Dying like scarlet worms Among the fog-wreaths; but we gained, And when her flaming cannon stabbed the mist They thundered at our ghost.

So we were gone, With cotton in our furnace, Once the aft-stacks flared, And then we plied pitch-pine Dampened with turpentine, Until the black sea glared-- But we had gone-- Over the world's round shoulder Thrust the dawn, Their ugly, black masts dipping it hull down. Three days the paddles beat while we drove on!

And I had won; For on the fourth day as I sat In the black coffin-shadow of a boat, The burning decks a-wash with lime-white sun, I saw the graybeard lookout swell his throat And utter forth a glad and bronze hurrah, "_Land Ho_!" he cried-- We lined the windward side To cheer the washing palm tops of Nassau.

H.A.

[11] See the note on the chimes at back of book.

BEYOND DEBATE

Out from the wrought-iron gate Miss Perdee drives in state; Miss Perdee wears the thin smile And the sleeves of 1888.

Miss Perdee's face is stifled as a sonnet; Upon her wire-tight hair a duck-shaped bonnet Nests, nodding with a _cachepeigne_ Of violets on it.

East Bay, some tea and talk, them home by King. The horses have an antiquated plod; The team is old, but not too old to balk If driven north of Broad.

Miss Perdee wears the sure air of a queen, Which only queens and Perdees can achieve. The Perdees had blue blood in Adam's veins When Adam had the rib he gave to Eve.

Back through the wrought-iron gate Miss Perdee drives in state. Miss Perdee lives down on the Battery! Beyond debate.

H.A.

MARSH TACKIES[12]

Browsing on the salty marsh grass, Barrel-ribbed and blowsy-bellied, With a neigh as shrill as whistles And their mouths red-raw from thistles, I have seen the brown _marsh tackies_, Hiding in the swamps at Kiawah, With the gray mosquito patches Gory on their shaggy thatches. Balky, vicious, and degenerates, They are small as Spanish jennets, But their sires were with El Tarab, When he conquered Andalusia For the Prophet and the Arab; And they came with Ponce de Leon, When the Spaniard made a _peon_ And a Christian of the Carib. Peering from palmetto thickets At some fort's coquina wickets, Startled Indians saw them grazing, Thunder-stamping and amazing As the beasts from other stars, When they galloped down savannas, And their masters seemed centaurs With the new white metal blazing. Thus they came, these little beasts, With the men-at-arms and priests, In the west with Coronado When he reached the Colorado, In the east with bold De Soto In the search for El Dorado, And they packed the bells and toys That the chieftains loved like boys; Struggling through the swamps and briars After dons and tonsured friars; Dying in the forests dismal, Till the shrill of silver clarion Brought the buzzards to the carrion Round the smoke of lonely fires In a continent abysmal.

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.

_Parnassus_ 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-horsemen 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 sturdy 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 fishing with a willow withe, And by him lay his hourglass and scythe, Resting upon the grass; They lay there in the sun, And through the glass 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 shimmer 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 grass and trees. Wistful and wanton as her sea-born airs, Bringer of dim, rich, age-old memories. Out on the gloom-deep water, when the nights Are choked with fog, and perilous, and blind, She is the faith that tends the calling lights. Hers is the stifled voice of harbor bells Muffled and broken by the mist and wind. Hers are the eyes through which I look on life And find it brave and splendid. And the stir Of hidden music shaping all my songs, And these my songs, my all, belong to her.

D.H.

NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

NOTES

NOTE ON THE CHIMES

TO ACCOMPANY "SILENCES"

The bells of Charleston, like the bells of London Town, have a peculiar interest. St. Michael's bells and clock were brought from England in 1764. When the British evacuated Charleston in 1782 they took the bells with them. A Mr. Ryhineu bought them in England and returned them. They were rehung in November, 1783. During the Civil War, St. Michael's steeple was the target for Federal artillery and fleet guns. In 1861 the bells were taken to Columbia, S.C., where two of them were stolen, and the rest injured by fire when the city was burned. Those left were again sent to England, and recast in the original moulds. In March, 1867, they once again rang out from the spire.