Chapter 16

"There is nothing else to be done. I know him," said he.

"So do I," was the answer.

Captain Spang and his mate were again in the boat. As they were on the point of starting, a loud whine and violent barking sounded from the deck, and Prussian showed his one eye over the railing.

"Stay where you are!" cried Tönnes. "We shall be back soon."

But the dog did not understand him. Perhaps he had his doubts; no one can say. He sprang overboard; Tönnes seized him by the ear, and hauled him into the boat.

And then the two men and the dog ventured back to the abandoned vessel.

This time the old man climbed on board without assistance.

Prussian whined in the boat.

"Throw that dog up to me!" cried the master.

Tönnes did so.

"Shall I come up and help you?" he called out.

"No, I can find my own way."

"But hurry, captain! do you understand?" said Tönnes, who anxiously noticed that the motions of the vessel were becoming more and more dangerous, while he needed all his strength to keep the boat clear of the wreck.

An answer came from the bark, but he could not catch it. In this moment Tönnes recalled the day when he rowed the captain out on the bay to the brig. His next thought was of Nanna. Oh, if she knew where they were!

And at this thought the mate's breast was filled with conflicting emotions. The dear blessed girl! Oh, if her father would only come!

"Captain!" cried Tönnes; "Captain Spang! for God's sake, come! Leave those papers alone. The vessel is sinking. We may at any moment--"

He paused.

The captain stood at the stern-sheets. At his side was Prussian, squinting down into the boat. There was an entirely strange expression in Andreas Spang's face; a double expression--one moment hard and defiant, the next almost solemn.

The sou'wester had fallen from his old head. His scanty hairs fluttered in the wind. He held in his hand a parcel of papers and a coil of rope. He pointed toward the brig.

"There!" he cried, throwing the package and the rope down to Tonnes. "Give the skipper this new line for his trouble. He has used plenty of rope for us. You go back. I stay here. Give--my--love--to the girl at home.--You and she--You two--God bless you!"

"Captain!" cried Tönnes in affright; "you are sick; come, let me--"

He prepared to climb on board.

Captain Spang lifted his hand threateningly, and Prussian barked furiously.

"Stay down there, boy, I say! The vessel and I, we belong together. You shall take care of the girl. Good-by!"

The Anna Dorothea rolled heavily over on one side, righted again, and then began to plunge her head downwards, like a whale that, tired of the surface, seeks rest at the bottom. The crew of the brig hauled in the lines of the boat. Tossed on the turbid sea, Tönnes saw his old skipper leaning against the helm, the dog at his side. His gray hairs fluttered in the wind as if they wafted a last farewell; and down with vessel and dog went the old skipper--down into the wild sea that so long had borne him on its waves.

THE PRINCE'S SONG

From 'Once Upon a Time'

Princess, I come from out a land that lieth-- I know not in what arctic latitude: Though high in the bleak north, it never sigheth For sunny smiles; they wait not to be wooed. Our privilege we know: the bright half-year Illumines sea and shore with sunlit glory; In twilight then our fertile fields we ear, And round our brows we twine a wreath of story.

When winter decks with frost the bearded oak, In songs and sagas we our youth recover; Around the hearthstone crowd the listening folk, While on the wall mysterious shadows hover. The summer night, suffused with loving glow, The future, dawning in a golden chalice, Enkindles hope in hearts of high and low, From peasant's cottage to the royal palace.

The snow of winter spreads o'er hill and valley Its soft and silken blue-white veil of sleep; The springtime bids the green-clad earth to rally, When through the budding leaves the sunbeams peep, The autumn brings fresh breezes from the ocean And paints the lad's fair cheeks a rosy red; The maiden's heart is stirred with new emotion, When summer's fragrance o'er the world is spread.

