On old Cape Cod — Themes and Context

or, Beach sand fluttered like withered leaves And sifted under the door.

The salt that crusted the chimney wide Had tinged the flames with yellows and reds; Salt were the wavelets that lapped outside, And white as the salt were their heads.

Visions of many a tropic clime In the firelight seemed to come and go; Till friends they had known in their youthful prime Took form in the radiant glow.

As time cracked voices droned away Through strange adventures in days gone by, One voyaged with them to far Cathay And spice swept Araby.

Quaint were the islands they knew so well Zanzibar, Pitcairn, and Celebes; Isles enchanted where reigned the spell Of other and lonelier seas.

Seas that cringed at the typhoon’s wrath When his thunderous roar was heard; Silent seas in the calm of death Where never a whisper stirred.

And the pulses quickened to hear their tales of voices hailing from spectral sands; Of dead men’s ships with their ghastly sails Unfurled by skeleton hands!

Legends weird of an unplumbed deep Where galleons foundered in days of yore; And sightless monsters that grope and creep In the slime of the ocean floor.

Sagas of shipwreck in days long gone, Of pirate treasure and revelry, Of clashing cutlass and fights hard won In some blood stained mutiny.

On decks awash how they held their own When faced by the knives of a cursing crew. And they spoke of shoals and of ledges lone Which only the sea birds knew.

Youth flushed once more on withered cheeks, Bent shoulders squared defiantly, At such deeds as fired the warlike Greeks In their legended Odyssey.

And the murmuring tide ebbed once again, And the fire burned low e’re the captains three Recalled with a sigh they were old, old men Who were done with their toil on the sea.

Red blur against the western sky A banner flutters threateningly The sport of every treacherous air It flaunts its warning note - “Beware” Each wrinkle in its protean form A portent of impending storm.

The darkening smudge where sank the sun In bloody embers smoulders on With brooding wrath. But angrier red Invests that standard with the dread Of unseen terrors. For it holds Death’s shadow in its writhing folds!

Horses of Neptune that bound and dash Maddened with fear at the tempest’s lash, Pawing the sand with their thudding feet In a crashing rhythm of thunderous beat, Swift as the startled winds they race, Straining ever at fleeter pace; Forms that curve where the billows comb, Breasting a welter of seething foam, What unseen riders spur them on In a fierce stampede to be up and gone? Out of the hoary deep they come, Surging on with a booming roar, Pounding ever along the shore, Till the senses whirl and the ear grows numb.

Manes that stream in the wind swept spume, Necks that arch in the breakers’ crest, Hoofs resounding like drums of doom, Rearing forward with frantic zest, Wild are the steeds of the storm scarred deep! Trident driven, they plunge and leap, With nostrils spread and their eyes aglow, And fetlocks gripped by the undertow, Boisterous, raging, uncanny steeds Out of an ocean waste that breeds Chargers fit for a sea god’s needs - Neptune’s coursers, untamed and free, Fleeing the wrath of the unknown sea!

TO A SPIDER WEB WET WITH DEW

Suspended o’er the grass there floats a web More delicate than strands of gossamer Wet with the morning dew, in pendant gems That flame with reds and greens and darting blues From the bright sun. A filmy nothingness Made visible by jeweled drops and etched, Like frosted silver, on a background dark Of drooping pines. An airy talisman As lustrous as a diamond necklace draped About a Peri’s throat. What fleeting glimpse Of loveliness ethereal and unreal Inspired that rapt enchantment of design, That harp of strings attuned to elfin songs, That ladder for the moonsprites nightly trail From sky to earth. What miracle of line, What shimmering grace, what witchery of form! So fragile that a fallen leaf may rend Its warp of magic ne’er to know the woof Of hard reality. A diagram Of elfin tracery impalpable; Each angle and its intersections squared By that grotesque geometer who spins Unseen, a hateful spider, ogre grim To all the insect world. Can ugliness So venomous create a thing so fair Beyond the range of art? In pensive mood We pause a moment to admire and scan Its meaning. Can such fairy elegance Spring from so foul a source? Yet legends tell How crippled Vulcan, grimed with dust and smoke, In darkness wrought the glorious shield of Mars. The water lily, blossom honey sweet, Draws nectar from the mire. Nor time nor bounds May curb that hidden beauty that wells up From secret springs in nooks obscure and dark, Till gems of dew upon a spider’s web Glow like the Pleiades in frosted skies.

