Carolina Chansons Part 5

Bring me one breath from the deep salt sea, Ye vagrant upland airs!

Over your forest and field and lea, From the windy deeps that have mothered me, To the heart of one who cares.

Clear to the peace of the sunlit park, You bring with your evening lull The vesper song of the meadow lark; But my soul is sick for the seething dark, And the scream of a wind-blown gull.

And bring to me from the ocean's breast No crooning lullaby; But the shout of a bleak storm-riven crest As it shoulders up in the sodden West And hurtles down the sky.

That, breathing deep, I may feel the sweep Of the wind and the driving rain.

For so I know that my heart will leap To meet the call of the strident deep, And will thrill to life again.

D.H.

TWO PAGES

FROM THE BOOK OF THE SEA ISLANDS

PAGE ONE

SHADOWS

There is deliberateness in all sea-island ways, As alien to our days as stone wheels are.

The Islands cannot see the use of life Which only lives for change.

There days are flat, And all things must move slowly; Even the seasons are conservative-- No sudden flaunting of wild colors in the fall, Only a gradual fading of the green, As if the earth turned slowly, Or looked with one still face upon the sun As Venus does-- Until the trees, the fields, the marshes, All turn dun, dull Quaker-brown, And a mild winter settles down, And mosses are more gray.

All human souls are gla.s.ses which reflect The aspects of the outer world; See what terrible G.o.ds the huge Himalayas bred!

And the fierce Jewish Jaywah came From the hot Syrian deserts With his inhibitory decalogue.

The G.o.ds of little hills are always tame; Here G.o.d is dull, where all things stay the same.

No change on these sea-islands!

The huge piled clouds range White in the cobalt sky; The moss hangs, And the strong, tiring sea-winds blow-- While day on glistering day goes by.

The horses plow with hanging heads, Slow, followed by a black-faced man, Indifferent to the sun; The old cotton bushes hang with whitened heads; And there among the live-oak trees, Peep the small whitewashed cabins, Painted blue, perhaps, and scarlet-turbaned women, Ample-hipped, with voices soft and warm With the lean hounds and chocolate children swarm.

Day after day the ocean pumps The awful valve-gates of his heart, Diastole and systole through these estuaries; The tides flow in long, gray, weed-streaked lines; The salt water, like the planet's lifeblood, goes As if the earth were breathing with long-taken breaths And we were very near her heart.

No wonder that these faces show a tired dismay, Looking on burning suns, and scarcely blithe in May; Spring's coming is too fierce with life; And summer is too long; The stunted pine trees struggle with the sand Till the eyes sicken with their dwarfing strife.

There are old women here among these island homes, With dull brown eyes that look at something gray, And tight silver hair, drawn back in lines, Like the beach gra.s.s that's always blown one way; With such a melancholy in their faces I know that they have lived long in these places.

The tides, the hooting owls, the daylight moons, The leprous lights and shadows of the mosses, The funereal woodlands of these coasts, Draped like a perpetual hea.r.s.e, And memories of an old war's ancient losses, Dwell in their faces' shadows like gray ghosts.

And worse-- The terror of the black man always near-- The drab level of the ricefields and the marsh Lends them a mask of fear.

PAGE TWO

SUNSHINE

This is a different page.

Do you suppose the sun here lavishes his heat For nothing, in these islands by the sea?

No! The great green-mottled melons ripen in the fields, Bleeding with scarlet, juicy pith deliriously; And the exuberant yams grow golden, thick and sweet; And white potatoes, in grave-rows, With leaves as rough as cat tongues; And pearly onions, and cabbages With white flesh, sweet as chicken meat.

These the black boatmen bring to town On barges, heaped with severed b.r.e.a.s.t.s of leaves, Driven by _put-put_ engines Down the long ca.n.a.ls, quavering with song, With hail and chuckle to the docks along, Seeing their dark faces down below Reduplicated in the sunset glow, While from the sh.o.r.e stretch out the quivering lines Of the flat, palm-like, reflected pines That inland lie like ranges of dark hills in lines.

And so to town-- Weaving odd baskets of sweet gra.s.s, Lazily and slow, To sell in the arcaded market, Where men sold their fathers not so long ago.

For all their poverty, These patient black men live A life rich in warm colors of the fields, Sunshine and hearty foods, Delighted with the gifts that earth can give, And old tales of _Plateye_ and _Bre'r Rabbit_; While the golden-velvet cornpone browns Underneath the lid among hot ashes, Where the _groundnuts_ roast, Round shadowy fires at nights, With tales of graveyard ghost, While eery spirituals ring, And organ voices sing, And sticks knock maddening rhythms on the floor To shuffling youngsters "cutting" buck-and-wing; Dogs bark; And dog-eyed pickaninnies peek about the door.

Sundays, along the moss-draped roads, The beribboned black folk go to church By threes and twos, carrying their shoes, With orange turbans, ginghams, rainbow hats; Then bucks flaunt tiger-lily ties and watchet suits, Smoking cob pipes and faintly sweet cheroots.

Wagons with oval wheels and kitchen chairs screech by, Where Joseph-coated white-teethed maidens sit Demurely, While the old mule rolls back the ivory of his eye.

Soon from the whitewashed churches roll away Among the live oak trees, Rivers of melancholy harmonies, Full of the sorrows of the centuries The white man hears, but cannot feel.

But it is always Sunday on sea-islands.

Plantation bells, calling the pickers from the fields, Are like old temple gongs; And the wind tells monodies among the pines, Playing upon their strings the ocean's songs; The ducks fly in long, trailing lines; Skeows _squonk_ and marsh-hens _quank_ Among the tidal flats and rushes rank on rank; On island tufts the heron feeds its viscid young; And the quick mocker catches From lips of sons of slaves the eery s.n.a.t.c.hes, And trolls them as no lips have ever sung.

Oh! It is good to be here in the spring, When water still stays solid in the North, When the first jasmine rings its golden bells, And the "wild wistaria" puts forth; But most because the sea then changes tone; Talking a whit less drear, It gossips in a smoother monotone, Whispering moon-scandal in the old earth's ear.

H.A.

MODERN PHILOSOPHER

They fight your battles for you every day, The zealous ones, who sorrow in your life.

Undaunted by a century of strife, With urgent fingers still they point the way To drawing rooms, in decorous array, And moral Heavens where no casual wife May share your lot; where dice and ready knife Are barred; and feet are silent when you pray.

But you have music in your shuffling feet, And spirituals for a lenient Lord, Who lets you sing your promises away.

You hold your sunny corner of the street, And pluck deep beauty from a banjo chord: Philosopher whose future is today!

D.H.

UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS

The judge, who lives impeccably upstairs With dull decorum and its implication, Has all his servants in to family prayers, And edifies _his_ soul with exhortation.

Meanwhile his blacks live wastefully downstairs; Not always chaste, they manage to exist With less decorum than the judge upstairs, And find withal a something that he missed.

This painful fact a Swede philosopher, Who tarried for a fortnight in our city, Remarked, one evening at the meal, before We paralyzed him silent with our pity--

Saying the black man living with the white Had given more than white men could requite.

H.A.