To roam in our fair land is like a dream, Through these still woods, renowned in ancient story, Along the shores, deep-mirrored in the gleam Of fjords that shine beneath the sky's blue glory. Upon the meadows where the flowers bloom The elfin maidens hide themselves in slumbers, But soon along the lakes where shadows gloom In every bosky nook they'll dance their numbers.

There are no frowning crags on our green mountains, No dark, forbidding cliffs where gorges yawn; The streams flow gently seaward from their fountains, As through the silent valley steals the dawn. Here nature smoothes the rugged, tames the savage. And men born here in victory are kind, Forbearing still the foeman's land to ravage, And in defeat they bear a steadfast mind.

I'm proud of land, of kindred, and of nation, I'm proud my home is where the waters flow; Afar I see in golden radiation My native land like sun through amber glow. Its warmth revives my heart, however lonely: Forgive me, Princess, if my soul's aflame,-- But rather be at home, a beggar only, Than, exiled thence, have universal fame.

Translation of Charles Harvey Genung.

JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE

(1795-1820)

Conspicuous among the young poets, essayists, and journalists, who made up literary New York in the early part of the century, was Joseph Rodman Drake, the friend of Halleck, and the best beloved perhaps of all that brilliant group. Hardly known to this generation save by 'The Culprit Fay' and 'The American Flag,' Drake was essentially a true poet and a man of letters. His work was characteristic of his day. He had a certain amount of classical knowledge, a certain eighteenth-century grace and style, yet withal, an instinctive Americanism which flowered out into our first true national literature. The group of writers among whom were found Irving, Halleck, Willis, Dana, Hoffman, Verplanck, Brockden Brown, and a score of others, reflected that age in which they sought their literary models. With the exception of Poe, who belonged to a somewhat later time and whose genius was purely subjective, much of the production of these Americans followed the lines of their English predecessors,--Johnson, Goldsmith, Addison, and Steele. It is only in their deeper moments of thought and feeling that there sounds that note of love of country, of genuine Americanism, which gives their work individuality, and which will keep their memory green.

Drake was born in New York, in August 1795. He was descended from the same family as the great admiral of Elizabethan days, the American branch of which had served their country honorably both in colonial and Revolutionary times. The scenes of his boyhood were the same as those that formed the environment of Irving, memories of which are scattered thick through the literature of the day. New York was still a picturesque, hospitable, rural capital, the centre of the present town being miles distant in the country. The best families were all intimately associated in a social life that was cultivated and refined at the same time that it was gay and unconventional; and in this society Drake occupied a place which his lovable qualities and fine talents must have won, even had it been denied him by birth. He was a precocious boy, for whom a career was anticipated by his friends while he was yet a mere child; and when he met Halleck, in his eighteenth year, he had already won some reputation.

The friendship of Drake and Halleck was destined to prove infinitely valuable to both. A discussion between Cooper, Halleck, and Drake, upon the poetic inspiration of American scenery, prompted Drake to write 'The Culprit Fay'--a poem without any human character. This he completed in three days, and offered it as the argument on his side. The scene of the poem is laid in the Highlands of the Hudson, but Drake added many pictures suggested by memories of Long Island Sound, whose waters he haunted with boat and rod. He apologized for this by saying that the purposes of poetry alone could explain the presence so far up the Hudson of so many salt-water emigrants. 'The Culprit Fay' is a creation of pure fancy, full of delicate imagery, and handled with an ethereal lightness of touch. Its exquisite grace, its delicate coloring, its prodigality of charm, explain its immediate popularity and its lasting fame. But the Rip Van Winkle legend is a far more genuine product of fancy.