The dunes, the silent sentinels of the land That range along the lea, In revery unbroken, there they stand And gaze far out to sea

Across their wind swept crests the breezes play In cadence sad and sweet, The restless sands whip ever day by day Their surf tormented feet.

The dying sunbeams gild their crags with gold Then purple into night, Around their slopes the elves of twilight fold A film of spectral light.

A landscape wild that one might see in dreams Or on the pallid moon, Blue shadows traced in silver by her beams In many a cryptic rune.

Or etched against the winter sky they show An outline weird and stark, Their pale sands melting like the sparser snow Into a background dark.

With scudding clouds, reflected on the dull Gray mirror of the sea. Cut by the wing points of a lonely gull In poised expectancy.

The distant sand bars mark the skeletons Of other vanished dunes, Their crests were once upreared to other suns And other ghostly moons.

The seething shoals once foamed beneath your feet And maddened tide rips swirled Whence risen proudly you can stand and greet The older, firmer world.

Unstable element of shifting sand Whose contours ever change, But moulded by great nature’s groping hand In shapes bizarre and strange.

We too, from sand have fashioned castled towers For waves to wash away, But her creations crumble much like ours Though in a grander way.

Nature, like man, forever vainly strives To conquer time and tide; She toils long aeons, we our briefer lives And both unsatisfied!

THE FLIGHT OF THE WILD GEESE

Out of the sky they call to me Honking geese in the far flung V Of an angle traced on the filmy skies As they float along, and their plaintive cries Are the pipes of an elfin roundelay. Tis the call of the wild to the Far-away!

“Northward Ho!” is their haunting chant Down the rocking winds their long lines slant, And the old gray gander who takes command How he marshals the files of his climbing band, As they wing their flight with a tireless haste, To the ice rimmed seas and the tundra waste.

To the spruce fringed lakes and the virgin sod Where never the foot of man has trod; To the empty lands unspoiled and clean That never the eye of man has seen; Where the frost wraiths flee in the melting nights That throb to the dance of the northern lights.

On their venturous voyage no compass guides Through the murmuring reefs and the chartless tides Of the upper air. But their leader hoarse, Like a pilot sage directs their course To the sheltered fens and the coves they share With the snow white fox and the arctic hare.

How we follow the wild geese’s homing flight Till their chorus dies and they fade from sight, And our pulses thrill to be up and away Joyously buoyant, as free as they. For their far off challenge seems to ring “Awake, glad world, to the songs of Spring!”

Strange perfume of the wilderness, Elusive as an elfin child That broods above the landscape wild - And haunting as a last caress.

From thickets broken and obscure That spicy fragrance down the lea, Brings to the ever murmuring sea The sweetness of the barren moor.

Low risen thickets, scarcely seen Among the clumps of reindeer moss; What elfin traceries emboss Your leafy arabesques of green!

And if no lonely passer by Has trod your solitude to share That incense - every wandering air Has borne it to the bending sky.

White sail beyond yon point of sand Set like a gem upon the blue, A fairy bark for elfin land Receding gradually from view;

White sail a snow flake come to rest Like thistledown, upon the sea; A distant beacon on the breast Of watery immensity.

White sail, a finger tip that seems To beckon from the ocean’s rim, To some enchanted isle of dreams Beyond the skyline, vague and dim.

White sail that like a lonely tern Fades out against the dying day, We watch till you are gone and yearn To voyage into the far away.

Blithe wanderer from some happier sphere What hither darting brought you here Swift as a flash of light, With rainbow spatters on your throat Aflutter like a dancing mote Upon a sunbeam bright.

Bold atom of exultant life With energy and action rife And pinions all ablurr, What glad exuberance of wing Like harping on a fairy string Evokes that vibrant whirr?

With humming, strumming melody Like some supernal bumble bee You flit about to sup On honey dew. Your fearless beak Probes, lancet like, those sweets to seek Within each nectared cup.

Ah birdikin, now here, now there, Poised elfinlike, upon the air Aglitter like the dawn, How ardently we would beguile So fair a sprite to rest a while But flash! and you are gone.

Yet the unspoken word you bring Still lingers. Time is on the wing And never may be stayed. So let us sip each honeyed hour For life itself is but a flower That all too soon will fade.

