Carolina Chansons Part 10

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 fishing 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 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 gra.s.s 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 m.u.f.fled 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.

St. Phillip's Church stands in the old part of the town. During the Civil War its bells were cast into cannon. For a long time its steeple was used as a lighthouse. It is the center of forgotten things.

The bells of St. Matthew's are modern and speak of a new order, but all the bells are the voice of the town. They speak for her silences, which are eloquent.

NOTE ON "THE PIRATES"

The many inlets and sheltering coves of the Carolina coasts very early made the "low country" seaboard a rendezvous for pirates and a shelter to refit, and to bury their treasure.

As early as 1565 the French from Ribault's settlement succ.u.mbed to the temptation to plunder their rich Spanish neighbors; and in the century before the coming of the English, the lonely bays and estuaries saw strange ships from time to time. There was a pirate settlement by 1664 at Cape Fear River, where Governor Sayle did not arrive until 1670 to take formal possession for the Lords Proprietors of the colony.

The Peace of Utrecht turned many privateers into pirates, ships which had been habitually preying upon Spanish commerce since Blake's victory at Santa Cruz in 1657, and these gentlemen of fortune were at first welcome in the Carolinas. Nearly all the coin in circulation then was at first brought by such doubtful adventurers, and they were regarded as the natural protectors of the Carolinas against their powerful enemy, the Spaniard, to the south.

Gradually, however, this cordial att.i.tude changed. It was a small step from attacking Spanish to plundering English commerce, and with the cultivation and export of rice and indigo, the demand for a safe sea pa.s.sage grew overwhelming, while the coasts continued to be ravaged. The royal government was slow to act. In 1684 we learn that "the governor will not in all probability always reside in Charles Town, which is so near the sea as to be in danger of sudden attack by pirates;" nor was this an idle thought, for the town was blockaded by pirate ships at the harbor's mouth, and medicines and supplies demanded while citizens were held as hostages.

In 1718 Governor Spotswood of Virginia sent an expedition to North Carolina, which succeeded in surprising, capturing, and beheading the notorious "Black Beard," who in company with one Stede Bonnet, had long ravaged the coast with impunity.

In August of the same year word was brought to Charlestown that Bonnet with his ship the _Royal James_ was refitting in the Cape Fear River.

Colonel William Rhett volunteered to attack him. With two sloops of eight guns each, the _Henry_ and the _Nymph_, and about 130 men in all, he set sail, and found Bonnet at anchor in the Cape Fear River. In making the attack, and during the encounter, all three ships ran aground. The fight raged desperately all day between the _Henry_ and the _Royal James_, the _Nymph_ being unable to get off the shoal and come to the help of her companion ship. Bonnet finally surrendered and was taken prisoner to Charlestown. It is this adventure which the poem celebrates.

Bonnet escaped, but was afterwards recaptured by Colonel Rhett on Sullivan's Island. He and about thirty of his crew were hanged about the corner of Meeting and Water Streets. Bonnet, himself, was hanged later than his crew, after a masterpiece of invective by the judge, who painted h.e.l.l vividly. This pirate leader was dragged fainting to the gallows, and there was much sympathy for him, as it was said, "His humor of going a-pirating proceeded from a disorder of the mind ... occasioned by some discomforts he found in the married state."

NOTE ON "THE SEEWEES OF SEEWEE BAY"

The Seewee Indians, who lived on the sh.o.r.es of what is now known as Bull's Bay, S.C., but was formerly called Seewee Bay, became discontented with the small prices obtained from the white traders for pelts. Seeing the ships constantly coming into the Bay from England, they conceived the idea of building large canoes and reaching England over the ocean. Several huge canoes, larger than any heretofore built by Indians, were accordingly constructed; these were loaded with the proceeds of a season's hunting, and, manned by all the braves of the tribe, set out in the direction from which the ships came. A gale came up and the braves were never seen again. Their squaws gradually wandered off to other tribes. This event took place about 1696.

NOTE ON LA FAYETTE

TO ACCOMPANY "LA FAYETTE LANDS"