Drake's few shorter lyrics throb with genuine poetic feeling, and show the loss sustained by literature in the author's early death. Best known of these is 'The American Flag,' which appeared in the Evening Post as one of a series of _jeux d'esprit_, the joint productions of Halleck and Drake, who either alternated in the composition of the numbers or wrote them together. The last four lines only of 'The American Flag' are Halleck's. The entire series appeared between March and July, 1819, under the signature of "The Croakers." Literary New York was mystified as to the authorship of these skits, which hit off the popular fads, follies, and enthusiasms of the day with so easy and graceful a touch. Politics, music, the drama, and domestic life alike furnished inspiration for the numbers; some of whose titles, as 'A Sketch of a Debate in Tammany' and 'The Battery War,' suggest the local political issues of the present day. There is now in existence a handsome edition of these verses, with the names of the authors of the several pieces appended, and in the case of the joint ownership with the initials D. and H. subscribed.

Drake's complete poems were not published during his lifetime. Sixteen years after his death by consumption in his twenty-sixth year, his daughter issued a volume dedicated to Halleck, in which were included the best specimens of her father's work. Many of the lesser known verses indicate his true place as a poet. In the touching poem 'Abelard to Eloise,' in the third stanza of 'The American Flag,' and in innumerable beautiful lines scattered throughout his work, appears a genuine inspiration.

In his own day, Drake filled a place which his death left forever vacant. His rare and winning personality, his generous friendships, his joy in life, and his courage in the contemplation of his inevitable fate, still appeal to a generation to whom they are but traditions. The exquisite monody in which Halleck celebrated his loss, links their names and decorates their friendship with imperishable garlands.

A WINTER'S TALE

From 'The Croakers'

"_A merry heart goes all the way, A sad one tires in a mile-a._" --WINTER'S TALE.

The man who frets at worldly strife Grows sallow, sour, and thin; Give us the lad whose happy life Is one perpetual grin: He, Midas-like, turns all to gold; He smiles when others sigh; Enjoys alike the hot and cold, And laughs through wet and dry.

There's fun in everything we meet; The greatest, worst, and best Existence is a merry treat, And every speech a jest: Be 't ours to watch the crowds that pass Where mirth's gay banner waves; To show fools through a quizzing glass, And bastinade the knaves.

The serious world will scold and ban, In clamor loud and hard, To hear Meigs[A] called a Congressman, And Paulding called a bard: But come what may, the man's in luck Who turns it all to glee, And laughing, cries with honest Puck, "Good Lord! what fools ye be!"

[A] Henry Meigs of New York, a Congressman from 1819 to 1821 in the Sixteenth Congress.

THE CULPRIT FAY

My visual orbs are purged from film, and lo! Instead of Anster's turnip-bearing vales, I see old Fairyland's miraculous show! Her trees of tinsel kissed by freakish gales, Her ouphs that, cloaked in leaf-gold, skim the breeze, And fairies, swarming.... --TENNANT'S 'ANSTER FAIR'

'Tis the middle watch of a summer's night-- The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright; Naught is seen in the vault on high But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky, And the flood which rolls its milky hue, A river of light on the welkin blue. The moon looks down on old Cronest; She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast, And seems his huge gray form to throw In a silver cone on the wave below; His sides are broken by spots of shade, By the walnut bough and the cedar made, And through their clustering branches dark Glimmers and dies the firefly's spark-- Like starry twinkles that momently break Through the rifts of the gathering tempest's rack.

The stars are on the moving stream, And fling, as its ripples gently flow, A burnished length of wavy beam In an eel-like, spiral line below; The winds are whist, and the owl is still; The bat in the shelvy rock is hid; And naught is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katydid; And the plaint of the wailing whippoorwill, Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings. Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and sky in her glances glow.

'Tis the hour of fairy ban and spell: The wood-tick has kept the minutes well; He has counted them all with click and stroke Deep in the heart of the mountain oak, And he has awakened the sentry elve Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree, To bid him ring the hour of twelve, And call the fays to their revelry; Twelve small strokes on his tinkling bell-- ('Twas made of the white snail's pearly shell) "Midnight comes, and all is well! Hither, hither, wing your way! 'Tis the dawn of the fairy day."