O ROAD THAT WINDS AMONG THE HILLS

O road that winds among the hills With sinuous curves that lure the eye Up distant slopes to meet the sky, And wake a wanderlust that thrills To scenes which beckon far beyond From steep Kashmir or Trebizon.

How like a bird, we’d love to roam Beyond the gray Horizon’s rim That shuts us like a prison grim Within that narrow niche - our home While thoughts unfettered steal away To Istanbul and far Cathay.

O road we tread in toil and strife That climbs to greet the bending air, The long, long trail to none knows where - The weary highway we call Life - What lies beyond? Ah, who can say But we shall see and know - some day!

THE BEACH GRASS THRENODY

Lo in the wind the beach grass sings A medley of fantastic things That stirs the silence of the ear With elfin notes we scarce may hear, From formless shapes grotesque and strange That lurk beyond the vision’s range.

The fingers of what moon beam sprite, Or lonely demon of the night, Have strummed those sweetly plaintive strings To the weird melody that wrings A note of haunting mystery From the chill vastness of the sea.

Fair chalice in your spicy store The roses seem to blow And childhood’s simple faith restore In legend’s long ago; Such as the Arab’s jewelled prose Where Genii from the bottle rose The magician’s command obeyed And at his feet whole kingdoms laid.

From odorous depths I summon thee O spirit of the past! Weave all your spells of fantasy And may your visions last. Bring to my ear the murmuring breeze The drowsy, far off hum of bees, Unfolding to my raptured gaze Those scenes beloved, of olden days.

Once more within this scented gloom Forgotten sunbeams rest On hedges drooped with odorous bloom By blushing lips caressed. Those roses faded with the dusk - Her lips grew cold, but fixed in musk The fragrance lingers - and her eyes Do they smile down from Paradise?

Prophetic incense, subtly rare, O may I understand The poignant messages you bear From Memory’s holy land For petals torn from withered stems Have filled this treasure casque with gems And their sweet perfume brings to me A hint of immortality.

From elfland’s glades and coverts green Peering through bars of sun and shade Are friendly little eyes, I ween, That glow like sapphires set in jade, And shyly veil their azure spheres In summer’s filmiest atmospheres.

There banqueting, we half recline And sip the perfume redolent With sweet fern, aromatic pine, And bayberries’ seductive scent, An incense rare as smoking spice That censers raise to Paradise.

The stillness brooding like a pall O’er thickets and entangled trees Is stabbed by the shrill blackbird’s call, And rippled by the wandering breeze That trails a buzzing dragon fly Where bumble bees hum drowsily.

Athwart the slant rays of the sun Far off there glides a cloudland sail To faery shores. Our task is done - Our treasure won - a brimming pail. And no blithe argonaut e’er bore From legend’s quest a richer store!

A frail old lady bent and gray She gazes out into the west. To her it seems but yesterday He sailed away with eager zest “I pinned a rose upon his coat” She falters, clutching at her throat.

A mariner he put to sea, Twas more than fifty years ago, The neighbors nod in sympathy, She cannot understand they know. What fancies throng her poor old head “My Robert lost? He can’t be dead.”

And she is right. Her clearer eye Sees through the storms and stress of years, Full well she knows he did not die The rainbow glistens through her tears Enshrined within her heart in truth

Her Robert lives in deathless youth. From her lone window on the shore She nightly sets a lamp to burn A beacon when the breakers roar To guide him on his safe return. No matter what the neighbors say These two shall meet again some day!

How now, little maid, in your bonnet arrayed With that quaint little shell in your hand! Not a shell but a boat? Ah, I see, let it float Far away from these mountains of sand.

It will sail so I’m told, down the pathway of gold Where the sun paves the sea with its beams, To some fortunate isle where the skies ever smile Upon childhood’s endeavors and dreams.

But, Honey, don’t cry if it sinks bye and bye Like a fluttering bird to its nest; For the wild waves at play in their blundering way, Like the oncoming years never rest.

My hopes were aglow in the long, long ago When my own little ship left the shore; But my hair has grown grey since it drifted away And it never came back any more!

O flotsam stranded on the beach Half buried in the oozing sand, A sudden step, an outstretched hand, And you are snatched beyond the reach Of clutching waves. What brought you here From far off climes beyond the seas, The sport of every furtive breeze, A wanderer for many a year?