They come from beds of lichen green, They creep from the mullein's velvet screen; Some on the backs of beetles fly From the silver tops of moon-touched trees, Where they swung in their cobweb hammocks high, And rocked about in the evening breeze; Some from the hum-bird's downy nest-- They had driven him out by elfin power, And pillowed on plumes of his rainbow breast, Had slumbered there till the charmèd hour; Some had lain in the scoop of the rock, With glittering ising-stars inlaid; And some had opened the four-o'clock, And stole within its purple shade. And now they throng the moonlight glade, Above, below, on every side, Their little minim forms arrayed In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride!

They come not now to print the lea, In freak and dance around the tree, Or at the mushroom board to sup, And drink the dew from the buttercup;-- A scene of sorrow waits them now, For an ouphe has broken his vestal vow; He has loved an earthly maid, And left for her his woodland shade; He has lain upon her lip of dew, And sunned him in her eye of blue, Fanned her cheek with his wing of air, Played in the ringlets of her hair, And nestling on her snowy breast, Forgot the lily-king's behest. For this the shadowy tribes of air To the elfin court must haste away: And now they stand expectant there, To hear the doom of the culprit fay.

The throne was reared upon the grass, Of spice-wood and of sassafras; On pillars of mottled tortoise-shell Hung the burnished canopy-- And o'er it gorgeous curtains fell Of the tulip's crimson drapery. The monarch sat on his judgment seat; On his brow the crown imperial shone; The prisoner fay was at his feet, And his peers were ranged around the throne. He waved his sceptre in the air, He looked around and calmly spoke; His brow was grave and his eye severe, But his voice in a softened accent broke:--

"Fairy! Fairy! list and mark: Thou hast broke thine elfin chain; Thy flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark, And thy wings are dyed with a deadly stain-- Thou hast sullied thine elfin purity In the glance of a mortal maiden's eye; Thou hast scorned our dread decree, And thou shouldst pay the forfeit high. But well I know her sinless mind Is pure as the angel forms above, Gentle and meek, and chaste and kind, Such as a spirit well might love; Fairy! had she spot or taint, Bitter had been thy punishment: Tied to the hornet's shardy wings; Tossed on the pricks of nettles' stings; Or seven long ages doomed to dwell With the lazy worm in the walnut-shell; Or every night to writhe and bleed Beneath the tread of the centipede; Or bound in a cobweb dungeon dim, Your jailer a spider, huge and grim, Amid the carrion bodies to lie Of the worm, and the bug, and the murdered fly: These it had been your lot to bear, Had a stain been found on the earthly fair. Now list, and mark our mild decree-- Fairy, this your doom must be:--

"Thou shalt seek the beach of sand Where the water bounds the elfin land; Thou shalt watch the oozy brine Till the sturgeon leaps in the bright moonshine, Then dart the glistening arch below, And catch a drop from his silver bow. The water-sprites will wield their arms And dash around, with roar and rave, And vain are the woodland spirits' charms; They are the imps that rule the wave. Yet trust thee in thy single might: If thy heart be pure and thy spirit right, Thou shalt win the warlock fight.

"If the spray-bead gem be won, The stain of thy wing is washed away; But another errand must be done Ere thy crime be lost for aye: Thy flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark,-- Thou must re-illume its spark. Mount thy steed and spur him high To the heaven's blue canopy; And when thou seest a shooting star, Follow it fast, and follow it far-- The last faint spark of its burning train Shall light the elfin lamp again. Thou hast heard our sentence, fay; Hence! to the water-side, away!"

The goblin marked his monarch well; He spake not, but he bowed him low, Then plucked a crimson colen-bell, And turned him round in act to go. The way is long; he cannot fly; His soilèd wing has lost its power, And he winds adown the mountain high For many a sore and weary hour. Through dreary beds of tangled fern, Through groves of nightshade dark and dern, Over the grass and through the brake, Where toils the ant and sleeps the snake; Now o'er the violet's azure flush He skips along in lightsome mood; And now he thrids the bramble-bush, Till its points are dyed in fairy blood. He has leaped the bog, he has pierced the brier, He has swum the brook and waded the mire, Till his spirits sank and his limbs grew weak, And the red waxed fainter in his cheek. He had fallen to the ground outright, For rugged and dim was his onward track, But there came a spotted toad in sight, And he laughed as he jumped upon her back; He bridled her mouth with a silkweed twist, He lashed her sides with an osier thong. And now, through evening's dewy mist, With leap and spring they bound along, Till the mountain's magic verge is past, And the beach of sand is reached at last. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Up, fairy! quit thy chickweed bower, The cricket has called the second hour, Twice again, and the lark will rise To kiss the streaking of the skies-- Up! thy charmèd armor don; Thou'lt need it ere the night be gone.

He put his acorn helmet on: It was plumed of the silk of the thistle-down; The corselet plate that guarded his breast Was once the wild bee's golden vest; His cloak, of a thousand mingled dyes, Was formed of the wings of butterflies; His shield was the shell of a lady-bug queen, Studs of gold on a ground of green; And the quivering lance which he brandished bright Was the sting of a wasp he had slain in fight. Swift he bestrode his firefly steed; He bared his blade of the bent-grass blue; He drove his spurs of the cockle-seed, And away like a glance of thought he flew, To skim the heavens, and follow far The fiery trail of the rocket-star.

The moth-fly, as he shot in air, Crept under the leaf and hid her there; The katydid forgot its lay, The prowling gnat fled fast away, The fell mosquito checked his drone And folded his wings till the fay was gone. And the wily beetle dropped his head, And fell on the ground as if he were dead; They crouched them close in the darksome shade, They quaked all o'er with awe and fear, For they had felt the blue-bent blade, And writhed at the prick of the elfin spear; Many a time, on a summer's night, When the sky was clear, and the moon was bright, They had been roused from the haunted ground By the yelp and bay of the fairy hound; They had heard the tiny bugle-horn, They had heard the twang of the maize-silk string, When the vine-twig bows were tightly drawn, And the needle-shaft through air was borne, Feathered with down of the hum-bird's wing. And now they deemed the courier ouphe Some hunter-sprite of the elfin ground; And they watched till they saw him mount the roof That canopies the world around; Then glad they left their covert lair, And freaked about in the midnight air.

Up to the vaulted firmament His path the firefly courser bent, And at every gallop on the wind, He flung a glittering spark behind; He flies like a feather in the blast Till the first light cloud in heaven is past. But the shapes of air have begun their work, And a drizzly mist is round him cast; He cannot see through the mantle murk; He shivers with cold, but he urges fast; Through storm and darkness, sleet and shade, He lashes his steed, and spurs amain-- For shadowy hands have twitched the rein, And flame-shot tongues around him played, And near him many a fiendish eye Glared with a fell malignity, And yells of rage, and shrieks of fear, Came screaming on his startled ear.

His wings are wet around his breast, The plume hangs dripping from his crest, His eyes are blurred with the lightning's glare, And his ears are stunned with the thunder's blare. But he gave a shout, and his blade he drew; He thrust before and he struck behind, Till he pierced their cloudy bodies through, And gashed their shadowy limbs of wind; Howling the misty spectres flew; They rend the air with frightful cries; For he has gained the welkin blue, And the land of clouds beneath him lies.

Up to the cope careering swift, In breathless motion fast, Fleet as the swallow cuts the drift, Or the sea-roc rides the blast, The sapphire sheet of eve is shot, The sphered moon is past, The earth but seems a tiny blot On a sheet of azure cast. Oh! it was sweet, in the clear moonlight, To tread the starry plain of even! To meet the thousand eyes of night, And feel the cooling breath of heaven! But the elfin made no stop or stay Till he came to the bank of the Milky Way; Then he checked his courser's foot, And watched for the glimpse of the planet-shoot.