What gulfs of ocean’s nether world Your paths have plumbed, I cannot know, To what abyss the Krakens go, Or where Leviathan was hurled. What current dark, I wonder, links Your lot with mine on this lone shore, - But there is only silence more Unbroken than the Memphian spinx.

And am I fain to speculate Upon the burden of your past? When I, myself, am flotsam cast Ashore a little while to wait For Time’s resistless tides that sweep In endless waves of night and day Across the shoaling milky way From some vast, unimagined deep!

’Tis a time eaten volume with pages so blurred That they seem to peer out through a fog, But our fancy illumines each lustreless word Of that battered old “wind-jammer’s” log.

Till our eyes gazing out through those angular lines Like windows, transparent, behold Far vistas of seas where adventure combines With “spices” and “teak wood” and “gold.”

“Off the Horn” where the “greybeards” loomed up “mountain high” All “our topsails were carried away”; Then ’twas “cutlass and pike” when the “pirates drew nigh” As “becalmed off Macassar we lay.”

“One man hurt” then a later notation, “he’s dead” And “was buried at sea” all we know, He “signed from Tahiti” a “good man” they said, “The fo’castle hands called him ‘Joe’”

Lone wanderer far from his native lagoon Was he mourned by some garlanded maid? We ponder till jarred by a “roaring Typhoon” And “there on our beam ends we laid”.

“With our water casks low” when our “Bread had give out” “We fetched by some island unknown” Though we “dragged on the coral” while “Going about” We added “their stores” to our own.

There’s the wash and the surge of the murmurous deep In each billowing flourish of ink. Though the captains are silent in fathomless sleep What they tersely inscribed is a link.

With a past, when our banner, its glory aflame To the winds of the heavens was flung; And their deeds are forever an epic of fame Such as Homer of old might have sung.

THE DANCE OF THE MOON BEAMS

O the moonbeams dance down the broad expanse Of a path o’er the heaving sea, And they blithely trip from tip to tip Of the billows ranging free.

Down a highway bright of silvery light They dance to the ghostly moon, In the sprightly set of a minuet And the whirl of a rigadoon.

To our lonely shore like a burnished floor Streams that river of luminous sheen; ’Tis a fairy track through the shadows black ’Tis a bridge that spans between.

The regions here and that unseen sphere Far off in the western sky, Where the day is done with the setting sun And the sunsets fade and die.

Where the moon holds court and her minions sport As over the seas they roam, And they dance their way through the glistening spray And laugh in the rippling foam.

“O the night is ours and its witching powers “And there’s never an eye to mark, “For the demons sleep in the caverned deep “And the goblins of the dark.

“Are far away where the shadows gray “On the spectral sand dunes lie, “So join in our mirth that is not of the earth “But more of the sea and the sky!”

To the rhythmic beat of their twinkling feet The creaming breakers fret, As to and fro on a rollicking toe They gracefully pirouette.

For the surges roll o’er the murmuring shoal Through a brooding harmony And the night wind sings of unspoken things In an eerie melody.

“O cast your cares on the buoyant airs “Where the star points smoulder dim” Is their lilting song as they float along To the skyline’s molten rim.

As their footsteps pave o’er the frosted wave A path to the magic west, With a carefree shout we would join the rout And follow their homing quest.

But our feet are banned from that faery land Though our vaulting fancy yearns As it throbs in tune to the dying moon Till the morning redly burns.

With our hearts in tune to the dying moon We stand in the hush of dawn; There are cryptic runes on the windswept dunes But that luminous path has gone.

And the wet sands lie neath the empty sky As drear as the lifeless sea, But through our dreams flit the elfin beams Of that moonsprite revelry.

Marshes of Sandwich where slow currents wind Languidly seeking the outermost sea Drifting, some ultimate haven to find, Where far horizons stretch, boundless and free!

Out there beyond the white sea wall of dunes, Murmurs of ocean that breathe faint and low Looming like mountain peaks crusted with snow Weaving blue shadows through hot afternoons.

Languorous meadows where dragon flies dream, Level green solitudes soothing the eye, Golden with mist from the sun’s slanting beam Purpled by patches of cloud floating by.

Prairies beloved of the homing wild geese Nature’s hurt children are healed by your balm; How we have longed for the infinite peace Born of your timeless, unchangeable calm!